View Fishing Report

  • 06/2019 Fishing Report by Kevin McKie on Size Matters (Craobh Haven, Argyll & Bute)

    Jun 2019 by Kevin McKie

    Report on-board Size Matters

    Our time in Scotland has now come to an end, the last three months have been a great experience for both anglers and my self.

    Firstly I would like to say a massive thanks to all the staff at Croabh Haven Marina, they have been amazing and could not do enough for me and my anglers.

    Also all the staff at the lord of the Isles pub where excellent no matter what time we would get back from fishing, the staff would have a table ready for all the anglers for food and drinks. (The food here is excellent).

    If you have never been to this part of Scotland then you should definitely check it out, not just for fishing but the views, food, drink and wildlife is amazing.

    The biggest thank you goes to the 244 anglers who booked with us and made the long journey up here from all over the UK and Ireland.

    Most of them stayed for three to five days
    spending well over £120,000 on accommodation, food, drink, fuel, fishing, bait and in some cases flights and hire cars.

    The Skate fishing was truly outstanding at times, we totalled 641 Skate for a total weight of 80617lb!!!

    We averaged 9.1 Skate a day with the average weight of 125lb 8oz!!

    442 Skate where female and 199 were male, we caught 44 over 200lb and 359 over 100lb!!

    When we fished inside the marine protection zone the recapture rate was around 20%, when we fished out side the marine protection zone the recapture rate was less than 2%.

    The biggest Skate was caught by Wirrel angler Mick Walsh a cracking fish of 232lb!!

    Bert Willams from the Wirral caught the first ever Blue Skate in Scottish waters all 22lb of it, this is an exceptional catch in UK waters.

    The most Skate we caught in one days was 37 for a total weight of 2790lb, by Garry Streeter and his lads from South Wales.

    The Liverpool A Team consisting of Phil Riley, John Owan, John Mcbride and Paul Hendrick, had the most weight in one day with 20 Skate for a massive total weight of 3590lb!!

    The best part about this is all the Skate are out there swimming around to be caught again in future.

    Anglers kept telling me each day what an amazing experience it has been for them to catch big fish in UK waters.

    If you have never had a fish in UK waters over 100lb then this part of Scotland is definitely the place to do it, you mite even get lucky and catch a Skate over 200lb!!

    Only four anglers never caught a Skate with us and on another day after returning from an off shore trip the lads wanted a few hours on the skate, this was the only day we never caught a skate.

    Sadly we only got chance to fish for Six Gill Sharks once over 80 miles out, the sea bed was alive with sea lice and big baits where lasting 25 mins max making the fishing very hard.

    We went shark fishing on the drift twice but on both occasions we had very tough conditions, wind against tide and no wind at all.

    We also tried a few gravel and sand banks but once the Spurdogs moved in nothing got a chance at the baits.

    We did find some amazing Pollack fishing no monster fish but 5lb to 9.5lb, on the both days we went there the lads had 120 Pollack in 2 hours the first day then 90 Pollack in 2 hours the next day.

    It was great to see massive shoals of fish on the sonar, most importantly the lads only took what they needed for the table and all stopped fishing when they had enough.

    Last but by no means least there is no way we could of caught this amount of fish without the top quality fishing tackle from our sponsors Shimano UK, thank you for your continued support.

    Kevin Mckie
    Size Matters (Scotland)
    07999628511.

    #Shimano
    #Scotland
    #mckiesfishingcharters


    View Boats Page