My patience is now wearing a little thin.

Topknot. My new nemesis. I've put in a serious amount of time over the last few months trying to catch one. Slightly annoyingly, they keep popping up on my Instagram feed too, caught by anglers on the south coast of England.  Earlier this week, I had yet another couple of sessions after dark, dropping live prawns down the walls and into cracks in and around St Abbs Harbour trying to catch a highly elusive, rock dwelling flatfish. On the first trip I was joined by my mate Ryan. It was nice to have some company, creeping around in the dark on your own can be a little lonely, especially when the fishing is slow, which it was during both trips! We both caught a few fish, although Ryan trounced me on the species front, catching four I didn't in the shape of a ballan wrasse, a flounder, a shore rockling and a leopard spotted goby. 

Scanning the bottom with our headtorches, we saw this darkly coloured flounder moving around over sand, but it swam over some weed, disappearing. Ryan cast his rig over the area a few times and the fish eventually took his ragworm section.

Ryan pulled this shore rockling out from the base of a wall inside the harbour. Normally associated with mixed to rough ground in the open sea, it must have been inside the harbour under the cover of darkness to scavenge.

Returning a couple of nights later on my own, I again failed to catch my intended target and after several hours trying, I decided to try to catch a leopard spotted goby. Ryan's the session before was the first one I'd seen caught from the venue, and I wanted to replicate the feat! Shining my headtorch straight down the harbour wall close to where Ryan had caught his, I couldn't believe my luck when I saw one sitting motionless on a concrete shelf. Dropping a small chunk of prawn down, the fish ignored it to begin with, but after a brief pause I gave my bait a twitch and watched the goby spring to life and my bait quickly vanished.

It was the same size as Ryan's fish. I compared our photos a few days later out of curiosity. It was in fact the exact same fish!

By the end of a pretty tough evening, I was feeling just ever so slightly frustrated at my repeated failures on the topknot front. Keen to go fishing as the weather was glorious, the other day I opted to spend a few hours targetting mullet at the outflow of Torness Power Station. In particular, I wanted to catch a golden grey mullet, as I hadn't caught one yet this year. Donning my polarized sunglasses to eliminate the surface glare, below the surface I couldn't see any mullet swimming about, but decided to have a go anyway. Tearing up some bread into small pieces and throwing it in to try and draw in some mullet, eventually I spotted a few small fish swimming up the current into a pocket of slack water and taking the free offerings. Fishing a very small piece of flake on a #16 hook and using a few split shot to get my bait down, I felt the odd nibble and eventually caught a couple of fish in quick succession.

The first fish I caught was this thick lipped mullet. Easily identifiable from the rows of papillae on the lower section of its thick upper lip.

The second mullet was the one I was hoping to catch, a golden grey mullet. With a much thinner upper lip and a bright, well defined golden spot on its gill plate it was very straightforward to identify.

About thirty minutes later, I hooked a third mullet. It was small and having already added a golden grey mullet to my 2024 species tally, I didn't even bother using my net to land it. Swinging it up to hand however, it looked a little odd. Curious, I popped it into a bucket of water, so I could carry out further examination and take some photos.

The fish in question. It had a thin upper lip, but only a very faint golden marking on its gill plate. It was not as slender as a golden grey mullet either, being much heavier in the body. Furthermore, it also had a black spot at the base of its pectoral fin and an orange/gold shade to parts of the iris, both are features of a thin lipped mullet!

The shape of its head didn't look right for a golden grey either. The snout was stubbier and flatter across the top. The maxillary bone at the corner of the mouth was also larger than that of a golden grey mullet. In the golden grey mullet, this structure is very small.

Had I caught my first Scottish thin lipped mullet? In the back of my mind, I seemed to recall a simple test that I had read about that could be used to positively identify UK mullet species. Doing a quick Google search on my phone, I found details of the method in question. Folding the pectoral fin forward, it will not reach the posterior edge of the eye or at most will just reach the posterior edge of the eye on a thin lipped mullet. On a golden grey mullet, the pectoral fin when folded forward will reach well past the posterior edge of the eye, sometimes as far as the centre of the eye.

The pectoral fin folded forward didn't reach the eye! Along with the other features, did this mean my fish was indeed a thin lipped mullet?! It would be a new Scottish species for me if it was!

Returning home, I consulted the numerous species identification books that I own. Some, including the excellent "The Fishes of The British Isles & N.W. Europe" by Alwyne Wheeler, which has detailed dichotomous keys that can be used to positively identify fish within a known group to species level, also specified the pectoral "fin test" as the means of distinguishing between the golden grey mullet and the thin lipped mullet. At this point, I sent my pictures to a few fellow species hunting anglers and also to the National Mullet Club, asking for their opinions on the identity of my fish. The consensus was that I have indeed caught a thin lipped mullet! 

Curious to carry out the pectoral fin test on a golden grey mullet, I returned the other day to try and catch one. The session turned out to be quite a frustrating one. The wind had changed direction and a swell was running directly up the outflow. It didn't look promising, but I had a go anyway, this time fishing a two hook presentation to increase my chances. Feeding small pieces of bread, I eventually spotted one or two fish, so I persevered. After about three hours, this paid off when I finally hooked a few fish, three taking my hook bait in a fairly short period. All three somehow managed to eject my hook though, after being on for a brief period. They felt like bigger fish, too big to be golden grey mullet I felt, so I wasn't too annoyed. Another couple of hours later, I’d had no more action, and I was about to admit defeat and head off when I hooked a fourth, smaller fish. This time the fish was well hooked, and I had it in the net fairly quickly. It was the golden grey mullet I was after.

Time to put the pectoral fin test to the test!

As predicted! The pectoral fin when folded forward reached the centre of the golden grey mullet's eye.

Personally, I'm now extremely confident that I have indeed caught a thin lipped mullet, a quite unexpected and very welcome bonus catch that I'm happy to add to my lifetime Scottish species tally, taking it to ninety eight. With only two species now required to reach my goal of one hundred, and as the colder months approach, I don't want to take my foot off the gas just yet, but conditions will play a huge part in the fishing I can do, and the species I can target. Regardless of how my fishing plans develop over the coming months, I really need a break from topknot hunting! I’ve taken the opportunity to get just that with an impromptu, very last minute, week long trip to Malta with my mate Gordon this Saturday, and there's zero chance of catching one there!

Tight lines, Scott.