Power struggle.

The weather was pretty poor during the week, so I opted to stay fairly local and had a session down at the inlet of Torness Power Station. After netting a few small prawns to use as bait, I spent some time fishing them in various rockpools. Dropping them into potential hiding places, I soon caught a few long spined sea scorpions. I still find it amusing watching them suddenly appear to aggressively attack the bait, sometimes completely ignoring it and trying to eat the split shot instead! I then remembered I had a jar of Berkley Gulp! powerbait in my bag that I had been meaning to try out on saltwater mini species for a while.

Usually a favourite with rainbow trout fishery "bait" anglers, I was confident the rockpool inhabitants would love it too.

Putting a small ball of it on my hook, a blenny was first to pop out of a crack to attack it mercilessly, but its incessant nibbling just knocked it all from the hook in no time. This happened a couple of times, until a long spined sea scorpion appeared and greedily swallowed it whole.

Why peck repeatedly when you can greedily gobble in one go?!

After unhooking the fish I flipped it over only to see the bright orange lump of powerbait through the fish's throat membrane!

After switching back to fishing with prawns and exploring a few more rockpools, but without catching any more fish, I headed over to the inlet area's gantry to try fishing from it. Dropping live prawns down close to a submerged concrete wall, I was hoping to maybe catch something unusual, but I didn't get any interest sadly. After a while, I switched to using small pieces of prawn on tiny hooks. Things were slow, but eventually this approach produced a couple of goldsinny wrasse, and my first coalfish of the year.

Not exactly the exciting, rare species I was hoping for, but certain better than catching nothing.

My first coalfish of 2024. I doubt it’ll be my last!

After catching the coalfish, I fished on for a couple of fruitless hours before I decided to call it a day. I really hope the weather settles down soon. The endless wind coming from a variety of directions along with the wet conditions of late really are making fishing less productive I think. I’d say the fishing is at least a month behind where it is usually by this time of year.  On Wednesday, I'm hoping to spend a full day fishing with two of my mates, Nick and Ryan. The weather will no doubt dictate where we end up, but unless it changes, I think we’ll head to the west coast for a session on the Clyde estuary and perhaps also visit a new spot on either Loch Goil or Loch Long.

Tight lines, Scott.