So glad I went fishing.

Some days you go fishing when the conditions are less than ideal. Yesterday was one of those days. Overcast, rain forecast, and an onshore wind. Not great and a continuation of the poor summer we’ve had this year. Despite this weather, I drove down to St Abbs to use up some ragworm I had left over from my sessions at Newhaven Harbour the two previous days. As I expected, the sea was quite rough, so I focused my efforts initially inside the harbour, dropping fairly generous sections of ragworm down tight against the inside of its walls. 

Outside the harbour, the slowly undulating sea was breaking violently over the rocks.

This approach proved too tempting for the long spined sea scorpion hiding out on the vertical surfaces. Moving along and trying different spots, I soon caught about a dozen of the aggressive little ambush predators. One of them was a bit of an old warrior. It looked pretty beat up, and its spines were curled round at the tips. I’ve never seen one like that before.

This long spined sea scorpion had ragged, misshapen fins and its spines were blunt. Its right one noticeably curled right round at the tip.

Having covered a good portion of the harbour’s walls, I moved around to the harbour’s mouth where I was hoping to catch a flounder, but didn’t have any joy. The sandy area where they normally hang out was covered by loose sea weed that had been washed in by the swell. Turning my attention to the fringes of the kelp beds at the right hand side of the harbour’s entrance, I caught about half a dozen corkwing wrasse. All males, one of them had some very colourful markings.

The vivid colours on this corkwing wrasse were lovely, particularly the blues and greens on its fins.

At this point, I noticed that the weed covering the sandy area had been partially washed away from it, so I had a few more casts onto it to see if any flounder were lurking there. After a working my rig slowly across the sand back towards me a few times, a nice coalfish took my ragworm as I recast, and my rig dropped through the water column.

A nice chunky coalfish that put a bit of a bend into my ultra light rod as it tried to get into the kelp.

Things went quiet for a while and as the tide picked up a fair amount of suspended weed appeared, so I took the decision to head up the A1 to continue fishing at the inlet area of Torness Power Station, a spot I knew would afford some shelter from the northerly wind and accompanying swell. Walking back up the hill to where I had parked the car, I noticed a sticker on a rubbish bin and, curious about what it said, stopped to read it to find out.

Having recently taken the decision to quit my own job, I’m not working at the moment. I can relate to some aspects of the message conveyed in this sticker. I’m taking some time off to carefully consider what I want to do for a living going forward.

Arriving at my chosen spot, that produced lots of butterfish and leopard spotted goby during a visit last week, I soon caught a few tiny cod and a couple of small corkwing wrasse. The water was a little coloured up however, bites came intermittently, and I was struggling to connect with some of them. When I finally hooked another fish, it was a fairly large leopard spotted goby. I had my little photo tank with me and popped the fish into it for a photo.

All the details of the leopard spotted goby shown in their full glory.  The mini species tank really is a great thing for examining a fish's features fully!

After catching a few tiny coalfish and cod, the bites dried up almost completely. Persevering through a fairly long period with nothing showing any interest in my ragworm, I then had a very subtle knock that I slowly lifted into. Feeling the weight of a fish that wasn’t fighting particularly hard, I slowly wound it up in case it was something odd. When it appeared on the surface I initially thought it was a butterfish due to its brown and pink colouration, but as I lifted it up, and it got closer, I realised that it was in fact a Yarrell’s blenny!

One of my favourite UK blenny species! Its coolest features were laying limply on its forehead though. Time to put my photo tank to use again!

The fish just fit inside, but its impressive bushy eyebrows were on display in all their funky glory!

Many years ago, my mate Nick caught a Yarrell's blenny, not too far from where I caught this one, so I always hoped there was a potential resident population. I have over the years tried numerous times to catch one there myself and had kind of given up, so I was over the moon to finally get one at this venue. Shortly afterwards, I used up the last of my ragworm and called an end to a most enjoyable day’s fishing, during which I had been rewarded with some odd, colourful and interesting species. The Yarrell’s blenny in particular being a real highlight. They’re such a strange looking fish!

Being honest, I was pretty close to not going fishing at all due to the poor conditions. It just goes to show that sometimes you never know how a fishing trip will turn out. Even when the weather is poor, the fishing might not be!

Tight lines, Scott.