Dodgy dolos and a historic harbour.

I had another couple of short sessions at the weekend targeting topknot, visiting two new spots. A very strong westerly wind posed a problem, so I visited a couple of sheltered venues. On Saturday at Torness Power Station, I spend a few hours in the afternoon fishing down through the concrete dolos blocks, lowering live prawns down into the gaps between them into the water below. This produced a few small ballan wrasse to begin with, but then for some reason the bites dried up. Carefully moving about on the blocks was making me slightly nervous, one false move on those things and you could have a very nasty accident. No fish is worth that and the fact I had stopped catching any fish made my decision to climb back up out off of the huge tetrapods and call it a day a pretty easy one. I’m not sure I’d risk fishing on them again in a hurry. 

One of the small ballan wrasse I caught from down in the blocks.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon down in the Scottish Borders with my girlfriend Lillian. We visited a few places, including the picturesque Cove Harbour, which lies tucked away at the bottom of huge sandstone cliffs. It’s been there for hundreds of years and to this day it’s still a working harbour. At the top of the cliff, next to the beginning of the path that takes you down to the harbour, there is a sculpture that offers a reminder of how dangerous the occupation of a commercial fisherman is. 

"Commemorating the widows and children left by the fishing disaster of 14th October 1881 when 189 fishermen were lost off this coast. Cove lost 11 out of 21 fishermen."

After making our way down the slowly sloping path to the harbour, I spend some time fishing Mini Isome down the inside of its walls, hoping a topknot that was stuck to the wall or sat in a crack would grab my little pink worm imitation as I twitched it around. 

I patiently worked my way along, hoping to catch a weird looking, rocky surface loving flatfish. 

My endeavours had fairly predictable results. So predictable in fact that Lillian successfully guessed which species would be first to take my brightly coloured, peach scented lure. A couple of long spined sea scorpion were first to scoff it, followed by three common blenny. 

Peach flavoured Mini Isome, one of your five a day!

After about an hour, I’d caught a few more small fish but my allotted fishing time was up and permission to extend it wasn’t granted. During the short window of opportunity, I also caught a couple of juvenile cod, but unsurprisingly, no topknot. I’m still confident that eventually my persistence will pay off and each time I visit an old harbour or some likely looking boulders I’ll keep trying. Sooner or later I may get lucky. 

Tight lines, Scott.