A hard days fishing on Loch Etive

As I zoomed through the Bonawe narrows and headed up the loch, the wind died to nothing just after high tide. It gave me a chance to play with the throttle ..putting the boat on and off the plane and of course..some full throttle to see how fast she would go. It was fast ..but I have no idea of the speed as I had nothing to measure it with. However, all high speed manouvers were kept in a straight line and ..yup..I did wear the kill cord.

This safety cord is attached to mysef and the engine stop button. The idea is that if I accidentally fall overboard.. the engine will stop instantly as the kill cord activates the stop button. This will save the boat disappearing over the horizon at a great rate of knots..or worse still..running round in circles ..cutting myself to pieces with the big propeller as happened to four folks just recently :-(

It only took minutes to get half way up the sea loch so I stopped for a rest off the site of the bothy..the little cottage seen in the distance in this photo. It was very hot and my throttle wrist was getting tired with its new work.



With my other hand.. I lowered the hokkai lures back to the bottom of the loch and gently bobbed them up and down. Five minutes later.. my now tired wrist was busy winding in another fish. This time it was a small cod. I dont eat cod so it was returned safely to grow bigger on the rubbish it eats off the bottom. Give me a fresh free range mackerel anyday.



Now that both my wrists were a little tired with all this work..on such a hot day.. I let the boat drift in the doldrums while I drifted off for a snooze. The surrounding scenery was simply stunning.



I felt a bit like the boy castaway on the boat in the movie .. The Life of Pi ..except of course there was no tiger in my inflatable. The movie had some stunning scenes filmed on flat calm water ..and so did my hard days fishing on Loch Etive.



It was that hot.. I imagined that even the cows were going swimming to try and keep their cool.



I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming .. but was delighted to find that I wasn't. I really was in paradise.... to be continued