The goldsinny wrasse are in!

I spent a full day on Wednesday over on the west coast, fishing at a couple of spots, the first in Gourock and the second in Greenock. A few tompot blenny have been caught at both these marks over the last few months, so I went to see if I could get lucky and catch one myself. Fishing small sections of ragworm close in amongst the rocks and weed, I caught lots of fish on my trusty Rock Rover. Quite predictably though, it was very difficult to get through the local wrasse, the goldsinny in particular being present in very large numbers, although there were also some corkwing in amongst them.

I must have caught over fifty goldsinny wrasse throughout the session.

A few anglers along from me were catching reasonable amounts of mackerel on feathers, so I decided to catch some myself. I set up my second, longer, but still very light rod and clipped on a 15g metal jig in a “rainbow kandy” pattern. Whacking it out, jigging it up through the water column and fishing it on the drop did the trick nicely and my first mackerel of the year were soon caught and released, free to again run the gauntlet of multiple sets of feathers being ripped past them.

The three hooks on the jig were overkill for mackerel. I probably should have taken two off but unbelievably all the fish were cleanly hooked in the mouth and shaken off to minimise handling. After catching half a dozen, I returned my attention to fishing close in to target a tompot blenny again.

The biggest of the mackerel I caught. Great fun on a super light rod. The average Scottish east coast mackerel seems to be bigger than those on the west for some reason. 

Before deciding to drive through for the day, I'd been chatting with a local angler who'd caught a tompot blenny recently, and he pooped down to fish alongside me for an hour in the afternoon. Andrew, who loves light rock fishing, was using an even lighter setup than I was and as we chatted away he caught a few wrasse on Isome. Not long after play time was over and he’d went back to his work, I headed along to the second spot after a short break to have something to eat. The fishing there was pretty slow and to begin with all I caught were a few more goldsinny wrasse. After a while I moved to try a second spot at the same venue and this produced a couple of common dragonet and a dab. The first dragonet was a large male. It was very colourful but was also a bit of an old warrior with a few split fins. It had obviously lived a full life. The second dragonet was a smaller female.

My second large male dragonet this year. Coolest fish in UK waters? Definitely in the running.

The females are smaller and pretty drab by comparison.

After a few hours I ran out of ragworm just as it started to rain, so I called it a day. So, no joy tempting a “Tampot” blenny but I had still added a species to my 2023 tally with the humble mackerel. It was nice to meet and fish with Andrew if only briefly, and I think we’ll meet up again at some point. He wants to catch a butterfish and I have a spot we can try here in Edinburgh. In the meantime I think next week I'll visit Parkview Coarse Fishery again and will have yet another go at catching a Scottish barbel.

Tight lines, Scott.