A kraken day afloat.

On Tuesday I headed down to Port Logan with two of my mates, Nick and Stewart, for a day out with skipper Spike aboard his boat Go West. I was hopeful that I could add some species to my Scottish saltwater species hunt tally with bull huss, herring, tub gurnard and red gurnard being the most likely captures that would see me do that. In the end I only managed to add one but we all caught a few fish, had a laugh and to top it all off the sun even managed to appear in the afternoon.

Once upon a time herring were plentiful around Scotland, sadly this is no longer the case due to overfishing. They can still be caught in the Irish Sea at certain times of the year and I was happy to catch two of them on a set of sabiki.

Nick caught a couple of tub gurnard after his first one spat the hook at the side of the boat. I had no luck catching one despite us spending a bit of time repeatedly drifting over the area where Nick caught his.

In the afternoon I caught a couple of nice colourful male cuckoo wrasse while scratching around on the bottom. They are one of my favourite UK fish. 

I also hooked and boated a couple of these amazing creatures. The first octopus was friendly enough, crawling around on my arm after I removed my hook from its tentacle, but the second one decided to bite me with it's rather sharp little beak whilst clinging onto my hand. Putting my arm in the water it let go, spurted its ink and swam off.

Later in the day we headed a bit further offshore to try for a ling over some rougher ground but instead we caught a few ballan wrasse and some dogfish before I caught this small haddock.

Before we knew it was time to wind up for the last time and head back to port. It had been an enjoyable day out and the herring had left me with only five saltwater species remaining to catch to reach my goal for the year. There are quite a few species I can catch out of Port Logan that I haven't caught yet this year so I will be back down there again as soon as I can. My mate Martin is trying to organise a day out for us with one of the guys from his angling club, also named Scott. I might also book another day out with one of the charter boats down there too with Stewart and some other guys from my work who are keen to go fishing. Hopefully the weather will be kind. 

Tight lines, Scott.