Chasing fish?

At the end of March this year I got a tip off from a fellow species hunter that some Connemara clingfish had been caught on a west coast pier. I was off work the following day but was also due to fly out to San Miguel in the Azores the day after that and still had packing to do. Normally my experience of "chasing fish" is that you rarely catch what you're after but for some strange reason I just had a good feeling about setting off on this particular "wild fish chase"! After grabbing a box of ragworm from work, and doing a bit of grovelling when I got home, I was excused from packing duties the following day and first thing in the morning I set off and made the three hour drive to the pier. 

Fishing a simple split shot rig with a small piece of ragworm on a size ten hook straight down the side of the pier, lowering it down between the kelp stalks was the simple method employed. Things were slow for the first hour or so, and when I did start getting bites and caught some of the culprits, it was rock goby, after rock goby, into double figures.

A healthy rock goby population was clearly present.

By the afternoon I was beginning to worry that the journey would end up having been in vain and, to be honest, I had kind of switched off a little bit. The resident gobies had switched off too by that point, and my mind was wandering a little towards when I should admit defeat and start the drive home. My rod was actually tucked under my right arm, as I replied to a text message from my mate Lee, when I felt a little rattle. Phone still in my left hand, I gently struck and clumsily began winding up the fish fully expecting it to be yet another rock goby. Small and dark, as it came to the surface I had it lifted half way up before I noticed the shape was different and that it was in fact my target, a Connemara clingfish!

My first ever Connemara clingfish! My first ever clingfish for that matter! Quite a slimy, odd looking little brown fish, with some small red markings on its gill plates and fins. It also has a fairly large mouth for its size.

I popped it onto a rock to take more photos. Clinging on using its pelvic sucker, it was pretty impossible to budge. So strongly in fact that I had to wait until it decided to let go and thrashed around a bit before I could scoop it up and return it to the water. 

My target caught and released, I packed up and left a very happy species hunter indeed. In the end my gut instinct had been proved right, it had been well worth the six hours of driving to get there and back! I was over the moon and it was also the first new addition to my Scottish species tally in eighteen months. This would prove to be a catalyst for more effort being put into hunting further new species around Scotland over the coming summer months, so I guess sometimes "chasing fish" is a gamble well worth taking!

Tight lines, Scott.