Fishing destroys car!

Get a new car, use it exclusively for fishing, and watch as it becomes a stinking rotten rust heap in 3 years flat. Or maybe it was just me? An angler’s car tends to suffer much more abuse than your average road user, both inside and out. For one, the miles anglers put in are insane. Furthermore; how many sea anglers can say they haven’t taken there road car very much off-road for the purposes of reaching an out-of-the-way bait bed or remote fishing spot.

It’s a kind of curse, and no matter how careful you are they all go down the same downward spiral if you’re a dedicated angler who fishes week in week out. I will never forget my first fishing wagon; a 1litre Corsa which was legendary around these parts – and others! It was frequently loaded to the gunnels; back seats flattened and hammered hundreds of miles every single weekend so I could go fishing.

I’m going to go as far as saying that this blog is a tribute to that car... the service it gave me in 3 years was fantastic, although it inevitably perished having been neglected and driven some 70K miles. It took me to some truly remote places that you would think only passable by a 4*4, and provided shelter and warmth from some horrendous Scottish weather. During one particularly nasty night on the banks of Loch Etive, I thought I would try to be smart and take the car off-road towards a place I wanted to fish... I didn’t realise until it was too late that I was actually driving down a storm overflow drain, and it had been pouring down for hours! Despite being pitch black, and water up to the doors, my little car pulled through and we were safe... a hairy experience!

Bait collecting also left its mark. Buckets of salt water splashing around the boot caused some major rust patches, and the smell from dead crabs which had somehow escaped and festered in impossible to reach crevices was almost toxic. I wasn’t surprised that I was only offered pennies to trade it in.

As small as it was, it done a fantastic job for me and it was sad to see her go. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of WSF members at a Scrabster meet when me and my mate turned up with 15 rods, 4 seat boxes and cool bags stuffed in the back of that car ready for an all weekend boat and shore bash... if anyone still has the photographs please get in touch - I would love to see them!

Bored...?? Check out these You Tube Clips.

Pike eats trout - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI71Hsy_PaU

Underwater fish cam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMupcal5Svo