I'm back from my long weekend in Tighnabruaich, on the Kyles of Bute. I was staying with an old friend and his wife in the family holiday cottage, so couldn't spend too long diving, Anyway, the first morning I got up before everyone else had got out of bed and dropped in right in front of the cottage (see white house in photos). Visibility on entry was poor due to pretty high winds the night before, there was plenty of seaweed in the shallows (<2m) to hide in, but sadly there was only lots of little crabs knocking about. So I set off in to deeper water of around 8m only to lose any weed or rock coverage and find myself over a silty bed. A swim around for a bit turned up a handful of scallops of a size I'd never seen before (massive!), after an hour I returned back to find my full scottish breakfast waiting for me, including square sausage, yum yum.
The next afternoon we ventured to the opposite side of the peninsular and I dropped in to Lock Fyne. I decided to enter a small bay close to the ferry terminal and had to make my way over a field of mussels just to get to the water. On entry the water was crystal clear and a sandy bed started to turn in to weed along a rocky shoreline, so this was looking more promising, the water was pretty shallow at no more than 4m but again there was little worthy of pointing a gun at. I ventured out in to the centre of the bay and the weed started to thin to where I stumbled on a reasonable scallop bed and bagged myself 12 good sized scallops. I could see my girlfriend and friends looking pretty bored on the rocks so decided I should head back. Back in 3 or so meters I spotted a good sized edible crab lurking in the weeds, I scooped him up and tried to get him in the goody bag, which was more tricky than I'd imagined, this guy wasn't getting in there if he could help it. In the shallows I was just about to stand up when I spotted a flounder on the white sandy bottom, a quick jab of the speargun and he was mine. A nice hour or so was almost marred when as putting my kit back in the car I fired the speargun that I had forgotten to disarm in to the air, I was very lucky no one got hurt!!! I guess I'd assumed that the gun wasn't loaded as I'd just taken a fish...
On arrival back at the cottage we decided we couldn't be bothered to cook the crab, so he got reprieve and was released back in to the water. The scallops were served with a tomato sauce on spaghetti and with shallow fried lightly battered flounder and was delicious.
Talking to the locals, linefishermen do catch quite a lot of mackerel and the odd decent sized pollock, so the fish are in the area. If you are interested in fishing the area, I'd say study it on Google earth and work out how to get to your spots. The most easily accessible places are beaches which are generally shallow and sandy/silty. Most of the coastline is pretty inaccessible unless you're prepared to walk quite a distance. Anyway it's worth a visit as it's a truly beautiful and stunning place.
I'm waiting for my next invite to explore the area further
Paul
