Earlier in the summer, I arranged a couple of days out on Tuesday and Wednesday last week aboard Mull of Galloway charter boat "On Yer Marks" for myself and my mates, Nick and Ryan. A few weeks after this was booked however, I was offered a place on a boat out of Weymouth to target something quite unusual. Butterfly blenny! This trip was taking place the following day on the Thursday so I had a difficult decision to make as the dates caused problems travel wise. In the end, the opportunity to catch a butterfly blenny proved too tempting for me to turn down, so I broke the news to Nick and Ryan that I'd be driving south whilst they were out fishing on the second day.
Going all the way down to Weymouth is a long way to go for just one day out on a boat, so I decided to use up the last of my holidays at work and extend my stay afterwards. This would allow me to try and catch a few species down there that I'd not yet caught this year, and also hopefully perhaps even some new ones as well. So, a two day trip to the southwest of Scotland had become an eight day long road trip to the southwest coast of the UK!
Last Monday night the three of us drove down to Stranraer, where our accommodation was booked. The next morning we drove down to East Tarbet where the boat was being launched. The conditions weren't great, it was pretty windy and a bit of a swell was running, so after catching some mackerel to use as bait, skipper Matt headed down around the Mull of Galloway to some sheltered water where we spent a large portion of the day float fishing for pollock. We all caught lots of them, but Nick seemed to consistently pull out the bigger specimens.
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| One of Nick’s pollock. |
In the afternoon, we briefly visited a second mark, where we fished for launce over a sandbank using sabiki. There were shoals of mackerel in the area however, and as a result we only managed to catch two launce, but I got one of them, and it was my first of the year, so I was happy enough.
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| Look at the size of that mouth! |
After a bit more pollock fishing in the afternoon, the wind had dropped off a bit, so we headed back around to the Luce Bay side of the peninsula where we spent some time live baiting joey mackerel for bass. We made several drifts over fairly shallow ground, letting out lots of line in the hope a passing bass would devour one of our baits as they swam along, but sadly this approach didn't produce any results. Before calling it a day and heading back in, we did a few final drifts fairly close to shore over a mark that Matt assured us would, and did, produce a few small tub gurnard.
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| The second addition to my 2023 species hunt tally. |
The first day's fishing over, it was touch and go whether the second day's fishing would go ahead due to the forecast, but in the evening I got a text from the skipper saying that Nick and Ryan were to head to Port Logan for a 09:00 launch. I wouldn't be joining them as I had a long drive to make south. In the morning we parted company and I wished them luck targeting tope, bull huss and conger eel. They wished me luck targeting butterfly blenny! Not something you hear very often!
Tight lines, Scott.
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