Trigger warning!

Attention: This post may contain grey triggerfish and other unusual UK fish species!

At the end of August, I headed down to Cornwall with my mate Ryan for four days of species hunting. Checking the weather forecast in the days running up to the trip, it didn’t look great. With strong winds and some rain forecast, our plans would have to adapt as our trip progressed, but we were still keen to make the most of our time down there. Last Monday, we arrived and headed to Fowey to seek shelter from the wind. We were soon joined by my Welsh mate Ben and the three of us spent the afternoon fishing flapper rigs out in the channel of the estuary there. Being a bank holiday, there were lots of small boats around, which made fishing difficult at times, but we soldiered on and caught a few fish. Ryan and Ben caught a few Couch’s seabream, my main target for the session. Sadly, I didn’t get one, but did catch a gilthead seabream and a striped red mullet. 

Silver and gold. Not the seabream I was hoping for!

Only my second ever UK striped red mullet, but it was a UK first I was after!

The following day, the three of us met up in Newquay, where along with other anglers Jack, Nev and Lewis, we had a day out with Newquay Fishing Trips aboard Atlantis targeting grey triggerfish. The weather was kind, with the wind having eased up a fair amount from the previous day. On our way out to the mark, skipper Matt told us that a fortnight previously another group had caught plenty of our target species there and before too long we were all dropping rigs baited with squid, mussels and prawn down. Drifting past a ridge on the sea floor, we all started catching them almost immediately and over the remainder of the day we must have caught about forty grey triggerfish between the six of us.

I caught one when I fished in Florida a couple of years ago, but I was over the moon to catch my first ever UK grey triggerfish.

A couple of hours into the charter, I started to feel a little bit ill. Over the years, I’ve had sea sickness a few times and as I steadily felt worse it became apparent that yet again my “sea legs” had failed me. I stopped fishing, sat by the wheelhouse, and sipped water in an attempt to alleviate my symptoms, watching the others catch a few fish. Lots of grey triggerfish aside, nothing too interesting was caught. A few wrasse, some pouting and a couple of scad putting in an appearance. Having all caught what we wanted, with not much else being caught, the wind beginning to pick up and the swell starting to build, we decided to head back to port early. Needless to say, I was very grateful to get back on dry land!

On our penultimate day, Ryan and I headed to Falmouth where we made a couple of brief stops at two very different marks to fish for two very different species. At the first spot, we were out of the wind and our target soon appeared when some bread was thrown in. The mullet however were being, well, mullet! I enjoy the tricky, frustrating nature of freelining bread flake for them, but Ryan just wanted to catch one so we could head to our next spot! Eventually, I caught a couple of small thick lipped mullet and then Ryan caught a pair at the same time, his two hook rig paying dividends!

Mullet are so frustrating, but they can also be a lot of fun too!

We then headed off to fish in some rockpools for Montagu’s blenny. The area we visited was very exposed, with strong wind and rain battering it, so things were challenging to say the least. Clambering over the slippery rocks, we eventually found a small rockpool with a boulder in it that was slightly out of the wind and spotted our target species sitting on the bottom. As we approached, it swam off under the boulder, so Ryan, who had never caught one before, was first to drop a tanago hook baited with a tiny piece of ragworm down the edge in front of the crack where the fish was hiding. It didn’t take too long to tempt it out and it was soon unhooked and placed in my little tank to be photographed by Ryan. Shortly afterwards, I caught a Montagu’s blenny of my own from underneath the exact same boulder.

I like catching Montagu’s blenny. I wish we had them up in Scotland!

When you examine them closely, they’re quite colourful little fish.

In the afternoon, we headed to Flushing, where we spent the rest of the day fishing the flooding tide. With plenty of ragworm for bait we both fished two rods, although Ryan put out a crab bait on one of his, to hopefully tempt a passing bass. I was still after my first UK Couch’s seabream, with an outside chance of catching my first UK common pandora.

Falmouth over on the other side of the estuary on an overcast, windy afternoon. 

Things were slow to begin with, until the tide began to pick up a bit and Ryan was first of the mark. Winding in his fish, when it came to the surface, I thought initially it was a Couch’s seabream when I saw the colour of it. When it got a closer, I realised it was in fact the much rarer common pandora!

A number of these common pandora have been caught in the Fal Estuary over the last few years. I was a little bit jealous!

Excited by this capture, we fished on, hopeful that it would signal the beginning of a busier spell, but unfortunately it didn’t. The wind made things unpleasant, but eventually I connected with a good rattle on one of my rods and wound in a small pink fish of my own. Not long after, I caught a second.

Small, but perfectly formed. My first ever UK Couch’s seabream!

Winding this in, I was hopeful it was a common pandora, but it was just a second, bigger, Couch’s seabream.

We carried on fishing until it started to get dark, and by that point we had just about run out of bait, so we called it a night and headed back to our accomodation. In the hour or so before we left, we hardly had any decent bites. Our rod tips were twitching away, and I correctly guessed what was responsible before we caught a handful of black seabream.

Black seabream can be a bit of a bait stealing nuisance, especially when you’re after other, much rarer, seabream species.

On our last day, the wind picked up and rain showers increased too. We visited Mevagissey in the morning to get out of the wind, but the fishing was very poor, with only a few wrasse being caught. Ryan wanted to catch a reticulated dragonet from the sand out in front of the breakwater, but drew a blank. In the afternoon, we drove west to hunt mini species in the rockpools at Marazion.

St Michael’s Mount on a grey rainy afternoon.

There wasn’t much biting there either, but we both eventually caught giant goby. Protected in the UK, we quickly photographed Ryan’s as it was his first ever and then carefully returned them to the spots where we’d caught them from to go about their business.

 Ryan’s first ever giant goby was a bit of a chunky brute. Giant by name.

When I put the one I caught back, it sat on the bottom for a brief period before returning to its hiding hole.

After grabbing a steak filled Cornish pasty from a small bakery, we drove up to St Ives. Out at the end of the town’s harbour, we were totally exposed to the strong winds that were blowing. This made targeting lesser weever incredibly difficult from our elevated position, but eventually we caught a few of the little venomous fish.

Despite the large amount of hman activity in the water, I think the lesser weever population living in the golden sands of St Ives is quite healthy!

For our final session of the trip, we drove back south to Penzance to fish after dark for blackspot seabream and scad. The end of the town harbour's breakwater was already quite busy with anglers when we arrived, but we managed to squeeze ourselves in and fished for a couple of hours. Out of bait, we fished with Isome on a drop shot rig. Things were again, pretty slow, but after pulling out a few small pouting closer in, I caught a couple of blackspot seabream by casting much further out and slowly working my rig back in, pausing frequently to give any fish attracted a chance to strike at my fruity imitation worm.

Also known in the UK as red seabream, this was my last species of the trip.

On the lengthy drive back up to Edinburgh the next day, we discussed how it had went and agreed that the short species hunting trip to Cornwall had been a tough at times but ultimately a success, especially given some of the challenging conditions we were faced with. I had added two new species to my UK lifelist and Ryan had caught eight species for the first time. It was nice to catch up with Ben, Jack and Nev again and meet Lewis for the first time too. I was very impressed with skipper Matt too, he did a fantastic job of putting us on a highly localised population of grey triggerfish and I’d highly recommend a day out with him if they’re a species you’d like to catch. The south coast of the UK has some fantastic fishing and a superb variety of species too. Ryan and I might even “pop down” to Dorset in a few weeks' time at short notice if there’s a spell of nicer weather!

Tight lines, Scott.