Monday 20 June 2011

Loch Goil and my sonar submarine searcher

Loch Goil was another favourite place to visit last year in my inflatable boat and I wondered if I could still access it with the rigid boat. I knew the parking was quite busy during the summer months at weekends and the local outbound school used the slip ramp for scouts to launch their canoes and dinghys etc. I was on holiday so thought that a mid week visit would suit best. It paid off as I had the place to myself although I also admit that I was there at 7.30am in the morning.

The slip is off the car park right in the centre of the sleepy village of Lochgoilhead. You can reverse the boat right to the ramp and if you have a four wheel drive you could drive right to the waters edge. I don’t risk my old front wheel drive car on anything but tarmac so lowered the boat and trailer manually down the ramp with a rope turned round my towbar.



Although the tide was full out, it was easy enough to push it across the firm shingle beach into the water.



I then portaged the engines down on my sack barrow and twenty minutes after arriving in Lochgoilhead, I had the boat on the water and rigged ready to go.



Its a shallow sloping beach so I rowed out a fair distance before dropping the outboard and starting it up.



The loch looked very inviting in the early morning sun. I was hoping to catch a fish or three with a secret weapon.



On the hills the dark clouds started to break and clear. I felt good, something told me that this was going to be my lucky day. I switched on my new toy.



The day before, I had invested in one of these new fangled electronic gizmo things that find fish, and I was desperate to try it out. Yup, I was now taking my fishing very seriously and was determined to try anything to catch one. Instead of waiting for a fish to find my lure, I was trying a new tactic, I was going to find the fish first..then put my lure in front of its nose.




At switch on, I was delighted to see that it worked perfectly. The red line shows the seabed and it is 89ft below my boat. There was no point fishing here because there is not a fish to be seen anywhere. All I have to do now is find them and its mackerel murder time ... don’t you just love modern technology :-D

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