Effort and reward.

I headed off on a two day trip with two of my mates, Nick and Ryan, last Tuesday. We visited several marks on the west coast and attempted to catch as many species as we could. Greenock was the first stop, where we were joined by a forth angler, Gordon, who like myself is a keen species hunter. He'd sent me a photo of a lumpsucker that had been caught there last week, so it was definitely worth a visit.

We had the harbour breakwater in Greenock to ourselves. Despite a strong wind, the conditions were OK, and we all caught a few fish. 

I was hoping to catch a common dragonet and got one first cast!

I followed this up with lots of goldsinny wrasse,..

...a few juvenile pollock,.. 

...a single black goby,..

..and a solitary ballan wrasse. 

After a few hours, the four of us headed along to Gamble Steps in Gourock, a mark I'd heard of, but had never fished before. Gordon told me he had caught some tompot blenny there in the past, so I was hoping to get one myself.  The four of us fished away and things were slow to start with, but by dropping to smaller hooks we all began catching a few goldsinny wrasse. Ryan had a small cod before I caught a single black goby too. After a while, a large shoal of fish arrived, swimming just below the surface of the water. I cast my rig out and let it fall back towards me through them. This worked a treat and after a few taps I hooked one of them. They turned out to be sand smelt. 

 

Only my third ever sand smelt from a Scottish venue.

After another hour or so we were all pretty bored with catching goldsinny wrasse, so Nick, Ryan and I said goodbye to Gordon, and we drove down to Troon where we tried to catch rock goby. The bottom of the larger rockpools there were all covered in ripped up kelp however, and all we managed to catch was a few common blenny. Jumping back in the car, we headed further south still, to the picturesque Portpatrick harbour. There we spent a couple of hours fishing into darkness. Nick caught a flounder and I caught a pollock before we started targeting shore rockling at the harbour’s mouth. 

Perched on the rocks, I waited for a fish to show interest in my ragworm. It didn’t take long to get some, and it was the target species. Odd as it wasn't even dark!

A very small shore rockling, but I didn’t care, it was my first of the year. 

Nick and Ryan waited patiently for some more rockling to start feeding. Ryan ended up catching three before we headed to Stranraer, where we spent the night in a hotel.

The next day we got up early and headed down to Ardwell Bay Beach on the west coast of the Rhins of Galloway. Our targets there were flounder and turbot. It quickly became apparent that there was a lot of suspended weed in the water, but after moving to the northern end of the beach, we all caught what we were after on small strips of mackerel fished on three hook flapper rigs tied up with small hooks. 

Ardwell Bay Beach. It's a lovely spot.

I caught my first flounder of the year. 

Ryan was first to catch a small turbot,..

...but we eventually all caught at least one. 

For our afternoon session, we drove to Port Logan and headed up and along the high cliffs to the south of it. This was more of an exploratory session as none of us had fished there before. Compared to all the other marks we'd fished, where we literally jumped out of the car and started fishing, this was going to require a fair bit of climbing up, scrambling down, jumping over streams, as well as navigating gorse, barbed wire and electric fences!  There was no path along the clifftop which slowed our progress in places, but it was a pleasant afternoon, we took our time, enjoyed the views and after an hour or so we eventually found a place where the gradient was shallow enough that we could get down to fish. 

The cliffs were massive and most of the sea was inaccessible. 

A fall near the edge would no doubt have proved catastrophic. 

Eventually we found a spot where we could get down to the rocks with relative ease.

Unfortunately, for all the effort we put in getting along to this spot, it only produced one fish, a small pollock that Ryan caught almost straight away. There was a large pod of dolphins in the area, so that may have had something to do with the lack of fish. Despite fishing with bait rods and lures, none of us caught anything else after persisting for a few hours, so we packed up, climbed back up to the clifftop before making our way further south still along to Clanyard Bay. From there we cut inland and followed some B roads back to Port Logan.

The sandy shoreline of Clanyard Bay. 

So, a fairly productive trip, during which I’d added nine species to my 2023 tally. Nick, Ryan and I had a good laugh and caught lots of fish. The mark we found north of Clanyard Bay is definitely worth another visit. I had high expectations of the fishing there, but it wasn't to be. Funny how we caught way more fish at the easily accessible marks! I've caught grey gurnards, tub gurnards, plaice and short spined sea scorpions whilst boat fishing in the area in the past, so I know there are fish there to be caught. It was also great to catch up with Gordon again too, and we'll be fishing together again tomorrow. We’re going to try and target some unusual mini species in Scottish sea lochs from his SIB. I'm really looking forward to it!

Tight lines, Scott.