My Best Dunbar Pollack | A fine morning afloat 

Thanks Alan - It was a lovely morning to be afloat. I was almost fooled into thinking it was summertime😀

Hi Tam, it was very relaxing fishing on a perfect morning. The drift was very slow for the first few hours so a little breeze might have encouraged more fish - but I'm not going to knock a few hours of calm, warm weather after the last month of chilly winds 👍🙂

Many thanks - that was a very fine morning and warm too, for a change. Chuffed with the pollack too, although there are still bigger ones finning around this part of the east coast. Most of my better pollack have actually been from the east coast, although the west certainly has greater numbers.

Hi Gordon - thanks for commenting, it's always good to hear people enjoy these videos! That was a nice, easy morning fishing in beautiful conditions. A big improvement over recent months 🙂 Sorry for the late reply but work and fishing have been catching up with me a bit!

Yup, the east coast is picking up nicely now. These fish were generally in better condition than I'd expect at this time of year - the cod tend to be very thin and the pollack often look like they've had a right kicking.

Thanks Ash - definitely a big improvement over the last couple of weeks. Hopefully that means summer is arriving, although we seem to have reverted back to cool and cloudy today. Still looking towards the far north, but it seems pretty unyielding at the moment 😥 Many of these fish were taken in only 40 feet and 400 yards from the shore, so there is definitely hope from the shore, at least up here. Cheers, Doug

It's amazing how quickly a trailer will bog down into sand when it's standing in the water, particularly as you retrieve, and even small boards really spread the weight effectively. A heavy duty 4x4 would probably be fine, but my lightweight version would get into difficulty quite quickly at Skateraw. A 2WD will work OK on hard sand with a reasonably light boat, but the killer is usually the last 10 yards of soft sand right at the top of the beach.

@@Corkwing-DougK Thanks Doug, I've an Orkney Coastliner. Might try to launch there when I have a mate with me and a second car. With some ropes we should be able to get out of trouble if I get stuck. 👍

Hi Charlie, the sand is definitely on the soft side near the slipway itself although otherwise OK. There is also a 2.1m barrier on the access road which will limit many boats. It's the sort of place I'd use in settled weather and perhaps when Dunbar is likely to be a bit too crowded for comfort. Definitely check it out before committing though!

@@Corkwing-DougK Many thanks for your reply Doug.

Hi Fraser, Something like Navionics is generally the best way to find the wrecks, although they aren't always precisely correct and you need to search around a bit. One problem is that many wrecks are marked as PA (position approximate) which means the actual wreck could be miles away, and Navionics doesn't always tell you this. There's a lot of information online but it can take a lot of digging to find it - for SE Scotland you could have a look at this page - www.scottishshipwrecks.com/9-south-east-scotland/ which has reports for a reasonable sample. Most of the wrecks don't hold many fish these days and I usually just fish one or two inshore ones which are very broken up. Every now and again I'll head out for a trip to visit a few offshore wrecks - great fun finding them, but they rarely produce anything worthwhile. Cheers, Doug

There is definitely some soft sand at the bottom of the slipway so you need a bit of momentum to get through it. If you watched to the very end you'll see I also use boards under the car and trailer wheels when I'm retrieving the boat - the trailer can bog down quite quickly otherwise. There's also a barrier across the road down, so you need to be under 2.1m to make it. Apart from that, Skateraw is perfect😁 (any NE wave motion is bad news too)