The morning after driving down south I was up early and drove down to Weymouth Marina, parked the car and started organizing my tackle. After meeting up with Jack Perks, the underwater photographer who had organized the boat trip and asked me to take part, as well as some of the other six anglers who Jack had also invited along, I popped around to the Weymouth Angling Centre to get some ragworm. Once back at the boat, we all loaded our gear onboard. We left the pontoon at 07:00, and it didn’t take us long to get to the breakwaters of Portland Harbour, where we'd spend a few hours to begin with.
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| One of Portland Harbour’s massive breakwaters covered in old military positions. We fished a few different spots around them to start with. |
By the time we'd drifted over a couple of different marks, a few pout and pollock had been caught, as well as all six species of wrasse found in UK waters. Between the eight of us we'd caught Baillon’s, ballan, corkwing, cuckoo, goldsinny and rock cook wrasse! I also managed to catch my first tompot blenny and black seabream of the year.
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| Not the blenny I was most looking forward to possibly catching, but very welcome nonetheless! |
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| A few small black seabream interrupted the steady stream of wrasse. I’d really love to catch one of these in Scottish waters. Maybe something I'll attempt next year! |
Whilst drifting over the third mark a few black goby were coming up and then the first butterfly blenny of the trip was caught. Quite fitting perhaps that it was caught by Jack, as the trip was after all his idea! I’ll be honest and admit I was pretty jealous, but at the same time I was happy for him, and it was also cool to see one in the flesh. That being said, whilst I was glad someone had caught one, as it confirmed their presence, that didn’t necessarily mean I would catch one too! So, with a sense of renewed optimism, I focused on my fishing, trying to feel any bites as my small piece of ragworm slowly trundled along the bottom. About an hour or so after Jack caught his butterfly blenny, a second one appeared from the depths and was hastily brought onboard the boat. Caught by yours truly! I was absolutely delighted to say the least! My first new UK saltwater species in a while, and a very cool one into the bargain. Blenny do occasionally bite you when being handled, and I've been chomped more than a few times over the years, but even I was slightly surprised by how super aggressive the butterfly blenny was, continually biting my fingers as I tried to take some photos of the small funky fish.
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| My first ever butterfly blenny! The rather vicious little swine attacked my fingers repeatedly! |
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| I popped it into a bucket of fresh seawater to calm down... |
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| ...before lifting it out again for a trophy shot! |
We carried on drifting over the butterfly blenny mark for a little bit longer so that the other anglers could continue trying to catch one, and before too long a third was indeed caught. After a while though we decided to turn our attention to targeting red band fish and skipper Colin soon had us in position on a new mark and gave the OK for us to drop our rigs down. Straight away, two of the guys caught one each. These were followed by a couple more shortly afterwards. I didn’t catch one myself but as I’d caught one before I wasn’t too disappointed. I caught my first red band fish almost ten years ago! After a while, no more had been caught, so we then decided to anchor up at a different spot further offshore.
Colin took us to a spot that produces a lot of rays and other shark species, so some of the guys who had brought heavier tackle aboard dropped bigger baits to try for those. I decided to continue fishing with my Rock Rover and small baits, and this produced a few black seabream. One of the other anglers caught a striped red mullet, a few dogfish were boated and then Jack caught a small tope. After a while, my rod got pulled down by something a little bit bigger that turned out to be a small starry smoothhound! Great fun on my Rock Rover I must say, but more importantly, another addition to this year's species hunt tally.
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| Happy days. A bonus starry smoothhound on ultra light tackle! |
As the tide strength increased, holding the bottom became problematic for those of us fishing with lighter tackle, so we decided to head back to the butterfly blenny mark to have another go for them. The drifts were a lot faster though, and this made staying in contact with the bottom and detecting bites difficult. I let out line as we drifted to try and keep my bait stationary for short periods, to allow any small fish more of an opportunity to grab my bait. This method worked quite well and after catching a few black goby I caught my second, and what would turn out to be the last, butterfly blenny of the day!
We finished up the day drifting over muddy banks targeting red band fish again, and just as had happened the first time we drifted over them, a few red band fish were caught almost straight away. The action slowed up after that, so some of the guys ditched their sabiki rigs and tried fishing lures for bass. They didn't catch any spiky silver fish but were rewarded instead with some other species including a nice tub gurnard on a Fiiish Black Minnow and a red band fish on a Major Craft Jigpara metal.
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| Ben Bassett's jig caught red band fish. What an awesome capture! |
It was soon time to head back in and a great day out had come to an end. Between the eight of us we'd managed to catch twenty one species. A pretty good effort all things considered. Some of the guys had very little experience fishing in saltwater and others had fished exclusively with artificial baits and lures all day as well.
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| Jack Perks (Far Right) and his motley crew of species hunters. |
I really enjoyed the day's fishing, and obviously catching the two butterfly blenny was a real highlight for me. In fact, it'll definitely be one of the highlights of my species hunting escapades this year! It was also great to meet Jack in person for the first time, we've been exchanging emails and WhatsApp messages about fish for years! It was a pleasure to meet and fish with everybody else too and see everyone onboard catching a wide variety of fish. If the opportunity to do a similar trip comes up again in the future, I'd sign up for it in a heart beat! I might even organize one myself next year!
Tight lines, Scott.
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