Mark Macleod with a small Turbot |
In April 2008 from Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th, the club held its annual Junior Coaching Weekend, yet again this year it was held at the superb Scaladale Centre in Harris, where the Juniors could make full use of the centres excellent facilities.
Friday evening saw the Junior Anglers getting instructed on the basics of Boat Angling and how to use the various rods and reels from CJ Buchanan and Angie “Mopp” Macdonald, as well as general safety when onboard a boat. This was followed by tutorage and on how to make up the various rigs required for sea angling around the waters of Western Isles of Scotland, starting with how to make Rigs to fish for Pollack, then how to make general rigs for bait fishing. All the juniors successfully made up a number of rigs themselves. It was planned to go shore fishing on the Saturday if the weather was good enough, so the evenings rig making ended with the juniors making basic rigs for shore fishing also.
Saturday arrived, and thankfully the weather was kind enough to give a lovely sunny day, so in the mini-buses everyone headed to one of the most remote and beautiful beaches in the Western Isles of Scotland at Huishinish on the West Coast. With a nice long beach to fish from and not a soul to be seen, the junior anglers spread themselves out along the beach and casted out various baits out past the breaking waves in hope of a fish coming by. Having fished the beach at a similar time of year a number of years ago at a Junior Coaching Weekend without a fish caught, hopes were not too high for anything being caught ... but when John Mackenzie pulled in a small Turbot it caused a bit of excitement, although very small – it was a fish, and gave everyone else a little bit of hope of getting a fish, and that they did. As the day went on a number of other small Turbot were caught and safely released to hopefully be caught again when quite a bit bigger ... that’s the theory anyway. As the day went on, the storm clouds soon started gathering and it was decided to call it a day, by the time everyone was just about packed up and were back in the mini-buses the weather had changed much for the worse with the winds getting up, rain lashing down and the odd flash of lightening.
During Saturday evening Angie “Mopp” handed out information packs on the various aspects of sea angling from the boat, and went through the various rigs and methods etc used to catch various different species of fish.
Sunday morning, there was simple question and answer sessions whilst watching numerous sea angling videos and dvds, followed by a tidy up of the centre before heading off back up the road to Stornoway.
The club would like to thank everyone involved in making the Junior Coaching Weekend this year yet again another successful and enjoyable weekend.
Photographs from the Weekend
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