Tale end of last summer I headed to a local Sea Loch with Alex and had a ball. We were fishing off a ledge into deep water and picking up wrasse and pollock. Later on we would move to an area that had thorn back rays however what sticks out in my mind is the amount of wrasse that I caught in one deep wee spot. It felt like every cast I was pulling up wrasse, in fact it probably was.
Here is a wee selection of them..
Been doing a lot of thinking back over the last few days actually. I finally found an old pal from school on Facebook. He had moved to where I grew up from Dundee and lived across the street from me. I was the first person to befriend him in school. He loved UB40 (not the new stuff he would moan, the old stuff) and would talk about his hate of fireworks due to the waste of cash. He was a wee guy and confident, nobody would mess with him and his strong Dundee accent never left him. I guessed he made up a lot of stories about his life back in Dundee but I enjoyed hearing them anyway.
We would hang out smoking and drinking and eventually he got mixed up in a rougher crowd. We remained friends and we would run into each other and still chat away. The last time I met him it was when I worked in the Arches nightclub and he was totally wasted. He sat down to chill out with me as many people did at the time and we chatted for a bit, he disclosed he was gay and was struggling a bit with it. That was the last time we chatted. I finally tracked him down before Christmas and sent him a message on Facebook, no response. I tried again last week and sent one of his family members a message asking if he was still on Facebook. She got back to me a day or so later to say that he had been found dead last Thursday. He had moved back to Dundee and it looks like he got himself mixed up in heroin, there has been a spate of deaths over the last few weeks and he may have been a victim of it.
I need to get my old UB40 album out!
That’s a really sad story about your old school mate Alistair. It would be very easy to go down the wrong road in life and it is horrible to know one of your mates has done that.
On a brighter note, those wrasse are lovely. I have never had one much bigger than about 12oz but they are dogged wee fighters.
Alex
Aye, it really makes you think about folk that you lose contact with and even more recent pals you have not seen in a few months.
I caught the wrasse using a wee light spinning rod and some rag – they would take with a tap, tap and then rip out line to the depths – if you are up for it give me a shout!
A wrasse trip. Aye, I would be up for that. It would be a nice change once the best of the river trouting is over with around mid June.
Lets do it!