Fishing. Like a boss.

On Monday I headed west to the old crusher pier situated to the south of Creetown with my mate Ian. He’s an accomplished shore angler who fishes matches regularly. He also happens to be my boss, being the retail manager of the Edinburgh Angling Centre, where I work. Our main target species for the trip was starry smoothhound, a species I've never caught from the shore before, but I was also hopeful that I’d get a common eel too. Ian assured me I’d probably get one of those fairly quickly and he was right! A three hook flapper baited with small crab baits soon did the trick. 

I got a small common eel on my third cast!

Rig wrecking slippery swines. I’m not a fan if I’m honest.

I then turned my attention to fishing a big crab bait on a pulley rig at distance for starry smoothhound. Ian also cast out a pulley rig to target them as well, but he decided to also fish a three hook flapper on a second rod closer in with much smaller baits, to try and catch flounder, possibly bass and no doubt more eels.

Ian brought some top quality fresh peeler crab for us to use.

After watching our rod tips for thirty minutes or so we wound in to change our baits. There was a fair amount of weed in the water, but I got my rig in fairly quickly, Ian’s rig however had picked up a substantial amount of it, and he struggled to get it in. Eventually, once he'd dragged a huge mass of weed in to the side of the pier, he lifted it up by hand. As soon as he began removing the weed however he got a bit of a shock in the shape of a bass!

This silver surprise was hidden under a large amount of weed!

Over the next few hours, Ian caught a few flounder and eel on his second rod and spent a fair amount of time removing weed from his rig! I stuck with fishing just the one rod and sat watching it diligently, waiting for something bigger to hopefully take my pungent bait.

Ian winds in more weed. Occasionally there would be a flounder or an eel too!

A horrible messy tangle of eel and weed.

Just after the tide turned and began to ebb, Ian got a cracking bite on his big bait rod and wound in the first starry smoothhound of the trip. He had predicted their arrival at this stage of the tide and with some moving through the area I was hopeful I'd get one too before too long.

Ian showing me who's boss!

About an hour later, Ian caught his second starry smoothound of the session. We fished on for another two hours or so, but as the tidal flow increased it became very difficult to hold the bottom and I admitted defeat, probably a while after I should have. Ian had caught a lot of fish, species hunting like a boss too, catching all four that the mark usually produces. The solitary common eel I'd caught at the start of our session meant it wasn't a complete blank for me, and I'd added another species to this year's tally so that was something positive at least. On the way back we discussed the fact that spent more time driving than we spent fishing. Crazy really, but if I’d have caught a starry smoothhound I guess I wouldn’t have minded! If I return to the area I think I’d probably stay overnight and have a couple of sessions at the old crusher pier and perhaps head round to the Isle of Whithorn to fish over low water to try and catch a tompot blenny. 

Tight lines, Scott.