Riverside Drive, Dundee

Rigs: 2&3 hook flappers targeting flounders
Bait: mackie and prawn
Tide: 2 hours up and one down

Well March is already upon us and I decided for a first shore trip of the year to a sunny if still a tad chilly Riverside Drive at Dundee. Still suffering from the effects of man-flu I'd decided on an easy trip fishing out the back of the car.

It was apparent on arrival that that river was very muddy so I was immediately not expecting a bumper day. From the off there was a fair amount of grassy weed from the reed beds up stream. Always a pain to strip off the line and getting stuck in the rod eyes. No bites at all for the first 45 mins and a big tidal drag upstream whilst the flood continued.

The tidal run dropped a bit as did the weed, then a nice bite and my first shore caught fish of the year quickly follows, usual suspect of a flounder. This was quickly followed by a second smaller flounder and that was that for the day unfortunately.

Afloat on Etive

Finally 2014 is off and running fishwise for me. My rods and gear are all now in a nice new home out of storage and I should be out and about regularly again soon.

My first trip was over to Loch Etive where I was out on a charter with some of the Two Bridges SAC. After a dry start it hosed it down most of the day so no photos as there wasn't anything aboard to risk taking the camera out for. 122 fish between 7 anglers mostly spurs with a couple of whiting and lsds. Not a lot sizewise as I had biggest at just over 3.5lbs.

Good fun day though and glad to be fishing despite the weather.

Another New Year

Well after moving house and not having a lot of my fishing gear to hand I get my new shed this week and my fishing gear will be home just in time to start the annual species hunt again. Old and new places to explore and old and new species to target.

I always love the promise of a new year and even more so this year fishingwise after the end of last year was badly curtained by weather and 'real life'. Here's hoping the promise comes to something and that there is considerably more fishing this year :)

My targets for the year:

• 10lb shore fish of any species
• A Conger Eel from the shore
• 25 Shore species
• Continue to explore LRF locations around Scotland

Bait gathering in style

Well after an aborted attempt a couple of weeks ago due to the weather Gordon invited me out on his boat to fill up the freezer with mackerel for bait and maybe a cod or two.

Zooming over to Anstruther harbour after work I met Gordon and we were soon on the way. After a few fruitless drifts to see if there were any coddies about Gordon took us out to deeper water to get some mackies. They were still about in large numbers taking only 2 seconds to drop the hooks down to have them filled. Only 5 mins or so and there were about 60 mackies aboard. 120 nice fillets for bait to be frozen down.

Gordon then moved back to ground that he thought should hold as cod or two despite the small tides. Not the busiest trip bar the mackies but no blank for either of us. A wee suicidal coalie for Gordon and a 2lb odd codling for me.

Light fading we made our way back to Anstruther. Nice couple of hours blethering with Gordon and heading home with a cool box full of bait which I bagged up in to hand session sized portions. Thanks again to Gordon.

Elliot beach 24-08-13

Off to the beach for low tide up.I got set up just behind a big sand bank right on the lowtide point just where the tide would start coming in behind. When the tide started to flood there was a good amount of water running round the corner and behind the bank. Two baits out one in the slack water behind the bank and one sitting in the strongest flow of the tide.

Quite quickly I got a strong bite on the rod in the slack water, quite obviously a flounder and a bit smaller than it felt only about 21cms but thick and strong. Never snapped as I thought i'd have better. Not to be flounderwise.

Shortly after the flounder was landed my other rod took a mighty knock and unlike me I took the rod up and struck the second nod perfectly. This was a whole different ball game, zig zaging up and down the beach, taking line and leaping out of the water. I thought I had a bass on for a while as I got flashes of silver through the splashes it was sending up. With nothing to snag up on I played it calmly and shortly landed a decent sized fish. Not certain if it is a grilse or a sea trout but a damn good fight and as it was still full of vigor I put it back after a quick snap. It zipped off strongly back into the surf.

I had planned to fish the whole tide up on Sat but the session got curtailed to just a couple of hours due to the worst weed I have experienced on this beach. I was pretty disappointed but it was un-fishable with the flattie rods I had.

Stopped at Riverside on the way home to use up the bait and had loads of flounders but nothing of note so never bothered with the camera. I think it must've been close to two dozen for the couple of hours there.