Something to look forward to.

I had a short session on Sunday evening with my mate Ryan, scratching about at Newhaven Harbour. Rockling were the target species again, but for the majority of the night the resident whiting had other ideas. They were straight onto our black lug baits as soon as they hit the bottom, sometimes before they got there!

We caught plenty of small whiting, but it wasn't exactly exciting.

There was very little wind, but it was quite cold, and it rained lightly constantly, making things a little unpleasant. Casting our rigs in towards slightly rougher ground, I caught something that I knew wasn't a whiting as I wound it in. It turned out to be a beaten up long spined sea scorpion that was a little bit tatty around the edges and had a damaged tail.

A bit of an old warrior. Life is tough sometimes.

Over low tide, things went very quiet, and we didn't get many bites until it began to flood. Not long before we called it a night, Ryan struck into a decent bite and pulled in a rockling. Having caught a shore rockling during our last after dark session down in the Scottish Borders, he was hoping it was a five bearded rockling, but was disappointed when he lifted it up over the railings and realised it was a shore rockling.

Ryan's shore rockling was a nice deep reddish brown colour.

After catching a few more whiting, it was getting quite late, so we decided to call it a night after having a few "last casts". Rockling are probably my favourite target species at this time of year, but I've got to be honest, I'm not really a massive fan of venturing out at this time of year. Most of the time the conditions are, at best, pretty miserable, and at worst, downright rotten. Strong easterly winds the remainder of this week, mean I probably won't get out targeting rockling. Perfect winter cod conditions, but that's just not my thing! Luckily, I'll be getting a break from the cold Scottish winter next month when Ryan and I head down to Tenerife with our mate Nick. Should hopefully be a bit warmer down there, and whiting definitely won't be a problem! Not sure that I'll catch any rockling either mind you!

Tight lines, Scott.