Rockpooling fun and rockling hunt continues.

Conditions looked good for another session targeting rockling tonight so I jumped on the train at lunchtime today and headed to Kinghorn in Fife. I thought I'd adopt a different approach today and instead of taking two beachcasters I opted instead to take my Nories Rockfish Bottom Light and fish small baits on a drop shot rig using a 15g lead to hold bottom. When I arrived instead of walking down the road to the mark I decided to head down to the beach below the train station and then amble my way along the coast doing a bit of exploring. There were plenty of rockpools to search but despite dangling a chunk of raw prawn in front of several likely looking hiding places there was a complete lack of any fish which was quite surprising. After about an hour or so I reached the rockling mark and whilst waiting for low water and the sun to set I carried on with my rockpool fun and finally found a rich seam of long spined sea scorpions in a small concentrated area.

Small but welcome. My first fish in a few weeks!

Very bright belly on it too with lots of white spots.

Out of one small hole between three large rocks I caught a few before deciding to switch to a chunk of bluey on my hook. Fishing a drop shot rig I was using a #8 VMC Spinshot drop shot hook for the first time. My palomar knots aren't the best and I find the hooks don't sit quite right and need constant re-arranging. I also find line twist can be a problem when drop shotting so I thought I'd give these a bash after spotting them in one of my mate Ross's catch reports recently. I must say first impressions are great. Hooks are strong and sharp and hook up occurred pretty much every bite first time and I think this is due to the extra freedom of movement these hooks allow.

This stubby faced fellow swallowed the hook.

VMC Spinshot drop shot hooks. I'll be ordering more.

The sea scorpions kept coming and I found another nice hiding place that produced a few more fish all in quick succession including a couple of specimens. By the time low water was approaching and I decided to turn my attention to rockling I had caught thirteen of them, all from the one relatively small area.

A specimen long spined sea scorpion.

All of them were dark brown today which is quite unusual. Normally you catch a few different shades even from the same spot.

So with the rockpool fun over I turned my attention to targeting rockling in the gullies as darkness fell and the tide turned and began to flood into them. After a couple of hours of working my baits over the sea bed close to some rocky features with lots of long pauses searching for fish I had once again failed to tempt any that may have been around. I spoke to a local angler who came down to fish the gully adjacent to mine and he informed me that he hadn't caught any rockling for a few weeks there despite catching them fairly regularly at the same spot at the end of last year. Oh well, I'm off to Angelsey next weekend and I'm assured that there are plenty of rockling to be caught there!

Tight lines, Scott.