Yesterday evening, I headed down the A1 with my mate Ryan, to fish the inlet area at Torness Power Station for a few hours. It can be a sheltered spot to fish when an Easterly wind is blowing. Armed with some ragworm, we fished small pieces, on small hooks, using ultra light tackle. Plenty of bites from the start of the session saw us catching a lot of juvenile fish. Poor cod, cod, coalfish and pollock that were all fighting over the bait as soon as it reached the bottom. These were followed by a small ballan wrasse for Ryan and then we both caught a few of my least favourite fish of 2024, the goldsinny wrasse!
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| Not another goldsinny wrasse! Thankfully, next Sunday, I'll hopefully be saying the same thing about Mediterranean rainbow wrasse when I'm fishing on Malta! No chance of any goldsinny wrasse there! |
After an hour, light started to fade and I recieved a WhatsApp message asking my opinion on the identity of a clingfish. Putting my rod under my arm whilst I had a look at the photos I’d been sent and replied, I popped my phone back into my pocket and turned my attention back to my own fishing. Rod in hand again, my line had went a little slack and winding that up I felt another small fish on the end. Winding it up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a butterfish come to the surface.
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| Not another butterfish! My twelfth of 2024! I never thought catching so many in a year would be possible! |
We both caught a few more juvenile cod and also a few leopard spotted goby as it continued to get dark. As well as these fish we pulled up a few velvet swimmer crabs too that grabbed our ragworm and stubbornly refused to let go of it until they reached the surface, or were lifted up to have it coaxed from their claws. Once our headtorches were required I also pulled up a lobster. Instantly recognised by the thrashing of its tail. Following that the bites slowed right down over the area we’d been fishing over, so we moved a short distance and began fishing into a rougher patch on the bottom, made up of boulders covered in kelp. Ryan caught a couple of small cod and then pulled out a small shore rockling that had a lovely reddish brown colouration.
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| Not another shore rockling! Ryan's second consecutive Sunday evening session shore rockling. I was jealous and wanted to catch one myself! |
Determined to get a shore rockling too, I carried on fishing away and it didn’t take too long before I felt a couple of gentle tugs. Allowing the bite to develop, a few more pulls were followed by my rod being pulled down much harder. Lifting into a fish, it put up a spirited little fight but was soon wound up to the surface and quickly hoisted up onto the platform we were fishing from.
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| Yes! A shore rockling! My first of 2024. A bit bigger than Ryan’s, it was, in my opinion anyway, a much less attractive colour than his and also had extensive mottling all across its body. |
Not many sea anglers enjoy catching shore rockling, but Ryan and I sure do. They’re great fun on ultra light tackle too when you can feel them taking your bait! After a period of no further fish showing an interest in our ragworm sections, we called it a night, and headed back to Edinburgh. It had been an enjoyable short session. I’ve got some ragworm left, so I may pop out locally to use it up before I fly out to Malta on Saturday. My mate Chris has also told me where I can catch some lovely looking rudd from a small drainage pond about an hour outside Edinburgh, so Ryan and I might go and try to do just that later this week too.
Tight lines, Scott.
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