Inshore Fishing in Coll

When I was a boy I used to go fishing with my father for lobsters and brown crabs in the waters around Crinan. My grandfather from Caithness had been a fisherman all his life and he came frequently to Crinan where he would search the hazel woods for boughs to make hoops for creels.

Granddad taught my father how to knit netting covers and make creels so it logically followed that my father bought a boat and started fishing in his spare time. In those days there was nothing more sophisticated than a home-made glass bottomed bucket for studying the world beneath the waves and I spent many hours at the helm while Dad leaned over the bow, peering into the depths looking for fertile patches of weed, directing me to port or starboard with a wave of his arm, and heaven protect me if I failed to obey his signals promptly enough.

My first experience of Coll was when I arrived here as an apprentice plumber when the council houses in Carnan Road were under construction. Due to the difficulties of matching supplies of materials to the building progress the plumbing squad had quite a lot of spare time, much of which was spent in exploring the island on foot and by bicycle. It was a revelation to me to see the size of the lobsters caught by the few, mostly elderly, local men who fished round the island. I enjoyed the stories of island life I got from them and became fond of the island and the way of life.

However, the time came to leave the island and eventually I finished my apprenticeship but the work occasionally still took me to various islands, none of which appeared as attractive as Coll. I also made friends with a good number of professional fishermen, acquaintances of my father, and when in the late 1980s I became progressively disenchanted with plumbing as a trade, I took a berth as a share fisherman on a prawn creeler fishing out of Crinan.

It was a hard life but I thrived on it and skippered a boat for Sans Unkles for a while but my ambition soon became to have my own boat, an ambition realised in 1988 when I entered into partnership with my father who was now retired from his work with the Forestry Commission and who helped to finance the purchase of "Kylona," an Offshore 105.

Within months I was widening my horizons and concentrating my fishing around Coll and Tiree. By this time the velvet swimming crab, long regarded as useless bait consuming "vermin" had developed into a very desirable and profitable catch destined for the tables of Portugal and Spain. In 1987 they were selling at a price at least 50p per kilo more than they fetch now in 2001.

While I was plumbing I had bought a flat in Lochgilphead which I now sold and, again with help from my parents, purchased and modernised one of the cottages in the High Street, Arinagour and moved my workbase to Coll. I was also by this time discovering, usually the hard way, that there is more to managing a business than hauling creels and selling fish. There are always creels to mend, ropes to splice, boat maintenance to attend to, salesmen to deal with, licenses to be acquired, dinghies and moorings to look after, the supply of bait to be arranged and all sorts of difficulties keep cropping up.

Storms took their toll of the creels, often before they were even half way to paying for themselves. Clam dredgers could and did go through fleets of creels and leave balls of tangled wreckage in their wake, dinghies broke free from their moorings and disappeared and creels washed ashore and laboriously hauled and stacked above the high tide line vanish before they can be collected.

At this time I was landing my catches and those of several part-time fishermen in Tobermory and at times Kylona was occasionally loaded with more than she should have been carrying, so in 1998 we took the plunge and a huge bank loan, and purchased a bigger vessel, an Offshore 125, "Tarka."

A bigger vessel calls for a bigger crew, higher insurance and fuel costs and in some ways it is less efficient for inshore working. The larger vessel catches more wind and does more damage to the fleet when hauling them in because instead of the boat being dragged over the creels it tends to pull the creels along the bottom towards the boat. It does give more scope for novice hands to come aboard to learn something about the work and towards this respect we have been able to introduce some of the younger islanders on school holidays to this kind of work, and possibly give them an interest for the future that might allow them to follow a profitable career based on the island.

Safety must always be the first priority. Towards that end the vessel has to be equipped with fire extinguishers, pumps, radar and navigation aids, ship to shore radios, first aid equipment, and life raft, all regularly checked and serviced. Survival suits are normally worn when working and crewmen have to attend courses on fire, first aid and survival at sea and radio operation.

Nowadays a young fellow has to face a considerable financial barrier before he can start up as a fisherman in his own right. He must have his boat registered and licensed, inspected and surveyed. All of these are expensive and necessary with all the regulations now applied. It can nevertheless still be a rewarding occupation.

Creel fishing is an ecologically kind method. Only the mature and proper size of the species fished for is kept and anything else is returned undamaged to the sea. Areas can be rested to sustain supplies, and on an island like Coll where the weather can dictate which side of the island can or cannot be worked, Nature imposes its own restraints.

Officialdom is not kind to islanders. I live on an island with inadequate roads, no council lighting and lacking many of the amenities of the mainland. Cars must be licensed at the same rate as those with access to motorways, VAT is added to the costs of fuel and delivery, adding as much as 2p per litre to the Treasury coffers, yet a fisherman with a boat over 10 meters long has to pay £400 a year for the upkeep of lighthouses and buoyage of harbours he never uses while the affluent yachtsmen who make much more use of these amenities pay nothing.

I cannot end this article without paying tribute to the people of this island who have, over the years kept a watchful eye over my comings and goings, in particular Ruth & Robert Sturgeon, John Porelli and Angus & Donald MacFarlane at Sorrisdale. I thank them.

I.H.