Road Trip Part One Shetland Islands, King Tide.

We've been on a road trip
not a fishing trip as such but a couple of travel rods may have come with us!

By road up to Aberdeen, then the overnight sailing to Shetland which takes about 12 hours.
100 islands make up Shetland which is about 110 miles from mainland Scotland and 140 miles west of Norway.
The largest island is referred to as Mainland.



Scalloway, the original Shetland capital.
Memorial  to the WW2 Special Operations from Shetland known as "The Shetland Bus" At the beginning of the war, small Norwegian fishing boats were used to transport intelligence and supplies, and offer Norwegian refugees passage to Britain. The operation was under British command, but later it became a joint effort.


Touring around there seemed to be at least as many boats as cars, not to mention spectacular clean beaches.





Our arrival coincided with the
"King Tides" (biggest tide of the year and as it happened coinciding with the proclamation of King Charles III )

At Meal Beach the alignment of Earth, Sun and Moon may have been behind some unusual water movement that captivated us but which I couldn't do justice on camera, including small shoals of ( I think ) Herring jumping Polaris Missile like from the water. An internet search revealed that there are very strong undercurrents off this beach.



Nearby Minn Beach, -much calmer water here and the local shepherdess told us this is where local kids are taught to swim.





Cliff top walks and chaotic water at Hillswick, bet there are Pollock down there!


I'm going to have to fish soon!

Took the ferry North to Yell ( which is nothing to shout about unless you
like peat bogs) and onwards via another ferry to Unst.





50 yards from this longboat we glimpsed a basking shark, gone before it's photo was taken.

Amazing geology on Unst



Orca were seen off this beach on Unst, almost at the most northerly point
of the British Isles, two days earlier.




Most of the islands are north of 600 latitude,
and the most northerly island, Unst, is as far  north as Anchorage, Alaska.

The wind was picking up and took the ferries back to Mainland

Back on Mainland I'd hope to fish at Mavis
Grind near Brae, here you've a choice of seafishing either side of the road, but with the wind picking up and the rain now lashing down we settled for Britain's most northerly chipshop "Frankie's".

Next morning was still a bit blustery, our whale spotting boat trip had been called off  so we headed for Mousa Sound and did some whale watching from a layby instead!
Minke Whales, Porpoise and Dolphin had been reported here the day before - we saw a group
of five or six but weren't 100% on the species ID



As we watched the wind subsided and the rain stopped, time to fish!
LHD on the Esplanade at Kirkwall is about the only place you can find bait here and I bought a pack of sandeel and headed
for the old harbour quayside opposite ( pay and display £1 per hour)

I dropped half a sandeel in on
a size 10 hook on a general purpose travel rod with 30lb braid and a 2oz lead a few yards out to see what would happen, it was immediately apparent there was a good 25 foot + of water but little tide pull.

My second rod was my Ugly Stik 6 foot
travel spin, size 2000 Daiwa Ninja reel and 6lb mono ( thought I might need this along for trout on Mepps spinners) on which I cast out 2 unbaited small hook  feathers above a leadheaded lure.

The next hour was happy hour



Immediate attention on the sandeel


It was a fish a drop, usually in well under a minute,
quite often the bait looked intact enough not to need changing though "pre-owned" bait did seem to slow them, it was a bit too easy really,  so I switched to a larger sandeel bait cast further out where it was untouched to give me time to focus on spinning. I considered using the Billet for bait but it felt a bit mean when they were jumping on the hook so readily.

Casting the feathers out I soon worked out that nothing happened on the retrieve until the lures came into sight, still deep down but visible in the clear water. The lighter spinning rod and watching the take was more fun.





Lost exact count but had about 30 in an hour, All on the small side but they scratched the
itch to fish.

Our week on Shetland was coming to an end,
I'd return in a heartbeat!
From what I saw there is plenty of loch fly fishing for trout, rock sea fishing needs good directions as they are mostly inaccessible or too high, the quaysides are fun for smaller stuff and as we know from Tash's Shetland reports there is big stuff out at sea if you've the stomach for the swell.

Quickly shelving beaches are fairly easy to find and next time I think I'd take a beachcaster, a sandspike and some North Wales lug!

The tombolo two sided beach at St Ninian's Isle.

Time to leave Shetland, but the adventure continued...

Some great pictures there Notbad. That sea urchin looks like a hedgehog.

Great report Paul I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Kirky's Dad wrote:

Great report Paul I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Glad you enjoyed it!
Part two is under sea fishing chat

Great looking trip Paul.Nice pics.

MusselMan wrote:

Some great pictures there Notbad. That sea urchin looks like a hedgehog.

I was thinking Fozzie Bear's ear but yeah you're right!

VALVEBOUNCE wrote:

Great looking trip Paul.Nice pics.

Cheers, it was! We were away over 3 weeks and reluctant to come home.

I've been looking through my photos to see if I managed to catch any of the jumping Herring at Meal Beach mid air.
I didn't quite manage that but on enlarging a corner of one pic you can see the splashes they made and I believe the dark shape of the predator that was making them jump

Fantastic trip and report there Paul, well done and thanks for all the photos.

Rhod Lloyd wrote:

Fantastic trip and report there Paul, well done and thanks for all the photos.  

Cheers Rhod!