It's holiday time so hopefully some of you have been sneaking the rods in on a family trip or getting the kids out catching while they've been off school.
I’m heading down to see family in the Solway so I plan to dig some ragworm with my wee niece and nephew at low tide to maybe pick up flounders and dabs on the flood.
A bit of rockpooling and splashing about is always a good way to get the wee ones interested – I’ll be doing the manual labour, though.
If you’re hunting raggies , keep an eye out for the tide.
Seek out some broken muddy or sandy locations with reasonably firm ground that’s well-exposed during a big low tide, something like sheltered harbours or estuaries.
It’s easiest on firm, sandy ground – wading about through sticky mud in harbours isn’t advised unless you know the area and what you’re doing.
When you do find them, they’ll be in vertical burrows and hopefully in quite high densities so it shouldn’t take long to get enough for a session, particularly if you’re not after specimens.
When you’re walking on the beach, keep an eye out for the tell-tale holes and dimples to locate an area where the worms have fled back to their den, pushing water out as they go down.
Dig around those and gather your bait as you go.
When you have enough bait, wash off your tools and then fill a container with fresh seawater, rinsing the worms thoroughly and separating any broken worms out.
If you’re not sure about hunting raggies, they are available in tackle shops.
Flatfish like flounder and dabs are probably the most common species to see on the beach.
Even if you’re just having a paddle, they’ll have finished spawning and are starting to come back up into the shallows, with more appearing in the next month or so as you move north.
Fishing a simple legered set-up or flattie rig baited up with ragworm tipped by a piece of mackerel strip on a long-shank hooks in size 1-2 is ideal in Scotland and very easy to chuck out.
They’re often caught at exceptionally short distances. If you’re out with the kids, a cast of 10 yards on an incoming tide is going to be plenty.
As the tide starts to flood in, the flounder will be right up at the water’s edge in search of food picked up by the incoming tide.
It’s that first 10 yards of water that you need to plop your baited trace.
Palnackie, down in Dumfries and Galloway, hosts the World Flounder Trampling Championships in the summer.
If you can get them with your feet, then surely we’ll get a couple with fresh bait!
