A day at the wrasses.

Sunday's Fish Club meet saw myself, Brian and Col hit Starney Bay at the eastern end of St Abbs Head. The fishing was quite slow though after the lads initially caught a few coalfish. I tried fishing small baits over the sandy areas to see what mini species might be lurking there but after a while with only a tiny cod and coalfish to show for my efforts I joined the lads targeting wrasse. There wasn't much happening for a while until Col shouted over to say he had hooked one and Brian headed over with a net to help him land it.

Col loves catching wrasse and was ecstatic. Honest.

Needless to say Brian and I were soon perched either side of Col and the next thirty minutes or so saw Brian then catch a couple and Col catching a second too.

Brian readily admitted that in the past he has been guilty of plundering Col's swims when they trot maggots for grayling. Entering another angler's wrasse hole is another matter however but Col didn't complain too much.

One of Brian's colourful big lipped ballans.

Col's second ballan was a bit of a lump and he did well to keep it out of the kelp on the very light gear he was fishing.

You don't need use huge hooks and big baits to catch wrasse. Small strong hooks like this Kamasan Animal baited with a small section of ragworm will usually see them nicely lip hooked like this.

I just wasn't at the wrasses however and didn't have any luck getting myself one, instead catching a couple of very greedy little long spined sea scorpions whose enthusiastic assaults on my piece of ragworm had me thinking a wrasse was tapping away before they got hooked and I pulled them up. 

It then went fairly quiet again so after a while we headed to St Abbs Harbour but fishing there was also very slow. There seemed to be a lot of diesel on the  surface and the water itself was uncharacteristically quite coloured too. I managed a solitary flounder, Brian caught a coalfish and Col got a couple of long spined sea scorpions before we decided to call it a day. Even though I hadn't got into some wrasse myself it was nice to see the lads get into some nice ones. I'm sure if we return to St Abbs in the future when the conditions are a bit better we'll all enjoy catching colourful, hard fighting wrasse. Speaking of colourful, Brian and Col are also both keen to catch some cuckoo wrasse and as I still require one for my species hunt I dare say a trip up to Lochaline at some point might be on the cards. 

Tight lines, Scott.