Reluctantly it was time to move on from spotting fins in Shetland and Orkney
So there we are all checked in twenty minutes before departure of our ferry from Stromness Orkney to Scrabster on the northern coast of Scotland and looking forward to a good view of The Old Man of Hoy
It seemed a bit fishy that we still weren't being taken aboard so close to the off; was the cloud of black smoke that just came out of the funnel normal?
-turns out that evening's ferry wasn't going due to "technical issues" and the next morning's 6.30am crossing was "under review". so it was off to the pub for a bit of a think.
Plan B was hatched, a phone negotiation with the ferry company and it was back across Orkney to Kirkwall to get the midnight ferry to Aberdeen docking there at 7am after a smooth crossing
turned out to be a good decision as the Stromness crossing was still not operational the next day.
Plan B dropped the north coast as we headed inland initially for Aviemore and the Cairngorms taking a look at the world's premier salmon river en route, The Spey.
Just upstream of this pic the ghillies were waiting to greet their clients - lucky them!
https://www.riverspey.org/fishing/
The Salmon Season is coming to a close soon.
Not having seen trees for over a fortnight it was a shock to see autumn leaves falling.
A couple of days later and I squeezed in a couple of hours at Loch Etive, Oban
I know of two marks there, "The Priory" and "The Quarry"
I tried the first. The lochside road is twisty, single track, with passing places and there are quite a few HGVs on it presumably heading for the quarry further up the loch. I'd been this way a few years ago and fished at what I then thought was The Priory but which I now know to be Ardchattan Kirk. Passing Ardchattan Kirk I found signposts for the walk to Ardchattan Priory at the pier.
The only bait I'd found in Morrisons back in Fort William was chilled sardine, there is a tackle shop in Oban but this road trip wasn't about fishing so I just went with the sardine.
The parking at The Priory is not particularly accomodating. Rather than cause offence by fishing from the working pier I found a bit of beach away from the moorings.
Over the next two hours I tried head hooked half sardine on big hooks and sardine tippe small hooks.
400 -500 yards further out a cheer went up from this small boat, hopefully they'd landed one of the Spurdogs that live here.
Researching the location later I read in a report that the mark known as The Priory is actually still further up this road and in front of Ardchattan Parish Church (not the same as "The Kirk")
If I'm ever in the neighbourhood again I'll do my homework better and maybe seek out the quarry!
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