Mini session for mini species.

I headed down to Dunbar harbour with my mate Jake for a few hours yesterday. We didn't realise that it was RNLI day and the new harbour was packed with people enjoyiing the nice weather, watching the entertainment, listening to live music whilst enjoying the food on offer as well as a few beers. We started the session in the old harbour and again I was after sand gobies. I'm sure at one point I spotted a few but they didn't have a chance with little shoals of small coafish quickly appearing and attacking my small section of Power Isome. I was fishing this on a #18 Kasaman Animal hook with a single 0.8g split shot a few inches above it. I've been using this setup a lot recently as I find the hook up rate with smaller species is far higher than when using a jighead. Jake was fishing a red Berkley 1" Fish Fry on a 1.8g #10 Decoy Rocket. It wasn't long before we were both catching small coalfish and the odd blenny that came out of the weed on the harbour wall to get in on the action.

The harbour is full of these at the moment and they are growing quickly.

Blennies now face competition for food.

After a while we moved to the outside of the harbour to explore the rockpools in the hope that something odd may turn up. The tide was covering them fairly quickly though and we didn't get long. I managed a couple of tiny long spined sea scorpions before the tide forced us off the reef.

Small hooks and split shot ensure even the smallest target can be caught.

Next we headed into the new harbour and had a quick drop down the side at "blenny corner". The residents were quite obliging and we were soon hoisting them up much to the amusement of passing spectators, particularly the children.

We then headed over to an area where Jake had caught some launce earlier in the week but a thick soup of coalfish meant the chances of hooking anything else quite slim! A steady stream of small coalfish were shown to passing kids and we also tried fishing the bottom for flounders and whilst we both had a bite or two I think it was just the coalfish!

Finally just before we left we had a quick go over the back of the harbour from the barracks. I switched over to a 2.3g #8 Shirasu jighead and half a pink large Power Isome. Casting this out and working it back very slowly with a lot of small twitches I hooked a small pollock on my third cast and followed this up with another two.

Biggest fish of the day!

Jake meanwhile had been trying to tempt a wrasse in some deeper water but his only reward was another coalfish.

A relaxing, fun session still produced four species and about 40 fish. It was also great to see the harbour so busy with everyone having a great day and hopefully the RNLI raised a lot of money in the process.

Tight lines, Scott.