Angling Reports 2004
16 March - Loch Awe - Travelled to Loch Awe to fish the Ardanaiseig area. The water level was low with a strong wind blowing in from the south west. Fished a team of nymphs on a floating line, netted seven trout, all coming to the pheasant tail nymph fished on the point. No significant hatch of flies,a few duns and buzzers.. Brian 20 March - Loch Awe - Ardanaiseig again, similar conditions to previous trip. Fishing into shallow bays with pheasant tail nymphs was a deadly technique, ten trout to 1 1/4lbs, good average around three qrts of a pound. Brian
27 March - Kilmelford - Bright conditions and light winds. Fished a small unnamed loch. After a couple of hours with no results a few olives started hatching, switched to the bomber and nailed three risers in quick succession. Good 3/4lb average. Brian
28 March - Loch Awe- Tried Loch Awe again looking for that elusive hatch of flies. Conditions bright with light winds. A few duns coming off, lots of buzzers though. Managed to land six trout all on the bomber, missed a lot more. Found the take to be very soft in the light winds. Brian
4 April - Loch Tralaig - Our first visit of the year to Tralaig and in traditional Argyll style it poured with rain most of the day, with the odd patch of blue sky visible. Both Al and I were spinning with toby lures most of the day. I caught six fish in total, all taken on a silver 10g toby. The biggest was 1¼lb and sported a large scar on it's tail, probably made by a cormorant. Al had 3 fish in total, the biggest just under the pound. Andy & Al
16-19 April- Loch Lochy - All four of us on a cruiser on Loch Lochy (kindly supplied by West Highland Sailing). Conditions were far from ideal, wet with a cold north easterly for Friday and Saturday. Tried just about every legal method - trolled and downrigged for miles. No fish showed, none were caught. Sunday was much the same until about 4pm when the sun came out and buzzers started to hatch. Managed to tempt a couple of nice trout on the bomber. At least it wasn't a complete wash out! Brian, Andy, Stu & Al
24 April - Kilmelford - Kilmelford, this time with Al. Big Feinn was the chosen venue and after a vigorous hike, thought by some to be "not worth it", we arrived to the sound of rising trout. A good day was had with ten trout between us, biggest just over a pound. Pheasant tail nymph and the bomber were the killer flies. Fishing died off around 2 o'clock. Brian & Al
27 April - Lussa Loch, Campbeltown - Weather was warm and overcast with a blowy east wind. Fishing the evening with Sandy Fraser near the forestry road gate. The rainbows are lying deep so an intermediate line and weighted Alexandria on the point with an Olive bumble & a Clan Chief on the droppers. A few casts and we've found the fish, a cracking rainbow of 3lbs is determined to see how much backing I've got on the reel, I finally manage to bank the fish. Sandy pops his head around the point to see all is well as he has been catching as well. Finished with six for 14.5lbs, returned all but the first. Sandy has had a good session as well with four fish caught and two returned. N.B. the brownies are also fishing well with several fish being reported caught of 3/4lb and more. Andy Coffield
9 May - Kilmelford - Al and myself headed off for the Feinn lochs, again full of anticipation. The day began again with thousands of olive beetles being blown onto the loch and the trout making the most of it. This time the olive bomber was the killing fly, taking almost every fish I covered. Caught around twenty fish that day, the biggest was one of the famous dour monsters
reputed to live in Big Feinn. At around 3½lbs it was a bonny troot and was returned to be caught again another day! Brian & Al
16 May - Melfort Trout Fishery - Andy MacArthur, who runs the recently opened fishery on the Oude Reservoir, invited me down to have a go for some big rainbows. It was my first time at a fishery - I prefer fishing for wild brownies. Whilst setting my rod up I saw a few anglers catch some nice rainbows from the NE bank. Andy and I spent around an hour and a half fishing from the boat. I missed a few takes before hooking into a big fish. After a good scrap, and the fish doing a lap of the boat I landed the rainbow trout which weighed in at 5lb. Andy missed a few fish too but caught a nice fish around the 2lb mark. A pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Andy
5 July - Loch Creran - Tried out a couple of new marks in Loch Creran looking for pollack without much success. Towards the top of the tide I headed to a favourite mark. After fishing with a 25g leadhead jellyworm with no success I changed to a 15g leadhead and was rewarded with my first fish of the evening, a 2lb pollack. This was followed by another two fish of around the same size. Al
6 July - Loch Awe - I arrived at the Kirk bay around 7pm for an evening's fishing from the boat in quiet, calm conditions. I started off spinning with large spoons around the bay, with no joy. I set up 2 trolling rods, one with a large spoon and one with a jointed shallow-diving rapala and headed south down the loch following the 15ft contour. Within 15 minutes I caught a perch of 1¼lb on the rapala, shortly followed by another on the same rod. Not long after I passed over a known mark and hooked a lively jack pike of about 3½lb on the spoon. I trolled back to the bay after an hour or so and continued fishing with the large spoon, catching a feisty 4½lb jack. Stu
7 July - Loch Creran - Al and I headed out in the boat to one of our favourite pollack marks for an evening session. Within minutes of arriving I hooked into a really hard-fighting 3lb pollack on the jellyworm, great fun on braided line. Al wasn't far behind with fish of 3lb, 4lb, and 2lb. The fishing was consistently good for around an hour until the incoming tide forced us to move. We headed out into the Firth of Lorn for a spot of mackerel bashing but didn't come across any. Andy & Al
10 July - Oban (Oberon) - This picure shows my son Gary Mooney of Bothwell, Lanarkshire after catching this 145lb skate from the Oberon out of Oban last Saturday. The skate was caught with a single mackerel and it took 40 minutes to bring up from over 400ft of water only to see it dive to about about 150ft once it seen the light. It then took another 15 minutes or so to pull onboard. The fish was returned safely without too much hassle. This was Gary's first fishing trip and was the only skate caught on the day. Skipper John Keggie was absolutely brilliant with our kids and I'm sure Gary is now hooked on fishing for life, his only problem will be he may never catching anything this size again. Alan Mooney
28 July - Oban (Oberon) - Skipper John Keggie kindly invited us out for a day on the Oberon, 'though only Al and myself managed to make it. We set off slowly from Dunstaffnage Marina at 9am in the worst fog we've seen in Oban for some time. The fog proved not to be a problem as the boat is fully equipped with radar and navigational equipment. Our first stop was at Lady Rock at Lismore to catch mackerel for bait. I caught 3 fish on my first drop with the feathers but we soon drifted off the mark. We moved further up the tidal race and started hitting large numbers of fish on the drift, some on the bottom and some mid-water. After an hour we had a full fish box and headed towards a reef for some pollack fishing. As usual we both fished light spinning tackle, braided line and the leadhead-jellyworm combo. Just as the tide started to ebb we began hitting some big pollack. The first fish taken was over 7lb with the following half dozen around the same size. The fishing was great with lots of follows and savage takes close to the boat. Al had the best of the day at 8½lb. We were having such a laugh catching big pollack we were late leaving for one of John's skate marks. We fished for a couple of hours for skate with no success - only the second time John has blanked...just our luck! Many thanks to John for a great day out on his spacious, comfortable boat. Andy & Al
29 August - Loch Etive - Caught a few codling to 1.5lb and a few dogfish from Bonawe quarry, strong winds and it rained all day. The best bait was herring for both codling and dogfish with mackerel a good second. The only rig that seemed to work was an up and over with 1/0 hooks. Steve Burnett
1 September - Firth of Lorn (Oberon) - Out for a days sea fishing on the Oberon again, this time accompanied by Brian. The weather was good all day with a steady NE wind which dropped off early evening. Skipper John Keggie recommended reef fishing as the wind would make fishing the skate marks a bit uncomfortable. We were joined on the boat by Neil from Glasgow and a young couple from London, all on their first charter trip. After bagging up on mackerel we headed to the southern coast of Mull to fish for pollack over shallow reefs. John took us close in to a few good marks, each mark producing pollack over 3lb. The biggest fish to the boat was 7lb, taken on a shad, and we had a number of snap-offs from bigger fish. In total we had 6 species on board, pollack, coalfish, ling, mackerel, cod and whiting. The prize for most unusual catch went to Neil who bagged a seagull. It was netted, untangled, and sent on it's way unharmed. Everyone had a really enjoyable day out. Andy & Brian
2 September - Melfort Trout Fishery - The weather was warm and the sunny skies made it difficult fishing but 2 rainbow trout, both on the 2 pound mark, were caught, one on a floating line and the other on an intermediate line. Rab
4 December - Loch Etive - Fished Bonawe, wet and windy day, caught codling up to 2lb on sandeel and dogfish to mackeral and sandeel. Steve Burnett
5 December - Loch Etive - Al and I had a spare couple of hours so made our way to Bonawe for a spot of shore fishing. Spinning with leadhead-jellyworms it wasn't long before we started hitting fish. Al had a nice pollack of around 4lbs and two small rock cod of around 1lb. I had a few knocks but only managed to land a couple of small pollack. Andy & Al
12 December - Sound of Kerrera - We set off from Oban at low water around 11am in Al's boat. Our first stop was an island at the southern end of Kerrera. After a couple of casts with jellyworms we started hitting some nice fish. We fished a few other marks around the area and had 15 fish in total, averaging around 5lb. The weather was overcast, and it was fairly cold with a brisk SW wind. The water temperature was 11°C ( from Al's new fish finder!). Andy & Al