with the best forecast for months my mate camie managed to convince me that a trip to loch etive on his boat “outcast” was just the thing we needed. 
now i usually need a trip to that venue like i need an extra hole in my head but i’d heard there was one or two fish about so thought why not??
my youngest son sean was desperate to catch his first thornback and here was an ideal chance for this to happen so he was drafted in as second in command boat b!tch after me.
got to taynuilt about 8.30 and an easy launch was had as it was high water and we hammered down the flatcalm loch at 45knts courtesy of the 135 horses camie has bolted onto the back of his raider 18, a freezing trip at that due to the windchill.
we anchored in 155 feet of water off the church at the bottom of the loch, i set sean up first with the usual 2 hook spur/ray trace sporting 8/0 circle hooks and large baits. i just started to set up my own gear when sean had a bite resulting in his first ever etive spur about 4lb, he then got another as soon as his gear hit the bottom again, 2 fish before i even had a trace attached to my line.
i got set up, bait in the water and started to get my second rod ready and got a bite on the first rod, felt a nice fish and soon my first spur of the day was aboard, 10lb 5oz, not a bad start at all.
it carried on like this, spur after spur with plenty in the 6-7lb range when my second rod, a light quiver tip match rod dipped, i leaned into it and felt it was a thornie so i passed it to sean, he struggled a bit on the long rod and fixed spool reel as there was a fair bit tide and the fish took line on a couple of occasions, when we finally landed it it weighed amazingly 11lb 1oz, what would have been my first etive double figured ray turned out to be seans first ever thornback, what a fish to break your duck on, not bad for 13 years old.
the fishing carried on while the tide was running with plenty spurs and rays when my 6lb class rod buckled right over and i started to fight what i hoped wasn’t 2 fish at once, when it came up i shouted for the net, the biggest spur i’ve ever seen in etive, at first it went 16lb on the scales but subsequent weighing put her at 15lb 3oz, nice fish…
when the tide died off so did the fishing at this mark so we blasted about 9 miles up the loch to another of camies marks and because there was no wind whatsoever we drifted covering only about 800 feet in an hour and got several spurs to 7lb then it died again.
one last stop tied to a bouy close to the slip saw sean get another thornback bringing his total of rays for the day to 8 and i added a spur then we chucked it early.
a no nonsense retrieve and an incident free drive home.
what i was expecting as the usual struggle ended up one of the best days fishing on etive i’ve had for years…
well i never!!!! 
