OAA on tour: Mull of Galloway
- Ad Wyness
- Aug 31
- 4 min read
This week I met up with close friends Neil (of Perfect A'Lure) and his brother Phil down in the Mull of Galloway for an assault on their bass and smooth hound populations that visit there each summer.
Neil and Phil had been fishing for 2 days without a bite before I got there, but I wasn't too concerned as I had the garden fork for digging the fresh blowlug.
We hit the Cree estuary at low tide and got digging. The lug weren't hard to find on the extensive mudflats, peppered with the tell-tale casts. We dug slightly up-tide of where we were fishing, just in front of a small channel running parallel to the shore before the bank rose. we managed 30 or so good size worms, loosely burying Neil's leftover frozen bait as we went, before the tide chased us back to the rocks to collect a few hardback crabs, and then to the cars to fetch the rods.
For this first session, I was using my Vercelli Enygma Xilenius (bought from Neil almost 10 years ago (how we met!)) with a Shimano Aerlex 6000 with 15lb braid and a tapered shockleader, with 2 lug on a light long size 2 pennel at distance for bass, and a double crab as far as I could put it on the Anyfish Anywhere Match Pro 2 and Shimano Saragosa 8000 with 40lb braid and an 80lb shockleader with a 3/0 pennel. Circle hooks were used on the top of each of the pennels for increased hook-up-ability. The crab setup is admittedly a little heavy, but it was ready for casting out for tope should any fresh mackerel make an appearance.
The tide caught up to us, and rods were fired out as soon as it touched the bank in front of us. We must have only been fishing into a foot or so of water, but within 10 minutes, the conti buckled over with line streaming off the reel. Job done, and Neil and Phil shown how it's done too with a 4lb bass! After safely returning, I had another couple of smaller bass before the water had evidently got deep enough for the smoothhounds to move in resulting in an 8lb and 5lb fish too. Weirdly Neil and Phil only had one bite between them to show for the session, but they were still using up some of their frozen baits, and the continental rod with light braid was going a fair distance past the normal beachcasting gear, despite them getting a usually more than sufficient distance out onto the mud.
That evening we headed out on the lures to try tempt a bass over some boulder beaches. It wasn't to be for me, and Neil showed me up using his own lures- a small white paddletail doing the job for a couple of schoolies in the dark!
The next day we were up early to get enough fresh lug and crab for the 3 of us for the whole session, we set up in the same positions as the day before. It didn't take long before the bites started, with a shoal of small bass passing right to left, Neil then Phil getting bites, then one hooking up on my rod, followed by another 4 bass, a flounder, dogfish, and a bonus smoothie. Unfortunately the bass were smaller today, only up to 1.5 lbs (if I'm being generous). However Phil broke his duck with a nice smoothhound.
We then moved to the shelter of a harbour for the receding tide, did I mention the consistent torrential rain? I managed to catch a load of crabs down the side, but Phil and Neil did well firing the big rods out into the bay, with another nice smoothie for Phil, and a PB bass for Neil!
The final day we headed further up the Cree estuary, where Neil was species hunting in the main channel, resulting in a silver eel, and a small conger. I had the spinning rod on a 1 oz running ledger right in the shallows, and when the tide covered a small mussel bed, my bait only lasted a few minutes before a great scrap resulted in a 2.5lb bass, followed by another smaller one. In the evening we went back out with the lures for a final session, with me struggling to get anything except a mackerel, but Neil finding a cracking little drop off where he caught over 20 small pollack and mackerel, before it rained again and the boulders got hellishly slippy.
A great wee trip despite the rain, maybe a destination in future as we are consistently getting good results on our visits down there each year.. get in touch!
