Portknockie Harbour

Portknockie is a sleepy fishing village located on the Banffshire coast line. Once a small fishing port it is now filled with private pleasure craft, a handful of creel boats and a few private angling boats. With good facilities, Portknockie offers the travelling boat angler an excellent venue to launch their boat over most of the tide and across all of the tide for shallow draft boats. There is also ample safe parking for the car and trailer.

HOW TO GET THERE
Portknockie is clearly sign posted off the main A98 between Cullen and Buckie. Once in the village follow the signs to the harbour. At the top of the hill you’ll get a lovely bird’s eye view of the whole area where you can see the spots to fish. Taking the steep road down the hill will lead you to the parking and public toilets, making this an ideal place for ladies and children.

THE MARKS
There are two main areas to fish, one is the harbour mouth itself on both sides or on a small jetty. You can clearly see both from the top of the hill. The jetty is accessed through a small tunnel through the wall on the right hand side, the seaward side the most productive. A word of caution about the jetty, even a relatively small swell can break over it, so if you decide to fish at night be very cautious of the sea state. The harbour mouth offers shelter in most conditions and is very comfortable and safe area to fish.

The harbour mouth produces flat fish, coalfish, conger and the odd codling. The jetty produces conger, codling, coalfish, sea scorpions, pollock and wrasse. In the winter it can produce some nice sized codling.

METHODS
Standard rough ground gear should be used when bottom fishing. Using light traces on spinning rods can offer great sport and is a good way to rack up the species. Heavy traces should be used for conger, which are mostly down the sides of the piers. A method for reducing tackle loses when species fishing is to use lighter snoods and fine wire hooks. Float fishing over the kelp is a great method for wrasse and Pollock and spinning jelly worms is another well used method for picking up a nice Pollock.

BAITS
Good baits for species are rag worm, lug, mackerel, mussel, squid and a new bait on the market called bluey, with the Mackerel, squid and bluey been excellent for the conger.