Enter the dragonet.

Last Monday I arranged to meet up with my mate Gareth at Loch Fyne for an afternoon fishing bait on light gear. The target for the day was common dragonets. Gareth had never caught one before, despite a few attempts to catch one, so was keen to catch his first. I just think they're pretty cool. I arrived early in the morning and began fishing a mark that has in the past consistently produced them for me so I was quietly confident we'd catch some. I had some raw prawns with me for bait but I also took along a pack of dehydrated ragworm after a regular customer at work had told me he'd found them to be very effective. After a catching a few pin whiting on small chunks of raw prawn I decided to give the Dynabait a try on my size 12 hooks.

I was a bit skeptic but keeping an open mind I gave them a try anyway.

Taking one out of the packet it had quite a strong odour but being bone dry there was no mess.

Following the instructions on the packet you are supposed to rehydrate them but I opted to use it straight out of the packet. My reasoningbeing that it would perhaps stay on the hook on the cast better and would get rehydrated soon enough.

While waiting for Gareth to arrive I caught a few more pin whiting and dabs and then I caught a common dragonet and quickly text Gareth to let him know that our target species was around. I carried on fishing away, alternating between small chunks of raw prawn and small pieces of dried ragworm and caught lots of fish on both. I even had a treble shot of mackerel on the dried ragworm that intercepted my rig as it fell to the seafloor. It wasn't much fun pulling them up through bladdwrack on a rod rated to 15g! When Gareth arrived we happily fished away and after a couple of hours catching lots of pin whiting, the odd dab and a few black gobies he shouted over to let me know he'd caught his first common dragonet.  I really should have taken a trophy shot for him. Sorry mate! Here's a photo of the one I caught instead!

Weird little fish. 

Sadly no more dragonets were caught before the end of the session but our objective for the day had been accomplished so we both left happy enough. I'll be catching up with Gareth again soon and I'll also be keeping a few packets of the dried ragworm in the boot of my car from now on too as I was very impressed with them.

Tight lines, Scott.