A Wee Heavy Orkney Odyssey

"I haven't got halibut gear," said Mike worriedly.

"That's right, of course you haven't," said Hamish, smiling amicably.

"I can fix you up," I said firmly. "No problem at all."

"Skate, that is what the anglers like," said Hamish. "They do be getting them in Scapa Flow. Twenty minutes run, that is all."

"Halibut...." I said, trying to come back, but Hamish was already in the doghouse. Short of overpowering him and seizing command, there was no way that I could see of getting out from under the dark cliffs that stood 1,500 feet up from the water and searching for the halibut in the open sea. I was still saying "halibut" plaintively, after we had cast off and were under way. Hamish smiled and nodded reassuringly and said something that was lost in the roar of the diesel. We took a clear course away from the open sea and into the vast sheltered inlet of Scapa Flow.

The flow is shallow, 10 or 15 fathoms. Fast tides scour it, and it is a graveyard of ships. It was here that the German Grand Fleet came to surrender, and it was here in 1919 that battleship after battleship was scuttled to save the final humiliation. When the water is warm enough in summer scuba divers still salvage the uncorroded nickel-alloy plates that the Germans built into their warships.

Fishwise, though, it was less interesting. Enormous skates, small pollack and a repulsive species of spotted dogfish a couple of feet long made up the population. So once Hamish had smilingly indicated to us that we had arrived and commenced to anchor, there was very little choice for Mike and me. I rigged his tackle for him, 50-pound-test line, a running boom to take a two-pound lead and a short wire leader so that the bait would lie on the bottom. The technique, I told Mike, was simple. "Let out line till your sinker taps the bottom. Put your rod down and set the click so that it will give line to a fish but not the tide. If a skate takes, you'll get a very short run. Do not feel that you have to move swiftly, because a skate never lets go. Take time to adjust your butt socket and harness. Then set the hook firmly and settle down for an hour's tombstone hauling."

"That Swede last week," said Hamish lugubriously, "took three hours over his skate. It took him two hours to get it off the bottom to begin with." Skates have the engaging habit of using their huge pectoral fins to gain suction on the sand, and plenty of anglers have broken out of them under the impression that they have been fouled up on rocks. Alternatively, many anglers have hooked rocks and have worked for long periods under the impression that they were into skates.

All this was a new challenge for Mike, and he eagerly tried to get interested. "You mean," he said,' 'that there's nothing I can do except sit here and wait? Can't we bring them on somehow?"

"No," I said.