When I woke up this morning I looked out of the window to find it was a nice sunny day contrary to most of the weather forecasts I'd looked at last night. Perfect I though for a couple of hours down at Granton Breakwater before work to begin my hunt for a viviparous blenny, a species that has eluded capture despite me having several goes over the last couple of years at catching one. My plan was to fish small baits on a #6 hook close in on a simple running ledger rig. When I got to the tackle shop though they were out of ragworm, my first choice bait, so I popped along the road to a supermarket and got a bag of frozen raw prawns instead. Parking the car and heading right to the end of the breakwater I was soon fishing in about six feet of water between the rock I was standing on and the remains of the wooden pier that many years ago was at the end of the breakwater. Bites came from the start and a string of small coalfish were caught and quickly released.
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| One of the bigger specimens. Quite a fat little coalfish too! |
Just when I thought a move was in order I caught a long spined sea scorpion so I decided to stay put to see what else I could catch.
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| Perhaps there were other species down there who could battle through the coalfish hordes to my bait? |
After a few more coalfish I felt the distinctive taps of a wrasse and managed to hook the culprit, a nice little dark brown ballan wrasse with subtle gun metal grey spots.
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| My first wrasse from the venue. |
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| You can see the gun metal grey markings on the fishes gill covers too. |
Quite pleased with this I then caught another wrasse, this time a rather large battle scarred corkwing that had a chunk missing from his dorsal fin.
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| An old warrior. |
As the tide started to flood I caught a second corkwing that I thought might be the same fish but a quick check of his dorsal fin told me he was a different wrasse. A second ballan wrasse soon followed before I had to get back onto the main breakwater as the tide was about to cut me off on the large rock I was fishing from.
Before leaving I had a few casts to see if I could hold bottom out in front of the breakwater but my 1oz lead was quickly being pulled sideways so if I want to try there on future viviparous blenny hunts I will require heavier tackle I think.
On the way back to the shore the heavens opened as predicted by the Met Office, finally getting it right for a change! I got a soaking but I still had a big smile on my face after a very enjoyable short session. So, no sign of my target species but with plenty of prawns left over and with reports of them being caught there recently I will be back and the hunt will continue...
Tight lines, Scott.
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