I’d not seen my mate Ryan for quite a while, mainly due to poor weather conditions repeatedly ruining our plans, so at the beginning of July, when the latest heatwave began, we headed down to St Abbs Harbour to wet a line together. Still not feeling great, I had no expectations for the fishing, and really just wanted to catch up with my mate and enjoy the nice weather. Any fish caught would be a bonus really. Ryan was keen to catch a sand goby, so we fished tiny pieces of ragworm on the bottom over a sandy area I’d caught them from in the past. Sadly, this didn’t produce any, but we did catch a lot of small flounder instead.
Small but perfectly formed. My first flounder of the year. |
Heading around to the mouth of the harbour, we caught a few small coalfish and pollock. Dropping a live prawn down close in amongst the kelp straight down the harbour wall, I caught a chunky corkwing wrasse.
Wrasse don’t mess about when a live prawn appears in their vicinity! |
Next up, we headed around to fish straight down the wall of the harbour’s large outer section. This produced several long spined sea scorpions, a few leopard spotted goby, a butterfish, a coalfish and several ballan wrasse.
I had three chunky ballan wrasse in fairly quick succession. Live prawn presented close to the bottom doing the business again. |
To finish the session, we headed out onto the wall connecting the harbour to some of the rocks outside of it. I fished into an area I knew had produced a topknot in the past. After catching a couple of wrasse and a long spined sea scorpion on live prawn, I rigged up another, dropping my rig again, I felt a fish take my bait almost straight away. Lifting into it, it felt like my lead had got stuck, but I could also occasionally feel a small fish on my line too, occasionally shaking its head. After a while, trying to free my rig from the bottom, I was about to pull for a break when suddenly it came free. Winding up, it wasn’t fighting too much and felt a little odd. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the unmistakable shape of a small topknot came into view. I've seen a few people lose topknot lifting them out of the water, but without thinking, I quickly swung it up the wall and into my waiting net. Luckily it was well hooked! I’ve been after one of these rarely caught rock dwelling flatfish from a Scottish venue for quite some time, visiting three particular venues dozens of times over the last couple of years, so I was over the moon to finally get one!
I caught one over a decade ago on the Channel Island of Jersey, but this was my first ever Scottish topknot. |
What a cool fish! I love the way their markings make them look like a little masked bandit! |
What a great way to end what had been a very enjoyable session. It was great to catch up with Ryan again as well. Since we started fishing together, he’s been by my side as I’ve caught quite a few species in Scotland for the first time. Often wearing a very faded baseball cap, celebrating Hibernian’s 2016 Scottish Cup win. “Persevered” is embroidered on it, a reference to the 114 years since they last won the trophy, way back in 1902! I had certainly persevered too with my Scottish topknot hunt! I may not have been feeling great, but catching my one hundred and first Scottish species certainly gave me a much needed lift!
Tight lines, Scott.
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