Starting again from scratch.

Another year has begun, and for us species hunters, it's time to reset our annual species tallies. Last year, I caught one hundred and ninety one different species of fish, including forty three new ones. Not too shabby, all things considered! On Saturday evening, I headed back down to Cove Harbour with my mate Ryan to spend a few hours in the freezing cold targeting rockling. A bit of a swell was still running following the latest storm, which made fishing with light tackle fairly testing, but before too long I had pulled out my first fish of 2026.

The five bearded rockling was also my last species of 2025.

As the night progressed, we caught a few coalfish and the odd small cod on our small black lug baits. Despite the conditions, the fishing was enjoyable, and in between bites we chatted away. We mainly talked about our recent trip to Japan and all the things we were missing about it. We also discussed some potential destinations for trips this coming year.     

There were plenty of these reasonably sized coalfish around...

...as well as some small cod.

Towards the end of the session, we both caught a shore rockling each. These are easily distinguished from their five bearded cousin as they possess two fewer "beards". They also grow a bit bigger too.

The shore rockling has three beards. So does the three bearded rockling, but in my opinion the two species look nothing alike due to their very different colourations!

Before we knew it, the time had come to head back up the path to the car and drive back up the A1 to Edinburgh. It had been another enjoyable winter session and I think Ryan and I will be out again for more of the same over the next few weeks, although we may fish more locally.

Tight lines, Scott.

I needed perking up.

Last month I was still suffering from post Japan trip depression, and I hadn’t been fishing for a while. Between Christmas and Hogmanay, I headed down to East Lothian to meet up with wildlife cameraman, author and fellow fishing fanatic Jack Perks. We only had a few hours together and Jack was keen to catch a flounder and a shore rockling, so we started the session off at Belhaven Bay. Crossing the Bridge to Nowhere, we were soon at the water’s edge, fishing into the breaking waves at close range. The conditions looked pretty good, but the timing of the session meant we were fishing the last couple of hours of the ebb on a neap tide, a combination I’ve found in the past to be hard going. The flood on a spring tide is usually a much better time in my opinion. We gave it a go anyway, and it was nice to catch up with Jack. As I suspected, we struggled to find any fish that were biting, although eventually I did catch a solitary small flounder. We stuck it out for a few hours, but when light started to fade, we decided to head to Cove Harbour and turn our attention to fishing for shore rockling. The fishing there was much better, and it didn’t take us too long to catch a few rockling, dropping small sections of black lug down the walls at the mouth of the harbour. 

My first five bearded rockling of 2025 and also the last species I caught in the calendar year. Not the one we were after, but I was happy enough catching them. I have a bit of a soft spot for rockling!

After catching about half a dozen five bearded rockling between the two of us, and also a few juvenile codling and some coalfish, Jack switched to a piece of prawn on his hook and subsequently lost a bigger rockling on the surface that he was sure was our target species. Shortly afterwards, he landed a smaller rockling, that on inspection turned out to be the first shore rockling of the night. Mission accomplished! It started raining shortly afterwards, so we called it a night and made the walk back up to our cars. It was nice to get out fishing with Jack again and hopefully we can do it again this year at some point. A UK wels catfish is on my to do list this year and there’s a fishery down south near Jack that we might visit, or we might meet up on the south coast. The second half of our session was also a reminder of how much I really enjoy catching rockling, and will be out again soon hopefully to catch some more. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Dodgy dolos and a historic harbour.

I had another couple of short sessions at the weekend targeting topknot, visiting two new spots. A very strong westerly wind posed a problem, so I visited a couple of sheltered venues. On Saturday at Torness Power Station, I spend a few hours in the afternoon fishing down through the concrete dolos blocks, lowering live prawns down into the gaps between them into the water below. This produced a few small ballan wrasse to begin with, but then for some reason the bites dried up. Carefully moving about on the blocks was making me slightly nervous, one false move on those things and you could have a very nasty accident. No fish is worth that and the fact I had stopped catching any fish made my decision to climb back up out off of the huge tetrapods and call it a day a pretty easy one. I’m not sure I’d risk fishing on them again in a hurry. 

One of the small ballan wrasse I caught from down in the blocks.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon down in the Scottish Borders with my girlfriend Lillian. We visited a few places, including the picturesque Cove Harbour, which lies tucked away at the bottom of huge sandstone cliffs. It’s been there for hundreds of years and to this day it’s still a working harbour. At the top of the cliff, next to the beginning of the path that takes you down to the harbour, there is a sculpture that offers a reminder of how dangerous the occupation of a commercial fisherman is. 

"Commemorating the widows and children left by the fishing disaster of 14th October 1881 when 189 fishermen were lost off this coast. Cove lost 11 out of 21 fishermen."

After making our way down the slowly sloping path to the harbour, I spend some time fishing Mini Isome down the inside of its walls, hoping a topknot that was stuck to the wall or sat in a crack would grab my little pink worm imitation as I twitched it around. 

I patiently worked my way along, hoping to catch a weird looking, rocky surface loving flatfish. 

My endeavours had fairly predictable results. So predictable in fact that Lillian successfully guessed which species would be first to take my brightly coloured, peach scented lure. A couple of long spined sea scorpion were first to scoff it, followed by three common blenny. 

Peach flavoured Mini Isome, one of your five a day!

After about an hour, I’d caught a few more small fish but my allotted fishing time was up and permission to extend it wasn’t granted. During the short window of opportunity, I also caught a couple of juvenile cod, but unsurprisingly, no topknot. I’m still confident that eventually my persistence will pay off and each time I visit an old harbour or some likely looking boulders I’ll keep trying. Sooner or later I may get lucky. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Three bearded by name...

I drove down the A1 to Cove last night for a session targeting three bearded rockling. Quite often in the past fellow anglers have told me they've caught them on the east coast only for them to show me photos of shore rockling. Despite having never caught a three bearded rockling, to my mind the two species cannot really be mistaken for each other. Having seen a photo of an actual three bearded rockling that was caught from the mouth of Cove's harbour, I was hopeful that I might get lucky and catch one myself. Ledgering strips of mackerel things were very slow, and I spent six hours basically feeding the crabs and winding in to put a fresh piece of bait on every twenty minutes. I only caught one fish all night just after the tide began to ebb and whilst it was a rockling with three beards it was sadly not a three bearded rockling!

The fish I caught last night was a shore rockling. It is a pretty drab looking fish, not pink with brown spots like its three bearded cousin.

As well as having a lovely purple ring around the eyes, it also has three "beards" which I think is why some anglers who aren't really interested in rockling misidentify them.

For the avoidance of doubt, the fish above is a three bearded rockling. Pretty hard to confuse the two, given the three bearded rockling's much more colourful appearance.

I've been doing more research recently into potential hotspots for targeting three bearded rockling. They seem to be much more prolific on the west coast of the country, so that's where I'm going to try next. I'm off to the north coast of Devon next week to try my luck at Ilfracombe Pier for six days. As well as holding plenty of three bearded rockling, it seems that this venue is also known to produce clingfish, so I'll be fishing tiny baits straight down the side of the pier to try and get lucky during the day.

The Connemarra clingfish has banded eyes and orange markings on its cheeks.

The shore clingfish has two bright blue spots on the top of its head.

I'm really looking forward to this trip. It's always exciting fishing somewhere new. It's a long way to drive, and it's also been a while since I was down there, so depending on how I get on catching my three main new species targets I might try and visit some other more familiar venues while I'm down there.

Tight lines, Scott.

Variety is the spice of life.

My mate Jake picked me up at 8:45 yesterday morning, we headed down into East Lothian and to be honest we didn't decide where we were actually going until we were half way there! We parked up and walked down the path, through a small dark tunnel and arrived on the sandy shore of Cove harbour.

The sun was shining and the water was crystal clear. We started of exploring close in amongst the rocks and weed. There was no sign of life though and just as we were about to move I spotted a submerged large flat rock and dropped my Isome down the edge. I was soon getting little taps and then a more solid little bite resulted in a small blenny being hoisted out. I repeated this and was rewarded with a small long spined sea scorpion.

Jigheads? What are those?

Jake had a go at the same spot but didn't have any luck. He then waded out onto a skeer of rock and I headed round to the outer harbour wall. I managed another blenny but the lack of action was quite surprising as it just screamed fish. Perhaps it was just too bright. Jake came around to join me and we decided to head to another spot.

On the walk back up to the car we looked over to a rocky peninsula to the north west and discussed its potential. By the time we had reached the top of the path we had decided to go and check it out. After a walk down a dirt road, hopping over a few fences, walking along the edge of a field and climbing down a grassy embankment we were finally on the rocky platform. However it was a lot shallower than we thought it would be, with boulder fields stretching out as far as we could see. Jake cast out a Ribster but lost it in a snag on his first cast. After trying Isome at close range with no reward we quickly decided to leave although I think it looked like a good mark to try for bass with surface/shallow diving plugs in the right conditions so we may be back there!

Heading back up the grassy path and back to the car we were both pretty sweaty and Jake was also a bit grumpy as well. He only had about another hour or so to fish and was facing a dreaded blank. We decided to head to the outflow at Torness Power Station to try for a bass or worst case scenario raid the rockpools for a blenny.

Arriving on the reef Jake went with his Major Craft Crostage and started lobbing his new found favourite Lunker City lure, the Ribster in Arkansas Shiner. I went with my Shimano Diaflash and half a large pink Isome. After 10-15 min Jake hooked a fish and had a nice bend in his rod and a big grin on his face. I looked over anticipating the fish coming to the surface as bass normally do fairly quickly but it didn't. Strange I thought then the reason became apparent when the fish finally did come up. It wasn't a bass! Jake had caught a nice ballan wrasse!

Blank busted and the grumpy angler cracks a smile!

Quite an unusual catch from this mark although Jake has caught them before many years ago but on ragworm.

Jake's last Arkansas Shiner Ribster. He would lose it shortly afterwards. Just as well he's ordered a few more packs!

We fished on for a while longer but no bass were caught and Jake had to head up the road. Blank avoided though he was a happy man. I wanted to fish some more though and got Jake to drop me off in Dunbar where I headed down to the harbour. I sent local angler and fellow The Lure Forum member Nick Aitken a text to see if he fancied joining me as he lives near the harbour. He text back to say he was on his way home from work and would pop down when he got back. To pass the time whilst waiting for Nick I headed to flattie corner and stuck with my #14 hook with two 0.8g split shot and put a tiny section of pink Isome on. Casting out I was quickly into a small flounder. Couple of casts later a second. Then a small plaice, my first from this harbour. By the time Nick arrived I had caught five flounders and four plaice. I caught another two flounders and gave Nick a #14 hook so he could join in the fun but whilst he was getting plenty of follows they were tormenting him and he just couldn't manage to catch one although he did hook one but it came off. Here are a few photos of the flatfish. Can you correctly identify all seven?

The correct answers are at the bottom of the report.

Next up I got a little surprise. After travelling 250 miles during the week to get a sand goby I caught one from Dunbar harbour! I couldn't believe it! Anyway, nice to know they are still in there.

Where have you been every other time I came to Dunbar harbour trying to catch you this year?!

 

At this point Nick suggested a move so we headed over the back of the harbour to target wrasse. On the way we passed some nice big rockpools that I'd never fished before and I couldn't resist! It wasn't long before one of the regular inhabitants of the rockpools at Dunbar appeared and greedily scoffed the little chunk of Isome.

Possibly the most aggressive salt water species of fish I've encountered. 9 times out of 10 they just charge out into the open and smash your lure.

After that we headed out to the end of a rock skeer and started fishing 3-4" soft plastics down the edge. It wasn't long before we were both getting bites but we couldn't get any hook ups. Shortly afterwards we spotted the culprits. Two small ballans were coming out from underneath a huge boulder and nipping away at the lures. This continued for a while and then I decided enough was enough and switched from my Shimano Speedmaster Drop Shot rod to my Diaflash and dropped down the split shot rig I had been using previously. I missed the first couple of bites but let the third one develop a bit more and the fish hooked itself. Drag locked up the Diaflash had a nice bend in it but I just raised it up to stop the wrasse getting back into its lair. Soon pulled out away from the weed it was hoisted up into my hand.

My first Scottish ballan wrasse for a while. Lovely!

I soon followed it up with a second wrasse from the same spot. 

Nice dark brown fish with a bright orange underside.

At this point Nick, who had persisted with the larger soft plastics, switched over to an Isome on a #4 aberdeen hook. After this change he was still getting bites but no hook ups. I then pulled out a third wrasse.

Chocolate and Lime. My favourite!

Seeing this Nick quickly switched over to the #14 hook I had given him earlier and carried on trying. He soon hooked a wrasse but it charged into some kelp and came off. I then went to check on our exit from the mark as the tide was flooding in behind us and would soon be cutting us off. It had a little bit to go though so I returned to close to where Nick was but decided to try dropping my Isome into a nice big gap in the kelp. I let it land on a large rock and just let it sit there. A small fish appeared and tentatively had a little nibble. I gave the Isome a little twitch. It had another nibble. I then raised it up off the bottom slightly and that did the trick nicely! I quickly lifted the fish out to discover it was a leopard spotted goby!

Looks like a black goby I hear you say.

These can look very dark and it can be vary hard to make out their markings when they are out of the water. I popped it into a small rockpool to reveal the beautiful electric blue edges on its fins.

Hard to believe it's the same fish isn't it?

I felt a bit sorry for the goby as it looked like the local wrasse had been nipping at its tail fin as it was in a bit of a ragged mess! I popped it back where I caught it from and returned to Nick. He was still patiently trying to catch a wrasse and whilst I was trying to sort out the tangled mess that the goby had made of my split shot rig he finally hooked and landed one. Nick having only really taken up fishing with soft lures this year having enjoyed many years as a successful bait fisherman had just caught his first wrasse on one and was a very happy man.

Nick's first lure caught ballan wrasse. The first of many no doubt.

At this point we had to leave the mark before we got trapped and we timed our exit to perfection really! It was about 6pm and I had to go and catch my train up the road so we called it a day. We walked up the road and Nick went home to order a few packs of #14 hooks! All in all a great days fishing. A few different marks. Two great guys to fish them with. Seven species and 23 fish caught between the three of us. Happy days!

Tight lines, Scott.

Flatfish I.D. challenge answer.
Flounder
Plaice
Plaice
Flounder
Plaice
Flounder
Flounder