After hearing several reports in work from anglers throughout August that they'd been catching lesser weever from various beaches in East Lothian whilst targetting flounders I headed down in September for a couple of sessions to try and catch one myself having never caught one from a Scottish venue before. I met up with my mate Nick and over two evenings we caught five between us, ledgering small ragworm sections using ultra light tackle in the wash at very close range.
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| Belhaven Beach was our chosen venue, towards the end of the flooding tide as the day drew to an end. |
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| My first Scottish lesser weever. They might be venomous but they’re also quite a pretty little fish with a nice pearlescent herring bone pattern along their flanks and their distinctive jet black dorsal fin. |
Much to our surprise every single one we caught buried itself right in front of us when we released them. One of them even stuck it’s little venomous dorsal fin up out of the beach’s fine sand.
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| A little black warning sign jutting up. |
Towards the end of the second session I hooked into a nice fish that certainly wasn’t a lesser weever that put up a rather spirited scrap in about six inches of water. I knew it was a flatfish straight away and a nice flounder was soon landed.
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| At 36cm this was great fun on a very light 8' 6" rod rated at just 3-15g. |
The two sessions had been very enjoyable and the question of the possibility of catching one hundred species of fish in Scottish waters came up at the end of the second as we walked back up the beach to the car. At the time I wasn’t even sure how many I’d caught over the years and I’ll come back to this in a future blog post but a few days later I'd have opportunty to catch a new species and in Scottish waters too so whatever my tally sat at I was hopeful I’d be another one closer to a hundred.
Tight lines, Scott.
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