Starting again from scratch.

Another year has begun, and for us species hunters, it's time to reset our annual species tallies. Last year, I caught one hundred and ninety one different species of fish, including forty three new ones. Not too shabby, all things considered! On Saturday evening, I headed back down to Cove Harbour with my mate Ryan to spend a few hours in the freezing cold targeting rockling. A bit of a swell was still running following the latest storm, which made fishing with light tackle fairly testing, but before too long I had pulled out my first fish of 2026.

The five bearded rockling was also my last species of 2025.

As the night progressed, we caught a few coalfish and the odd small cod on our small black lug baits. Despite the conditions, the fishing was enjoyable, and in between bites we chatted away. We mainly talked about our recent trip to Japan and all the things we were missing about it. We also discussed some potential destinations for trips this coming year.     

There were plenty of these reasonably sized coalfish around...

...as well as some small cod.

Towards the end of the session, we both caught a shore rockling each. These are easily distinguished from their five bearded cousin as they possess two fewer "beards". They also grow a bit bigger too.

The shore rockling has three beards. So does the three bearded rockling, but in my opinion the two species look nothing alike due to their very different colourations!

Before we knew it, the time had come to head back up the path to the car and drive back up the A1 to Edinburgh. It had been another enjoyable winter session and I think Ryan and I will be out again for more of the same over the next few weeks, although we may fish more locally.

Tight lines, Scott.

I needed perking up.

Last month I was still suffering from post Japan trip depression, and I hadn’t been fishing for a while. Between Christmas and Hogmanay, I headed down to East Lothian to meet up with wildlife cameraman, author and fellow fishing fanatic Jack Perks. We only had a few hours together and Jack was keen to catch a flounder and a shore rockling, so we started the session off at Belhaven Bay. Crossing the Bridge to Nowhere, we were soon at the water’s edge, fishing into the breaking waves at close range. The conditions looked pretty good, but the timing of the session meant we were fishing the last couple of hours of the ebb on a neap tide, a combination I’ve found in the past to be hard going. The flood on a spring tide is usually a much better time in my opinion. We gave it a go anyway, and it was nice to catch up with Jack. As I suspected, we struggled to find any fish that were biting, although eventually I did catch a solitary small flounder. We stuck it out for a few hours, but when light started to fade, we decided to head to Cove Harbour and turn our attention to fishing for shore rockling. The fishing there was much better, and it didn’t take us too long to catch a few rockling, dropping small sections of black lug down the walls at the mouth of the harbour. 

My first five bearded rockling of 2025 and also the last species I caught in the calendar year. Not the one we were after, but I was happy enough catching them. I have a bit of a soft spot for rockling!

After catching about half a dozen five bearded rockling between the two of us, and also a few juvenile codling and some coalfish, Jack switched to a piece of prawn on his hook and subsequently lost a bigger rockling on the surface that he was sure was our target species. Shortly afterwards, he landed a smaller rockling, that on inspection turned out to be the first shore rockling of the night. Mission accomplished! It started raining shortly afterwards, so we called it a night and made the walk back up to our cars. It was nice to get out fishing with Jack again and hopefully we can do it again this year at some point. A UK wels catfish is on my to do list this year and there’s a fishery down south near Jack that we might visit, or we might meet up on the south coast. The second half of our session was also a reminder of how much I really enjoy catching rockling, and will be out again soon hopefully to catch some more. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Five above zero.

Leaving Singapore at the end of November, where the average temperature was about 30°C, and stepping off the plane in Edinburgh on a dark and rather chilly evening into a temperature of 1°C, was not much fun. Winter in Scotland is pretty grim, even in the Central Belt. At least I had lots of photos to crop, watermark and upload into fourteen blog posts that I still had to write. Something to keep me busy for a couple of weeks when it was horrible outside.

About halfway through that process, I checked the weather forecast for the coming days, and seeing a short, fairly mild spell approaching, I arranged to meet up with my mate Ryan to catch up. We fished locally at Marine Esplanade, our main target for the evening was five bearded rocking, a species I’ve not caught this year. Ryan brought some frozen black lug, and we fished small sections of it, on small hooks, on the bottom. We got bites from the start of the session and both of us opened our account with pin whiting. 

There are lots of pin whiting around this part of the coastline.

I also caught a solitary poor cod. They seem to be increasingly common in the Forth Estuary.

After catching a few more whiting, my rod tip started nodding away again. Lifting it up and feeling the weight of a small fish, I wound it in to find the target species for the evening had snaffled my small smelly bait. 

My first five bearded rockling of the year! My 267th species of 2024!

The rockling reminded me slightly of the bigeye cusk I had caught in Singapore. A pleasant little flashback! Things slowed down after that, but as we chatted away, another bite registered on my rod tip and picking my rod up I felt another fish on. It felt like a second rockling, wriggling around as it came up through the murky water towards me, but it turned out to be a viviparous blenny.

A nice bonus fish!

Before we left, I caught a second five bearded rockling. I love it when a plan comes together! Speaking of plans coming together, Ryan will be coming to Japan with Lillian and I next November, and we’ll be planning our three-week itinerary over the next few months. It’s a trip I'm already really looking forward to!

Tight lines, Scott. 

Sixth sense.

Following on from my last post, I've had another session down at the incredibly glamorous sounding Marine Esplanade. I can assure you it is anything but. Flanked by a very large sewerage treatment plant, derelict waste ground and Leith docks, it's far from picturesque. There's also an abandoned Audi there at the moment, probably stolen, but the bright yellow police sticker on the driver window means they're already aware of its presence. I think it was -1°C on Wednesday night, it felt even colder thanks to a brisk wind. I was hoping to catch viviparous blenny, long spined sea scorpion or coalfish to add to my 2023 species hunt tally, but I only caught one fish during the short, two hour session. Another five bearded rockling.

Small one inch sections of frozen black lug soaked in squid oil were presented on a #10 Owner pin hook. A perfect little smelly package for a scavenging mini species' mouth.

Five beards on display and also its first dorsal fin. All six appendages are used to detect potential meals!

Having visited Marine Esplanade a few times now, I think a trip down the A1 to Dunbar Harbour is on the cards. I've got some new 1.5g micro metals that I want to try out, and the resident coalfish are the perfect target. Furthermore, I have a dedicated setup for targeting horse mackerel that I bought before the pandemic started, that I really need to put to more use.

Major Craft Nano Aji Metals. How cute!?

Dunbar Harbour is also a venue that can produce the odd viviparous blenny, if you can get through all the coalfish that is! I'll probably mix things up when I head there and fish with the micro metals and also do some more ultra light bait fishing too.

Tight lines, Scott.

The hunt begins! Again!

The temperature isn't the only thing that's hit zero recently. My annual species hunt tally has also been reset. Last year I caught almost one hundred species. Looking back over my records to before the Covid pandemic started, that's about average for me as a species hunter. This year I've decided to set, what I think at least, are some ambitious targets. I'll be fishing in three countries in Asia this year, visiting South Korea and Japan for three weeks in March and then Singapore for a week in June. I'll also be having a holiday on Crete at the end of September too. So the potential is certainly there to rack up a lot of different species in 2023. As a result, I'm going to try to catch two hundred by the end of this year, including one hundred new ones!

To get started, I've been braving some strong, icy cold winds locally over the last week. Marine Esplanade near the Seafield waste water treatment works was the venue I picked. It's only a five minute drive from my flat, so it's perfect to fish for a couple of hours in the evenings after work.  Five bearded rockling were my first target species of the year, and fishing scaled down two hook flapper rigs at close range on ultra light tackle was my chosen approach. Over three short sessions, things were pretty slow, but I managed to catch a few juvenile cod on small sections of black lug and also a couple of five bearded rockling from the rocky ground at the bottom of the sea defences.

No chips required.

Disliked by winter cod anglers, who see them as a nuisance, I think rockling are cool fish in their own right. Adept scavengers, not only do they have a face full of sensitive barbules to detect food, they can even taste using their adapted first dorsal fin!

So, the ball is rolling and 2023 should be an exciting and hopefully a very productive year of species hunting. I'm obviously very excited about visiting several new places in Asia and think the fishing there will be great. When I return to Crete in September, I'll be trying to catch lots of species there too, including new ones like lionfish and silver cheeked toadfish. In the UK I may make short trips to England and Wales to target new species as well, and finally I'm also going to carry on trying to catch new Scottish species during the rest of the year to edge me closer to my goal of catch one hundred of them. A three bearded rockling is at the top of my target list for that challenge, and I've got a trip to the west coast of Scotland planned to target them at the end of February. In the meantime, I'll continue fishing locally to add more species to my 2023 tally. Only one hundred and ninety eight to go!

Tight lines, Scott.

Rockpool tomfoolery.

I had some pinkies left over from my bitterling fishing on the last day of my staycation, so I decided to head down to Dunbar to mess about in the rockpools at the back of its old harbour. A simple split shot rig was used and I fished in the bigger rockpools, dropping the wriggling green bottle larvae down in front of gaps and cracks where I though fish might be hiding. It didn't take long for a few common blenny and long spined sea scorpions to give away their positions. I then caught a leopard spotted goby and the smallest five bearded rockling I've ever seen.

How can you not love these aggressive little goblins. They were more interested in my shiny split shot though so there's a presentation lesson there.

Only the third time Ive caught a leopard spotted goby during a session in this specific area.

The smallest five bearded rockling I've ever seen let alone caught! I had to pop it in a tub of water to positively identify it.

Next I spotted some red claws poking out of a crack down the side of a rockpool and offered up a pinkie. The owner quickly grabbed the bait and I quickly lifted it up onto the rocks.

Even this very colourful spiny squat lobster couldn't resist a pinkie!

Before I left I popped into the main harbour and spent half an hour targeting flounder in "Flatty Corner", a sandy area where they seem to like to congregate as the tides floods before they then head round into the old harbour to feed on the worms in there.

Slowly dragged along the bottom, several small flounders inside Dunbar harbour also took a liking to my fairly unorthodox bait choice.

Quite a fun little session, the rockpool exploration was inspired by a conversation I'd had at work with a customer who told me what he has, in the past, found in rockpools while he was out gathering bait. More on the topic of the potential of rockpool fishing in my next post.

Tight lines, Scott.

Punching and kicking.

On Thursday night I popped down to Dunbar Harbour to use up the small amount of ragworm that I had left over from my boat trip the Sunday before. Rockling were the target species and I fished half a ragworm baited on a #6 hook on a running ledger incorporating a rotten bottom. I'd never fished my chosen spot before, off the back of the old harbours upper walkway, but turning up just before sunset and at low water I quickly sussed out where there were gaps in the kelp and started fishing into them, casting my bait in close to where rocks gave way to broken ground. It is an area that I've always thought would produce rockling but for some reason I'd just never tried there for them. After a while as light faded I got my first bite of the session and caught a long spined sea scorpion. Once it had been dark for a while I got a second bite and caught my first rockling of the year which was of the five bearded variety.

I was over the moon to catch this little chap. My forty sixth species from Scottish saltwater this year.

Five bearded rockling have a nice golden hue to their flanks and on their gill plates. They also have, as their name suggests, five barbules or beards on their short stubby faces.

I had intended to only fish for two hours but when my rod tip rattled again just before I was about to pack up. I missed the bite but I decided to fish on for a bit. I was glad I did as shortly afterwards my rod tip went again and this time I was quicker to lift my rod and hooked the fish. Winding it up the wall another rockling appeared in the beam of my headtorch and was quickly swung to hand. This time it was a larger specimen and a different species to boot.

This fine example of a shore rockling. They are generally larger than their five bearded cousin and only possess three "beards". Not to be confused with the three bearded rockling, a variety I have never caught but hope to do so later in the year.

Returning the fish I punched the air in celebration, packed up and headed home a very happy angler. What a brilliant little session that really couldn't have gone any better although despite being on a high in the back of my mind I was kicking myself a little for not following my instincts and fishing there for them previously. I have only three species left to catch now and I have three months to catch them. To be honest I'd rather hit my target sooner rather than later but as I've just arrived on the south coast of England and will be fishing in Cornwall and Dorset for the next week my challenge is on hold until I return. 

Tight lines, Scott.

I caught ninety nine species now I just need one.

With adding to my 2014 species from saltwater tally in mind, I got up early on Sunday and headed down to Torness Power Station outflow with my mate Nick for another session float fishing bread for mullet. We were expecting a slight swell but unfortunately when we arrived the conditions were far worse than we had anticipated forcing us to head to Dunbar instead for a couple of hours. The harbour is normally full of coalfish but incredibly we both blanked. I had planned to drive over to Anstruther in the evening to try and catch a five bearded rockling but feeling slightly dejected by how things had gone in the morning I decided not to in case I went all that way only to discover the sea state there was also unsuitable.

Yesterday I had a similar itinerary planned, a golden grey mullet session in the morning and a five bearded rockling session in the evening but checking the weather forecast on Monday night I changed my mind and decided to head to Anstruther late in the afternoon arriving just before low water to fish the tide up in darkness.

I arrived on the harbour's "White Pier" just after light started to fade and quickly set up two rods.

The ground outside the harbour where I decided to fish is mixed with some rocky areas and some sandy patches. I went with simple running ledgers incorporating a rotten bottom, #4 circle hooks snelled onto short six inch 15lb snoods with black lug and squid cocktails for bait. Preparing the cocktails I laid a strip of squid alongside the worms and bound it up into a little sausage using bait elastic. I nicked the top end of a one inch section onto the hook leaving the bait dangling and it free to do its job when a fish took the bait and either moved off or I saw the bite and lifted the rod.

The pier is a very comfortable venue to fish and is also very well lit. No rod rest is required either.

Things were very slow until the tide turned and began to flood again, a small codling being first to get hooked after a few little rattles failed to produce hookups. After a while and a few more bites not being converted I was beginning to consider altering my presentation slightly by changing my hooks from circles to Nordic bends to try and improve my hook up rate. Just as I was about to get them out of my box though one of my rod tips registered the interest of a fish so I picked it up. Feeling another tug I gently started winding in and felt a little extra weight. Soon winching my catch up the wall I lifted it up into sight and was very pleased to see a five bearded rockling nicely hooked. Quickly unhooking my ninety ninth species from saltwater in 2014 I took a photo of the handsome chap before putting him back.

As well as having five beards, five bearded rockling have a golden tinge to their gill plates and flanks which makes them fairly easy to distinguish from shore rockling.

Over the moon to be one species closer to my goal I carried on fishing. Shortly afterwards I caught a second five bearded rockling and then a small coalfish before things went quiet again. Having caught what I had came for I decided to end the session early and made the drive home. I now have four weeks to add one more species to my tally to take it to the one hundred mark. Further sessions down at Torness Power Station outflow should eventually produce a golden grey mullet but the conditions will play a big part in that too as Sunday showed. Indeed over the next week or so the wind is forecast to pick up a bit so I may have to try for something else. Luckily there are a few other species I could target that I haven't caught this year so I do have a few options open to me and overall I'm still fairly confident I'm going to achieve my goal. I can't see me catching anything I've not caught before but a three bearded rockling is one potential new species I'd love to catch. Anyway, it's good to have something to aim for at this time of year.

Tight lines, Scott.

More beards than ZZ Top.

Well it's that time of year again. No, not cod season. Rockling season! Having caught my first rockling species, shore rockling, at the start of this year I was keen to add another before the end of it. With the largest of the UK rockling species, the three bearded variety in mind, and after gathering some intel, I decided to visit Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife to try and catch one. I was told that some had been caught there recently and conditions looked good so off I went on Tuesday for the first of two evening sessions.

Anstruther Harbour's western breakwater is known as "The White Pier" due to the white lighthouse at the end of it. About halfway along it would be my chosen mark.

Fishing with two rods I decided to keep things very simple and fished a running ledger on both with #8 Aberdeen hooks baited with black lug and tipped off with a little sliver of squid. It didn't take long at all for one of these small but smelly offerings to attract the attention of this passing flounder.

A nice start to the session. 

After the sun set the pace of the bites increased as the resident coalfish came out and after catching a few of them I caught a few small codling too.

Not the stamp of cod most anglers who visit the venue are after but nicely marked and a welcome change from the coalfish. 

I pretty much had the place to myself until a local lad came down, chatted to me for a bit and I explained what I was hoping to catch, before he headed home to get his gear. When he returned he lobbed out a juicy lug and mussel cocktail to try and tempt any larger codling that may have been around. He didn't succeed in catching any but did manage a few small greedy coalfish. Just before he left though he struck at a bite hooking the culprit and was soon reeling in a small fish. Another coalfish I guessed but as he lifted it over the wall he realised it was a small rockling and called me over so I nipped along to where he was took a look. Upon closer inspection of the fish which was maybe only 15cm long I couldn't believe the thing had managed to get a #6/0 hook into its tiny mouth!  It was a darkly coloured rockling so a quick beard count was completed and it turned out to be the five bearded variety, a species I'd never caught. The whole thing brought a huge smile to my face but I did jokingly tell him that if he caught another I'd have to throw him in! That's fishing though and it was good to know that there were some rockling around at least. I fished on for a while after the young lad called it a night at about 21:00 but left soon after rocklingless. 

The following afternoon I returned to try again. Thinking about the rockling the local lad had caught the night before as well as some of my angling mates advice to "go cod fishing" if I wanted to catch rockling and fish big baits and hooks I decided to try a compromise. I switched to a wishbone arrangement at the business end to hopefully put a bit more scent into the water that hopefully the resident rockling could home in on and this would allow me to continue using small hooks to increase my chances of a hook up should one decide to take a bait. As I set up the wind had dropped off almost completely compared to the previous day and the clouds had almost disappeared. It was a lovely mild evening especially given the time if year. 

A very picturesque December evening. 

Soon fishing black lug and mussel baits tipped off with squid the session started as it had the day before with another flounder and as soon as the sun began to set the bites were fairly frequent and a few coalfish were soon being caught. Reeling them in I was mumbling away to myself, "Please be a rockling, please be a rockling!" After a while I had a double shot of a coalfish and a viviparous blenny which at first glance I thought was a small rockling. It was a nice change from the coalfish though. They are cool little fish and are quite hard to handle as they slither around.

A slippery character indeed.

Shortly afterwards, after catching a few more coalfish and a single small codling, I was beginning to think it wasn't going to be my night again when I hooked another fish and as it came over the wall I was very excited to see it was a rockling. Which kind though? I knew straight away from its dark brown colouration that it wasn't a three bearded rockling so it was quickly unhooked and a beard count was eagerly done.

One, two, three, four, five,
Once I caught a five bearded rockling alive.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Then I let it go again.

I was over the moon to catch this as it was my first one! I really like rockling, I think they are a very interesting looking fish with their long bodies, small eyes and the barbules on their snout are most intriguing. I may be alone in feeling this way about them however as they are usually considered a nuisance, bait stealing pest by most anglers who catch them whilst targeting other, more prized species. Like all fish I think they are pretty cool fish in their own right. With about an hour or so left I decided to fish some slightly bigger baits on bigger hooks to try and tempt a three bearded rockling. This just resulted in coalfish tapping away but no more fish were hooked. Still a very pleasant couple of night's fishing, I left very pleased to have caught another new species and I'll certainly be out trying for a three bearded rockling again at some point over the winter.

Tight lines, Scott.