08/08/10 No fish, three crabs and some sculpture

Bait - lug and squid
Rigs - Pennel Pulleys
Tide - High >>>Low
Place - Auchmithie

Arrived a bit later than planned bang on high tide, quickly set up and had both rods out.

The weather was much better than forecast but unfortunately that meant the beach  was heaving.

 I'm very much for sharing the shoreline and don't think I've got a right over it as an angler, but I have to say I was pretty pissed off today by families letting their kids run riot. Most of which thought throwing stones right in front of where I and an other couple had set up to fish was fun. I know Auchmithie is not a massive beach but there is plenty of room and throwing stones comes naturally to kids, I just wish their parents had taught them a bit of consideration for others.

As you'd imagine the fishing was slow, only a couple of early knocks and only three crabs to show for the effort by the end of the day. I should probably have moved but I was a stubborn git and didn't.

Though if I had moved I wouldn't have got the chance to help an artist with their sculpture. Throughout the day I had noticed this woman taking photos of sculptures and towards the end of the day as I was thinking of packing it in due to the lovely children, when she approached me to ask for help moving a particularly large sculpture.

How could I say no.

As we got chatting it turned out she was from southern Bavaria and had been living at an artists retreat in the area for the last few weeks. She had been scouring the beaches for stones and driftwood for her sculptures and was in the process of photographing them back in the locations she had originally found them.

I wish I had some scale in this pic, but it was about 150cm long and 75cm high and was pretty damn heavy. She told me it was a single boulder of local old red sandstone which she hand carved to what you can see. It was pretty beautiful. Unfortunately it was the only one I got a snap of, but it made the day a bit more interesting as the fishing was so slow.

And her thanks was in stark contrast to the inconsiderate arses that plagued my day.