We couldn’t have asked for a better ferry crossing, it was flat calm and the facilities on board were great. We got up and had our breakfast as early as possible so we could disembark the ship and head off asap. It was now Tuesday morning and we weren’t due to fish until Wednesday but I had received a phone call from Kenny (our skipper) yesterday afternoon saying he had looked at the forecast and could we start fishing today rather than Wednesday. We were lucky he had the boat available although this meant we had a bit of a rush from lerwick up to cillivoe to get away at a reasonable time. Dad and steve canham had made their way up by plane and after spending the night in lerwick they were waiting for us to disembark the ship. We had a smooth journey from lerwick to cullivoe (sume 60 miles) but one bonus in Shetland is that traffic isn’t much of a problem Kenny was waiting patiently for us to arrive and we were soon underway. The sea state was great considering we were heading out into such an exposed location and keeny’s aquastar 43 made light work of it anyway. We were a good hours steam from the first mark and so we had plenty of time to chat to our skipper Kenny and find out what to expect and how to fish. he told us that the fishing methods would be pretty simple. He favours 2 gummy macks (plastic tubing on hooks) on a paternoster with either a pirk or a weight underneath. He said 1.8lbs of lead would be required on average and our hook lengths would need to be at least 150lb mono. We all planned to fish single hook rigs as we didn’t want a load of fish to take home and were here just for the sport. He said the other popular method was to fish a short flowing trace with a large shad on it. His main advice was that we should stick to the biggest shads such as the savage gear puffin lures or fladen Conrad giants which have 10-12/0 hooks as the smaller hooks on sidewinders ect would break or straighten.

We took his advice and most of us started with the puffin lures on the first mark.  We were on one of kenny’s first trips of the year and so he had to work to find the fish at first. The first mark resulted in one or two lost fish and the odd bite. Martin had the first fish and it was possibly smaller than some of our lures! It was a little codling a matter of inches long and one of the smallest Kenny had seen! On our next drift I managed to sneak out a slightly larger cod but other than that it wasn’t as good as Kenny had hoped. We had a move to another area a short steam away in the hoper of a few more fish. this was far more productive and as we had the first drift it wasn’t long before every rod was doubled over!  There were plenty of cod here and the majority were double figure. We had steady fish for a good couple of hours. Kenny showed me the sounder and the cod were 20 feet deep. Above these there were coalfish too. our big lures were helping us to avoid the smaller coalies but we were hooking the odd bigger fish as well as feeling our lures bump through them on the way down. we didn’t weigh any of the cod while we were fishing as we were trying to get them back asap. Dad had the biggest which was somewhere pushing 25lbs, we didn’t take any pictures as we got at back in alive. There were a good few around the 20lb mark and most of us had fish of this size. To end the day Kenny took us to one of his favourite wrecks. This was to try and get us a big ling and coalfish. The first drift produced a good few ling in the low teens to 20lb and the odd coalfish too. the big coalies were definitely here as we found out on the next drift or two. These fish go like stink and there were lots of good doubles and 20lb fish were common. We kept trying for the ling as Kenny said the size normally grows each drift. The next couple of drifts produced several high 20’s with dad and martin having some high 20’s. a drift after that and steve canham broke to 30lb mark with a fish of 31lbs! we continued to fish and the next drift I latched into something that was clearly a different animal to the others I had caught in the day. it took a lot of puffing and panting and a fair while to reach the surface where dad slipped the gaff in it. It was a fair lump of a fish and pulled the scales around to 37lbs. this was the fish I came for and I think everybody had broken a personnel best at some point throughout the day. we had one or two more fish after this but gradually the others were packing their rods up as they were knackered! I looked around the boat and It was clear that the last couple of days followed by a Shetland workout today had taken their toll on the lads. I don’t think I have ever seen uncle steve sweat so much! He was dripping in sweat after hitting into another decent fish every drop! We couldn’t fault Kenny for his work throughout the day. he made plenty of tea, had some great tunes playing on the radio and kept us on the fish. we were very grateful that he was able to move our booking to the better weather today. Kenny has been a busy boy too and not only is he flat out taking charters but he is developing some accommodation too. we were the first to stay in one of his new cabins. They have been finished to a very high standard and have a large lounge/dinner with open plan kitchen. There are 4 bedrooms (3 that are en-suite) and its clean, warm and spacious which is all and angler could ask for.