THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

How could it not be. Choice at that time was extremely limited, besides which, my mentor Davy Agnew
chartered from a sixteen foot clinker built mackay viking powered by twin seagulls. An outfit choice I
would kind-of follow a few years later with a GRP mackay viking of my own powered by the same
amount of power, but in the form of a single Johnson outboard.
This would ultimately provide myself and Steve Lill with a quality of fish and of fishing that was head
and shoulders above that which we have today, despite all the current advances in boats, engines, and
technology.
My encounter with Davy Agnew up at Loch Ryan also spawned another strand to my angling life. In
1984, in conjunction with another long-time small boat fishing pal Brian Douglas, I got the green light
from BeeKay Publishing for the first comprehensive subject specific book on small boat fishing ever to
be written, entitled 'Dinghy Fishing at Sea', which I recently had a flick through for probably the first
time in a good twenty years.
I have heard it glowingly described in the same way I have described some of the classic articles from
Clive Gammon, Brian Harris and the like in the next section, which truly is an exaggeration beyond
exaggeration. Those articles and our book are not even in the same league.
An archive piece, maybe. A classic, never. If anything, it now looks like an A5 version of some of those
antiquated black and white fishing articles, the presentation of which I am often so critical of. But one
very important thing it does do is demonstrate how far all aspects of boats, boat fishing, and technology
have progressed.
Technological advancement and changes in boat design were just about starting to creep in by the mid
1970's. Initially we had nothing more technically advanced than a seafarer spot the ball echo sounder
which was a flashing light on a circular calibrated dial indicating approximate depth.
Our first VHF, and one of the first I was aware of in small boat fishing use on my patch at the time, was
a hand held 3 channel affair boasting a 1 watt output for local line of sight chatter, and 5 watts for
distance work such as the coastguard, much of which was cancelled out by the fact of it having such a
small dumpy aerial.
Once we'd worked that one out, a cuddy
top aerial was fitted which improved
things no end, shortly after which we
started to see the first multi-channel
fixed VHF units appear.
These were as much statements of
wealth as they were pieces of
communication kit, because with so
few other people having them, there
was nobody else around to talk to
anyway.
‘Spot the ball’ echo sounder
Today of course, you wouldn't dream of
putting to sea without one. Even the
lads fishing from kayaks have access
to waterproof submersible handsets.
Proper echo sounders were the next
'toy' to really catch on, particularly amongst the early pioneers of dinghy wreck fishing in the Liverpool
Bay area such as Dave Devine and Ken Mitchell, who would also regularly be seen towing a
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