SIBly the best?

On Tuesday last week, I headed west and met up with my mate and fellow species hunter Gordon for a day afloat in his SIB on the upper section of Loch Creran. He recently sent me a link to a diver’s photos of some interesting mini species that were taken in Loch Creran, so we thought we’d spend a day fishing tiny baits to see what might take them. 

Upper Loch Creran on a breezy, overcast day.

Our fishing platform for the day. You can also see the bladderwrack beds that make fishing from the shore with ultra light tackle very difficult. Getting your rig back through them is problematic.

Things were pretty slow to start with, mainly due to the fac that the SIB was drifting a little too fast along the northern shore of the loch, so we tied off on a large grey buoy at the eastern end of the loch to try there. We soon started getting some little taps, and I eventually caught one of the small culprits on a tiny piece of ragworm. It wasn't anything unusual sadly, but it was proof that our delicate rigs and tiny baits were working OK if nothing else.

The first fish of the day was a sand goby. 

After the sand goby was caught the bites dried up, so after a while we decided to untie the SIB from the buoy and to have a go drifting again, along the loch's southern shore this time. The water there was fairly deep relatively close to the shore and the drift was a little slower. By slowly letting out line as we drifted, we managed to leave our rigs in a stationary position and were soon catching lots of black goby.

We caught a few black goby.

After a couple of hours we'd caught a dozen black goby between us and nothing else. We were both feeling a little bit cold too by this point, so we decided to head back in and after packing up the SIB we headed off to get some hot food. Before heading home, we spend a couple of hours fishing at Kelly's Pier on Loch Etive. I was hoping to catch a painted goby for my 2023 species hunt and managed to do just that. I also caught a single black goby and a few rather rotund three spined stickleback.

A painted goby. My third goby species of the day.

A nice photo showing the black goby's elongated dorsal fin ray.

The sticklebacks were pretty chunky. What a bloater!

So, no unusual species were caught, but we did learn a little about fishing from the SIB in upper Loch Creran. If we do it again, we'll do so when the weather is nicer and there is little wind. We might also use an anchor to fish over the one area. The drifts along the southern shore did also give some ideas about potential shore fishing spots too. Perhaps fishing from the SIB isn't the best approach to take? All food for thought. So, a fairly productive day trip for formulating future trips there, and I also added a sand goby and painted goby to this year's species tally in the process!

Tight lines, Scott.