I'm saury.

I received a WhatsApp message from my mate Nick the other day. He'd found what he thought was a garfish, washed up and barely alive, on an East Lothian beach whilst he was out walking his dog. Interesting, I thought, but zooming in for a closer look at the fish, I realised it wasn't a garfish. It wasn't long enough, and the shape of its head and length and thickness of its beak were not right. It also had rows of pronounced finlets behind its dorsal and anal fins. So what was it then?

"That's not a garfish!" I replied, adding that I thought it might be a needlefish of some description.

Turns out I was correct. After a bit of discussion in work and some Googling, we established that the mystery fish was in fact an Atlantic saury, a member of the needlefish family. Most UK sea anglers will probably be familiar with the Pacific saury, it's sold here frozen as "bluey" and is used as a very oily fish bait. The Atlantic saury is likely much less well known. I'd never heard of it and learning about it was quite interesting. I discovered that it also goes by another name in the UK, the skipper. No doubt because, like the garfish, they can "skip" along the surface of the water to evade predators or move out of the path of approaching boats. With another quick Google search I discovered there is a UK record for this species, standing since 1994 when a specimen of 148 grams was caught from Chemical Beach in Seaham, County Durham.

What a cool find! I'm wondering if there are more around? I might have to do a bit of chumming and try float fishing tiny slivers of mackerel belly under a float on the east coast this summer. Nick's find was a reminder that you never know what species you might potentially catch around our coastline!

Tight lines, Scott.

No gold but happy with silver.

I popped down the coast on Sunday evening for a few hours to try and add to my Scottish saltwater species tally. First I visited Gullane Bents to try for lesser weever and turbot. Armed with a set of sabiki and a small tub full of little chunks of bluey I spent a couple of hours wandering along the beach as the tide started to flood. My baited sabiki attracted no interest whatsoever so I headed further down the coast to Torness Power Station outflow to try for golden grey mullet. My groundbait soon attracted a small shoal of fish and freelining a tiny piece of bluey on a #18 hook saw me land my first ever Scottish sand smelt. 

Sand smelt are easily identifiable. They have a dark green back and a very shiny silver "thread" that runs inside the length of their almost translucent flank. Good eating too when fried whole in a light batter I'm told but you'd need to catch quite a few to make a meal of them.

I caught three more before setting up a bolo float to target golden grey mullet. Adding more groundbait eventually saw some mullet arrive but judging by the size of the disturbances on the surface as they attacked larger pieces of floating bread I think they were thick lipped grey mullet. None of them were tempted by my hookbait and after an hour or so with no sign of any golden grey mullet and my groundbait all used up I called it a night. At least one more trip to Torness Power Station outflow on the cards then. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Not a big fan?

At the weekend I made a comment on an online messageboard about not really being a big fan of winter cod fishing. My mate Ad, who lives in Aberdeen and does a lot of it, read this, questioned my manliness and invited me up to the North East for an evening clambering up and down its rugged coastline in the dark to target them. I couldn't refuse and drove up to meet Ad on Tuesday afternoon. Having checked the forecast before I left I knew the sea might be a bit rough but due to the direction the wind was forecast to be blowing from I didn't think it would be too bad. When I was almost there and the A90 approached the coast however I could sea that it was pretty rough. When I met Ad we quickly checked out a mark nearby to see how bad it was but it was just to dangerous to fish really.

Bit of a swell running and breaking over the rocks. Ad insisted on going down just to double check.

Undeterred, we headed north and found a slightly more sheltered bay although there was still a fair swell running. Ignoring the notice at the top of the cliffs we carefully made our way down to a comfortable grassy ledge high above the turbulent water below.

The North East coastline is a cod angling Mecca but fishing there is not without its risks. Great care is required even accessing marks.

Setting up a rod each with a pulley rig incorporating a rotten bottom link we had a few casts with black lug, squid and bluey cocktails being the baits of choice. After an hour or so with no interest shown we decided to head to another mark though. By the time we got there it was dark so on went the headlights. The wind had started to die down a bit and the large peeble beach we made our way down to offered us a bit of shelter too. The rain came on for a while and as the ebbing tide started to reveal some rocky skeers off to our left we stared getting a few bites. These were all missed until I connecting with a couple of them and landed two nice cod of about 2lb that I returned to get bigger.

The cavernous mouth of an eating machine.

As the tide turned the bites dried up so we decided to have a break and grabbed a tasty portion of chips before heading to try one final mark. Once there we started fishing from some rocks but as the tide flooded we were forced onto another large peeble beach nearby by waves breaking in front of us sending a lot of spray up almost soaking us a couple of times before we got the hint. There was not much action from the beach until Ad's rod tip violently came to life not long before we were going to call it a night and a cod of about 3lb was soon landed before we packed up.

A nice fish to end the session with for Ad.

It had been a fairly mild night temperature wise, we managed to find some shelter and a hat trick of cod. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was good to catch up with Ad. It's a wonderful stretch of coastline and I can see that whilst fishing it can be dangerous it can also rewarding. Ad, like many other winter cod devotees, is chasing a double figure cod from the North East shoreline and has come pretty close. Big fish are what attracts most anglers who focus their efforts solely on cod over the winter, driving them to fish in tough conditions on dangerous marks and it takes a special type of angler to do it I think. I'm happy to admit that I'm just not one of them. I'll stick to the odd occasional winter cod session in good company when the opportunity arises.

Tight lines, Scott.

Somewhere old, somewhere new, something flat and something blue.

On Monday I still hadn't decided where I was going to be fishing the following day when I got a text from my mate Nick about a spot where he fancied fishing on Gullane Bents. It is a rather nice stretch of coast I've walked along before and I too liked the look of it as a potential fishing mark so we hastily arranged to meet up there on Tuesday evening to see what we could catch. With the whole day free however I went down to the more familiar and altogether less scenic inlet area of Torness Power Station in the afternoon to have a go for a Yarrell's blenny at a spot Nick caught one from a couple of years ago. I only stayed for a couple of hours, no fish were biting and the only things I caught were three lobsters who took a liking to my small chunks of bluey and got hooked on my #8 wormer hooks.

I've hooked one before but didn't land it so this was a first for me. I love the deep blue colour of their shells.

The third lobster was bigger than the first two and was big enough to keep but was completely clawless so feeling sorry for it and thinking that there wouldn't be much eating in it without the claws I tossed it back. Despite it's obvious handicap it was clearly quite a hardy, ravenous creature and was so fond of my oily fish baits that it fell foul of my hooks again shortly afterwards, being caught a second time. A quite bizarre start to my day's fishing and there can't be many anglers who have caught four lobsters in a row! Still rather bemused I headed off to Gullane Bents hoping to find some fish instead of crustaceans.

After a short drive and making a fairly long walk along the top of the dunes I was down on some exposed rocks at the tip of a peninsula with bays to either side of it. I set up a rod and cast out a plain lead to find that the water wasn't very deep and the bottom was mixed ground but not too snaggy. At this point I gave Nick a ring to let him know exactly where I was only for him to tell me that something had come up and he would no longer be able to come down. Slightly disappointed to not have some company arriving later on I promised to let him know how I fared and carried on getting ready for the session. Clipping on a three hook flapper I tied a rotten bottom between it and my lead to prevent rig losses should it find a snag. I then baited each #1/0 circle hook with a one inch section of black lug sausage and tipped it off with a strip of squid. Casting out not too far I sat down to prep a few more black lug sausages. I had just finished them and had started prepping some more squid strips when my rod tip rattled a few times. Picking it up and reeling in I felt a small fish on the end and the white underside of a flatfish soon appeared on the surface.

My first googly eyed dab of the year.

The bug eyes are always the first thing I notice but a semi circular curve in the dab's lateral line is also a key distinguishing feature.

Encouraged by this positive start I decided to fish my second rod. Unsure about what larger species would come into such relatively shallow water I clipped on a pulley rig to hopefully find out. Fishing a bigger bait I launched it out as far as I could to try and find some slightly deeper water. As the tide receded a few large weed covered boulders were exposed directly in front of me that would make retrieving gear and fish troublesome so I decided to move around the rocks a bit to where there was a gap. Before long the sun started to dip towards the horizon and low water wasn't far away either. 

The sun began to set over Fife. Time for the headtorch to come out of my bag.

As always on the east coast I was expecting darkness to coincide with coalfish becoming active if there were any around. Things went quiet though for a little while until my close range flapper rig rod tip twitched a few times signalling the interest of a fish. Thinking it was probably another dab I let the bite develop to give the fish time to take the hook into its mouth. When my rod tip moved for the third time I lifted the rod and slowly wound in to find another flatfish had taken one of my baits. 

A rather chunky flounder.

By this point I had used up all of my black lug so switched to bluey strips tipped with squid on my flapper rig. A few more flounders were landed over the next couple of hours with one even managing to get a fairly large bluey bait that I put out in my long range rod into its greedy mouth. The #5/0 circle hook still did its job though, placing itself nicely in the scissors of the flatfish's jaws. Quite pleased with a successful first visit to a new spot I packed up at about 22:30, headed back to the car and drove up the road. Obviously it is a good flatfish mark but I'm keen to return with Nick in the not to distant future to try and find out what other species it holds.

Tight lines, Scott.