Dodgy dolos and a historic harbour.

I had another couple of short sessions at the weekend targeting topknot, visiting two new spots. A very strong westerly wind posed a problem, so I visited a couple of sheltered venues. On Saturday at Torness Power Station, I spend a few hours in the afternoon fishing down through the concrete dolos blocks, lowering live prawns down into the gaps between them into the water below. This produced a few small ballan wrasse to begin with, but then for some reason the bites dried up. Carefully moving about on the blocks was making me slightly nervous, one false move on those things and you could have a very nasty accident. No fish is worth that and the fact I had stopped catching any fish made my decision to climb back up out off of the huge tetrapods and call it a day a pretty easy one. I’m not sure I’d risk fishing on them again in a hurry. 

One of the small ballan wrasse I caught from down in the blocks.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon down in the Scottish Borders with my girlfriend Lillian. We visited a few places, including the picturesque Cove Harbour, which lies tucked away at the bottom of huge sandstone cliffs. It’s been there for hundreds of years and to this day it’s still a working harbour. At the top of the cliff, next to the beginning of the path that takes you down to the harbour, there is a sculpture that offers a reminder of how dangerous the occupation of a commercial fisherman is. 

"Commemorating the widows and children left by the fishing disaster of 14th October 1881 when 189 fishermen were lost off this coast. Cove lost 11 out of 21 fishermen."

After making our way down the slowly sloping path to the harbour, I spend some time fishing Mini Isome down the inside of its walls, hoping a topknot that was stuck to the wall or sat in a crack would grab my little pink worm imitation as I twitched it around. 

I patiently worked my way along, hoping to catch a weird looking, rocky surface loving flatfish. 

My endeavours had fairly predictable results. So predictable in fact that Lillian successfully guessed which species would be first to take my brightly coloured, peach scented lure. A couple of long spined sea scorpion were first to scoff it, followed by three common blenny. 

Peach flavoured Mini Isome, one of your five a day!

After about an hour, I’d caught a few more small fish but my allotted fishing time was up and permission to extend it wasn’t granted. During the short window of opportunity, I also caught a couple of juvenile cod, but unsurprisingly, no topknot. I’m still confident that eventually my persistence will pay off and each time I visit an old harbour or some likely looking boulders I’ll keep trying. Sooner or later I may get lucky. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Mind the gap.

I've been out a couple of times this week to continue my ongoing search for a topknot. On Tuesday I headed down to Torness Power Station for a few hours at the inlet area. Once again, I opted to drop live prawns down into gaps in the rocks and kelp. I believe prawns make up a large part of the topknot’s diet along with small fish so should in theory give me the best chance to tempt one. It was a very small neap tide, and as a result, the session wasn’t the most action packed. I did catch a few fish and my mate Nick joined me for a few hours. It was good to catch up with him and we discussed our up coming fishing trip to Norway at the end of this month. 

My first fish of the session was this colourful corkwing wrasse. 

There were lots of juvenile cod around too that were happy to munch a prawn. 

From the gaps in the rocks and kelp I also pulled out a few long spined sea scorpion. 

After Nick left, the tide had come in a bit and I headed down to carefully clamber around on the large sea defence boulders. Again, dropping a prawn down into the deepest holes I could find, I patiently sat waiting for bites. 

Any second now.

Surprisingly, my efforts only produced one fish. The bite felt a little odd, and was followed by a slow steady pull down of my rod tip. Was it a topknot?

Nope! It was a very small ballan wrasse and the final fish of a pretty poor session. 

The following day I met up with my mate Ryan, who’s also going to Norway with Nick and I, and we headed west to fish for topknot at spots in Greenock and Gourock. We fished artificials at the first spot, but things were pretty slow so after a couple of hours we headed west to the second mark in Gourock. Once there, we climbed down the rocks and collected a few shellfish to use as bait. Fishing small pieces on small hooks down in deep gaps in the weed covered rocks had fairly predictable results. Lots of goldsinny wrasse! Probably Ryan’s least favourite species to catch. 

Goldsinny wrasse on a dog whelk. 

After a few dozen goldsinny wrasse, I caught a tompot blenny. My fourth in a week, but I always love catching them. 

Big, chunky and colourful with tons of character. The king of blennies in my opinion!

A lot more goldsinny wrasse later, I hooked a fish that felt very small and was delighted when a Connemarra clingfish appeared. Clingfish are such a weird group of fish. 

I’ve caught a few clingfish over the last few years, but every time I catch one I’m reminded just how bizarre they are. For a small fish they have a large mouth. They’re also incredibly slimy.

Their head is very large in proportion to their overall size and the structures on their underside produce amazingly strong suction on any surface, including your hands.  

Basically if they’re not on the move they’re stuck down. The candy striped eyes of the Connemarra clingfish are amazing and they have some colourful red and purple markings too.

Whilst not the species I was hoping for, I was nevertheless on a bit of a high after catching this fish. It’s a reasonably rarely caught species after all and a very cool one at that. Ryan meanwhile, was pretty much catching only goldsinny wrasse. Having seen me catch these other two species, he was keen to catch either a tompot blenny or a Connemarra clingfish himself, so I swapped spots with him. Sadly, he didn’t catch either, and to make matters worse I caught another two tompot blenny from the spot he had been fishing originally! Eventually, the tide began to rise up over the area we were fishing and would soon force us from the rocks we were standing on. Shortly before we left to get some cold drinks and head to a third spot, we both caught a small rock goby each. Thinking I’d already caught one this year, I didn’t take a photo of mine. Checking my records later, I realised it had been my first of 2024. I’m sure I’ll catch another one before the year is out.

Before heading home we stopped off at another spot in Greenock to try to catch a grey gurnard. Casting further out past the rocks and weed onto cleaner ground, we didn’t have any joy locating any of them, so we had a few drops down the side. A few dozen goldsinny wrasse, a few corkwing wrasse and a couple of long spined sea scorpion later, I caught a small rock cook wrasse.

So colourful and rather cute. Look at that minuscule mouth!

We were almost about to leave when Ryan pointed out a massive dense shoal of small herring congregated in a corner to the left of us. I had literally just remarked that it was probably mackerel corralling them in there, when the surface began to erupt violently in a feeding frenzy. I’m not too fussy about targeting mackerel if I’m honest, but on ultralight tackle they offer fantastic sport, so this was too good an opportunity to miss! We both quickly tied on small metal jigs and had some fun catching a few of the frantically feeding fish. 

Little rockets on ultralight tackle.

It was a unexpected and fun way to end a fairly long day’s fishing. It was also Ryan’s first experience of catching mackerel on ultralight tackle and I’m pretty sure it won’t be his last! Yet again no sign of a topknot, but I’m pretty determined to keep trying until I get lucky and catch one, no matter how long it takes!

Tight lines, Scott.

Finding the right hole.

On Sunday, I visited a rocky shore mark in Gourock to spend a few hours targeting topknot. I was given detailed information by my friend and fellow species hunter Andrew on exactly where he caught one himself recently.

Here's one I didn't catch earlier. Such a cool little fish. I particularly love the banding that runs from their eyes. Makes them look like a little bandit!

Andrew, for the time being anyway, fishes mainly ultra light tackle and does so exclusively using lures. Although, he's told me in the future he wants to broaden his horizons into the smelly world of bait fishing, mainly so that he can catch a few different shark species. Years ago, I went through a similar phase, so I decided to spend the session fishing only with artificial baits. Knowing that topknot sit flush on rocky surfaces, I decided to use a 3g cheburashka weight to present these.

A Gulp! Hellgrammite rigged up, ready to get eaten...

...which it soon was by this tompot blenny.

This combination was getting hammered by what I suspect were goldsinny wrasse, but the hook I had on was a little too big for them to get into their mouths, so I decided to try a few unscented lures in an attempt to actually catch my target. Unsurprisingly, these got less attention, but eventually a long spined sea scorpion took a liking to a bright pink straight tail as I twitched it down inside a gap in the boulders.

Greedy little swine!

After a while, a seal arrived and hung around just out in front of me. Obviously expecting the opportunity to steal mackerel from a set of feathers, it sat up in the water staring at me for a short period. Eventually, it realised that my fishing activity didn't involve mackerel and swam off again.

Looking for an easy meal.

Getting back to my topknot hunting, I switched back to Gulp! again and after missing quite a lot of bites I caught a small corkwing wrasse that did a decent job of getting down into the rocks, but with a little gentle pressure and also by giving it some slack line I managed to coax it out.

Yummy! Hellgrammite.

The non-stop little taps kept coming though, tugging my hellgrammite around the bend of my hook, ruining the nice straight presentation, so eventually I gave in and rigged up a small hook on a stinger. Tying this onto my cheburashka weight and threading a Mini Isome up onto it so that the hook was placed near the bottom, soon had a few of the culprits caught.

Peck, peck, pecking away. Got you!

For the last couple of hours, I stuck with this presentation and caught dozens of goldsinny wrasse. If there was a topknot lurking down there, getting through the goldsinny wrasse was going to be a huge problem. I also caught a few long spined sea scorpion and another two tompot blenny as well though, so I guess it's a numbers game. A huge slice of good fortune will be required also, being lucky enough to drop your rig down into the right hole, at the right time, with a topknot in the rig's vicinity when it hits the bottom.

I'd forgotten how good Isome is for close quarter mini species fishing. I've got loads of it too, so will probably make an effort to use it more often going forward.

Another fun session had soon came to an end, even if a topknot had remained elusive. I enjoyed messing about with artificial for a change. Being honest, I'd almost always choose to fish with top quality bait as it will always give you the best chance to catch fish, but as a backup Gulp! and Isome are great to have available. The highlight of the day was catching a few tompot blenny, not a species I've caught that many of up here in Scotland, and now thanks to Andrew sharing his topknot holding spot with me, it seems that I have another place here to go catch them!

Tight lines, Scott.

Searching high and low.

Last Friday afternoon I resumed my search for a topknot, splitting a fairly long session over two venues. This first I visited was the gantry over the inlet area at Torness Power Station. Armed with some live prawns, I fished over a steeply sloping concrete surface, trying to drop my bait in underneath the weed line where I believe there’s a very slim possibility that my target could be located. It was a very windy day, which made bite detection difficult from my elevated position, with the strong gusts picking up my line and pulling my rod around a bit too. Things were pretty slow to begin with, but after a while the wind dropped off ever so slightly and this coincided with some wrasse beginning to bite. 

Even with its relatively small mouth, this goldsinny wrasse made short work of a prawn. 

After catching a few smaller fish, something much bigger grabbed my bait and did its best to get into the kelp. After a short battle, that tested my fish fighting abilities on ultralight tackle as well as my knot tying, a chunky ballan was brought to the surface and my 5.9m extending net handle was put to very good use. 

A bit of a lump! Would have struggled to land this without my net.

At over 40cm, this was the biggest ballan I’ve caught in a while.

I carried on fishing away until my bait was all used up, catching a few more ballan wrasse in the process. A couple of small coalfish and cod also took my prawn, but no funky flatfish sadly. After collecting a few more prawns, I drove south to St Abbs Harbour for the second half of my session, arriving just as the sun was beginning to get fairly low in the sky. 

St Abbs Harbour/Campervan Park as light just begins to fade. 

Waiting for it to get dark, I headed to the mouth and then worked my way around the inside of the largest section of the harbour. Just outside the entrance, I fished with prawns to begin with, but my supply was being depleted rapidly by large shoals of juvenile pollock and coalfish. To conserve my bait for my target species, I switched over to a soft plastic. 

My bait for the evening. Too good to quickly waste on juvenile pollock and coalfish.

Quite a few of the greedy little fish aggressively attacked my HTO Knight Worm. 

Moving around to fish down the walls inside the largest section of the harbour, I switched back to prawns again. Dropping my rig down and keeping it in close to the vertical surfaces, hoping that it would land near a bug-eyed flatfish, they instead were swallowed whole by a few long spined sea scorpion.

You've got something stuck in your teeth mate.

Once it got dark, I put my headtorch on and began searching down the walls and in the exposed rockpolls outside the harbour. Scanning slowly, hoping to suddenly spot the reflection of a topknot's beady eyes, the strong light from my narrow beam was not returned, so I began speculatively dropping a live prawn into likely looking holding places. After a while, I climbed down onto some rocks and started shining my light around. I spotted some small fish, but wasn't too sure what they were. Luckily I had my tango rod in my backpack and put it to good use catching some of them. They turned out to be fairly large three spined stickleback.

Three spined stickleback are anadromous, meaning they can live in saltwater, returning to freshwater to spawn. 

I then spotted a fifteen spined stickleback, a much trickier target, but I love a little micro species challenge so decided to turn my attention to catching it. Lowering my tanago hook baited with a miniscule piece of raw prawn down, I was expecting a frustrating time trying to catch it. In my experience, they are usually quite fussy eaters and take a bit of patience to get them to bite, but much to my delight on this occasion it quickly ate my offering.

God, I love tango hooks! They make the impossible, possible! This is only my third ever fifteen spined stickleback!

Quite pleased with my unexpected stickleback species interlude, I turned my attention back to hunting for a topknot. Exploring different areas over the next couple of hours, things were very slow, and eventually I'd gone a couple of hours without catching anything at all. When I started taking photographers of the large sea slaters that were crawling about all around the top of the harbour wall where I had ended up, I knew it was probably time to call it a night! 

Creatures of the night. I might be joining them again soon.

So my search for a topknot continues. For the foreseeable future, I think they'll remain my main target species to take my lifetime Scottish tally to Ninety-eight. I think some of the rocky venues around Greenock and Gourock may hold more topknots, so I think I may charge my headtorch up and head through there for after dark sessions once the days get a little shorter. I'll also be trying through there during the daytime as well in the meantime!

Tight lines, Scott.

Thorn in my side.

Last weekend, I headed back down to the Solway Firth with my mate Nick. Having caught my first Scottish Dover sole there recently, I wasn’t really expecting to be returning so soon, but the conditions and tides looked good for an evening session. Nick hadn’t caught a ray for a while, and as I’ve discovered, they’re pretty much a guaranteed catch down there. After driving down and digging some lugworm to add to our supply of ragworm, we headed to our chosen spot, got set up, and started fishing. As expected, our first few casts all produced a thornback ray. 

The channel we were fishing was once again full of these spiky flat sharks.

As the session continued, the thornback ray kept coming, but eventually I also started to catch a few lesser spotted dogfish as well, a welcome change!

How exciting?!

Both fishing two rods, we were kept busy well into darkness but eventually, as it always does, the tide got to the point where it was ebbing strongly and weed became a major problem. With a couple of hours of driving for Nick to do and having enjoyed another action packed session, we packed up and headed home. A pity we didn’t catch any other species, but at least we caught plenty of fish!

Tight lines, Scott.

Spelling error correction.

It seems for the last ten years I've been getting the common name of a species of fish wrong. I've been referring to Canthigaster capistrata as the Macronesian sharpnose puffer, and this error has also been subsequently perpetuated by anyone who has asked me to help them identify this particular species.

This is in fact the Macaronesian sharpnose puffer.

Massive thanks to my fellow species hunting friend Donny for noticing this mistake and bringing it to my attention. Just goes to show that you should always double-check what I tell you by doing your own research too! Sometimes, I get things wrong!

Tight lines, Scott.

A little too late to the party?

On Tuesday I headed down to Dumfries & Galloway with my mate Ryan for a couple of days to do some mixed species fishing. Ryan also wanted to try for a shore caught tope, so our first stop was the remaining old military pier in Cairnryan where amongst other species we were pretty confident that we could catch some mackerel to use as bait for our tope fishing session later in the day.  

Several sections of the pier have collapsed, rendering it an unsafe structure. Efforts have been made to keep people off of it. These don’t stop risk taking anglers though. Climbing through large holes in a couple of fences isn’t difficult. 

Enter at your own risk. One of many collapsed areas where the reinforced concrete has failed, and the deck has fallen into the sea below. 

There were lots of small baitfish around the pier, so I started off fishing with a set of tiny sabiki, jigging them vertically. This produced lots of juvenile herring. I was hoping that there might be some sprat present too, but carefully checking each fish, every one I caught was indeed a tiny herring. 

I’ve never caught a sprat. They look similar to juvenile herring but have sharp scutes on their stomach, their scales don’t come off as easily, the origin of the pelvic fins is in line with the origin of the dorsal fin, the eyes are slightly smaller and the lower jaw protrudes less than it does on a juvenile herring. 

As I wound up the juvenile herring, now and then a large sandeel would follow them up to investigate the commotion. Eventually, I caught one of them. It didn’t have an obvious dark spot on the side of its snout, so I was hopeful it might be a Corbin’s sandeel. After examining a few other features of the fish however, I positively identified it as a greater sandeel, also known as a launce. 

Fifty-six dorsal fin rays and a belly skin fold that only reached the first third of the anal fin, where it lost its continuity, made this a greater sandeel. The Corbin’s sandeel has 59-62 dorsal fin rays, and the belly skin fold is continuously unbroken all the way to its tail. 

After catching and closely examining a few dozen juvenile herring, I switched over to a drop shot rig and fished various heavily scented small lures. Lowering these flavourful baits down to the bottom produced lots of black goby. Ryan caught lots of these aggressive little fish too using similar tactics. 

Green Mini Isome with its blueberry taste proved popular. 

As did the less pleasant smelling Gulp! Hellgrammite in natural. 

I was expecting us both to catch a few wrasse as well, but incredibly neither of us caught any! Definitely a surprise as the pier's structure normally holds lots of them. After a few hours, and with our evening tope session in mind, we switched our attention to catching a few mackerel to use as bait. Once they turned up, we quickly caught what we needed and headed off to our tope mark. 

After driving an hour or so east, we made our way down onto our chosen rock mark and got setup. Big baits on long pulley rigs were cast out as far as we could at regular intervals, to hopefully create a strong enough scent trail to draw in any nearby tope. Sadly, after several hours of patiently waiting for a run, neither of us got one. A little disappointed, we drove back west to Stranraer, where we were staying for the night. 

In the morning we decided to forget about catching tope and instead headed south to Portpatrick where we clambered onto the rocks there to try and catch some wrasse on heavily scented artificial baits. 

The rocky shoreline to the north of the harbour village of Portpatrick looked like the perfect wrasse holding habitat. 

Ryan decided to fish with some Gulp! Sandworm, whilst I opted to fish with Mini Isome. I tried a couple of different presentations. 

Very simply, hooked once through the “head”.

When this produced no bites, I switched colour and tried wacky rigging it. 

This corkwing wrasse fell to the wacky rigging style. 

I expected us to catch a few more wrasse after this, but it was a real struggle to get any more bites, so we moved around and tried a few more gullies. 

Ryan clambered down to the edge to fish in close, but his efforts weren’t rewarded. 

Feeling a little frustrated, we decided to head further south to Port Logan where we could dig some small lugworm and then spend a little time fishing for small flatfish in the breaking waves on the beach there.  

Port Logan, a popular beach for relaxing, dog walking and where boat anglers launch their vessels.

Fishing a simple running ledger rig baited with a small blowlug produced a small turbot for me fairly quickly, but after that we didn’t get any more bites. With some fresh bait to use, we decided to head all the way down to the Mull of Galloway to fish from the rocks on its northern side. 

Only my second fish of the day. Not exactly epic fishing, but I love mini turbot, so was happy to catch this one. They’re such perfectly formed versions of their adult counterparts. 

Arriving at the Mull of Galloway, walking down the steep grassy slope, and then carefully climbing down onto the rocks, our decision to dig some lugworms was very quickly paying off. Casting out beyond the heavy kelp bed in front of us, the resident ballan wrasse were hammering them pretty much as soon as our rigs hit the bottom. 

Small blowlug, the perfect size bait for small ballan wrasse. 

Also readily taken by bigger specimens too! This one was a real test of my Rock Rover with a heavy kelp bed directly in front of us, but I managed to bully it through. 

While we had a supply of small juicy worm baits, we caught a few other species too. Ryan caught some pouting and poor cod, whilst strangely I caught only pollock.

This small pollock came up and grabbed my bait as I wound it in. 

Eventually, we ran out of worms however, and switched over to fishing with Gulp! Sandworm. The drop-off in interest was noticeable, as you would probably expect, so Ryan suggested we collect a few limpets and use them as bait. This was a good idea, and we were soon catching a few fish again.

Ryan into one of many limpet caught fish. 

He caught a few cuckoo wrasse. 

Hidden in this lump of weed was a goldsinny wrasse Ryan also caught on a piece of limpet. 

I caught a few more ballan wrasse on limpet slivers as well.  

As the tide rose, and we retreated up the rocks, I spotted a few blenny moving around on the bottom of a newly formed rock pool and dropped a tiny piece of limpet down in their vicinity. They immediately began fighting over it, and one quickly got hooked. 

Another lover of limpet. 

A tough day’s fishing had turned into a fairly action packed session, and before we knew it, it was time to call it a day, climb back up to the car park and make the drive back to Edinburgh. It had been a trip of mixed results, but in the end a quite enjoyable one, even if we spent four fruitless hours targeting tope. The toothy shark will probably have to wait until 2025, when I think we’ll go a bit earlier in the year when there are more tope around to be caught. I’m heading back down the Solway Firth tomorrow evening with my mate Nick. I’ve enjoyed my sessions down there this year, but I’ve not caught a starry smoothhound yet. Armed with some peeler crab, my fingers are crossed that they won’t be as elusive as the late season tope!

Tight lines, Scott.