Trying to find a viviparous blenny in a coalfish shoal.

Sitting in the canteen at work yesterday I had a look at the weather forecast and tides for Sunday. Whilst doing so I noticed that conditions looked good yesterday evening down at Dunbar for another session targeting viviparous blennies. Low water was at about 19:00 and I reasoned that perhaps there would be fewer coalfish around when there was less water in the harbour. I send my mate Nick who lives near the harbour a text to tell him that I would be coming down for a few hours, he said he was free and would join me for a while. Grabbing my gear after work I drove down the A1 and was soon fishing small chunks of raw prawn on a scaled down two up one down rig in the area where I caught my first viviparous blenny last year. My hopes that the coalfish would not be around in numbers which would perhaps make my difficult task a little easier were quickly dashed and by the time Nick arrived with his son I had caught about thirty of them including quite a few double shots. 

Nick's son was soon catching a few coalfish too which was nice to see and Nick cast out into the harbour entrance channel to try and catch a flounder which he soon suceeded in doing. I kept on ploughing through the coalfish, my rig barely getting a chance to settle before they were all over it. After a while I removed the top two snoods from it, basically converting it into a simple running ledger and fished a slightly bigger piece of bait. This cut down on the number of smaller coalfish being caught and after a couple dozen slightly bigger coalfish eventually I felt something biting that didn't feel like a coalfish. I lowered my rod tip slightly and let the bite develop for a few seconds before lifting it again. Feeling a little extra weight I began reeling in and quickly brought the fish to the surface, then hoisted it up the harbour wall even quicker when I saw it was indeed not a coalfish and was in fact the species I was after.

A small viviparous blenny, a new addition to my 2014 saltwater species tally so I was extremely happy. 

After I took a few photos of my slippery catch it was getting late and it was soon time for Nick to take his son home so they said goodbye and left me to it. I fished on for another half an hour but another dozen or so coalfish later, which took my tally to over seventy, I called it a night. I only have two species left to catch from saltwater to reach the one hundred mark and I'm now quietly confident I'll get them. Unless the weather forecast changes I'll be meeting up with Nick on Sunday morning to try and add species ninety nine with a session targeting golden grey mullet.

Tight lines, Scott.