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.

Finding the right hole.

On Sunday, I visited a rocky shore mark in Gourock to spend a few hours targeting topknot. I was given detailed information by my friend and fellow species hunter Andrew on exactly where he caught one himself recently.

Here's one I didn't catch earlier. Such a cool little fish. I particularly love the banding that runs from their eyes. Makes them look like a little bandit!

Andrew, for the time being anyway, fishes mainly ultra light tackle and does so exclusively using lures. Although, he's told me in the future he wants to broaden his horizons into the smelly world of bait fishing, mainly so that he can catch a few different shark species. Years ago, I went through a similar phase, so I decided to spend the session fishing only with artificial baits. Knowing that topknot sit flush on rocky surfaces, I decided to use a 3g cheburashka weight to present these.

A Gulp! Hellgrammite rigged up, ready to get eaten...

...which it soon was by this tompot blenny.

This combination was getting hammered by what I suspect were goldsinny wrasse, but the hook I had on was a little too big for them to get into their mouths, so I decided to try a few unscented lures in an attempt to actually catch my target. Unsurprisingly, these got less attention, but eventually a long spined sea scorpion took a liking to a bright pink straight tail as I twitched it down inside a gap in the boulders.

Greedy little swine!

After a while, a seal arrived and hung around just out in front of me. Obviously expecting the opportunity to steal mackerel from a set of feathers, it sat up in the water staring at me for a short period. Eventually, it realised that my fishing activity didn't involve mackerel and swam off again.

Looking for an easy meal.

Getting back to my topknot hunting, I switched back to Gulp! again and after missing quite a lot of bites I caught a small corkwing wrasse that did a decent job of getting down into the rocks, but with a little gentle pressure and also by giving it some slack line I managed to coax it out.

Yummy! Hellgrammite.

The non-stop little taps kept coming though, tugging my hellgrammite around the bend of my hook, ruining the nice straight presentation, so eventually I gave in and rigged up a small hook on a stinger. Tying this onto my cheburashka weight and threading a Mini Isome up onto it so that the hook was placed near the bottom, soon had a few of the culprits caught.

Peck, peck, pecking away. Got you!

For the last couple of hours, I stuck with this presentation and caught dozens of goldsinny wrasse. If there was a topknot lurking down there, getting through the goldsinny wrasse was going to be a huge problem. I also caught a few long spined sea scorpion and another two tompot blenny as well though, so I guess it's a numbers game. A huge slice of good fortune will be required also, being lucky enough to drop your rig down into the right hole, at the right time, with a topknot in the rig's vicinity when it hits the bottom.

I'd forgotten how good Isome is for close quarter mini species fishing. I've got loads of it too, so will probably make an effort to use it more often going forward.

Another fun session had soon came to an end, even if a topknot had remained elusive. I enjoyed messing about with artificial for a change. Being honest, I'd almost always choose to fish with top quality bait as it will always give you the best chance to catch fish, but as a backup Gulp! and Isome are great to have available. The highlight of the day was catching a few tompot blenny, not a species I've caught that many of up here in Scotland, and now thanks to Andrew sharing his topknot holding spot with me, it seems that I have another place here to go catch them!

Tight lines, Scott.

A little too late to the party?

On Tuesday I headed down to Dumfries & Galloway with my mate Ryan for a couple of days to do some mixed species fishing. Ryan also wanted to try for a shore caught tope, so our first stop was the remaining old military pier in Cairnryan where amongst other species we were pretty confident that we could catch some mackerel to use as bait for our tope fishing session later in the day.  

Several sections of the pier have collapsed, rendering it an unsafe structure. Efforts have been made to keep people off of it. These don’t stop risk taking anglers though. Climbing through large holes in a couple of fences isn’t difficult. 

Enter at your own risk. One of many collapsed areas where the reinforced concrete has failed, and the deck has fallen into the sea below. 

There were lots of small baitfish around the pier, so I started off fishing with a set of tiny sabiki, jigging them vertically. This produced lots of juvenile herring. I was hoping that there might be some sprat present too, but carefully checking each fish, every one I caught was indeed a tiny herring. 

I’ve never caught a sprat. They look similar to juvenile herring but have sharp scutes on their stomach, their scales don’t come off as easily, the origin of the pelvic fins is in line with the origin of the dorsal fin, the eyes are slightly smaller and the lower jaw protrudes less than it does on a juvenile herring. 

As I wound up the juvenile herring, now and then a large sandeel would follow them up to investigate the commotion. Eventually, I caught one of them. It didn’t have an obvious dark spot on the side of its snout, so I was hopeful it might be a Corbin’s sandeel. After examining a few other features of the fish however, I positively identified it as a greater sandeel, also known as a launce. 

Fifty-six dorsal fin rays and a belly skin fold that only reached the first third of the anal fin, where it lost its continuity, made this a greater sandeel. The Corbin’s sandeel has 59-62 dorsal fin rays, and the belly skin fold is continuously unbroken all the way to its tail. 

After catching and closely examining a few dozen juvenile herring, I switched over to a drop shot rig and fished various heavily scented small lures. Lowering these flavourful baits down to the bottom produced lots of black goby. Ryan caught lots of these aggressive little fish too using similar tactics. 

Green Mini Isome with its blueberry taste proved popular. 

As did the less pleasant smelling Gulp! Hellgrammite in natural. 

I was expecting us both to catch a few wrasse as well, but incredibly neither of us caught any! Definitely a surprise as the pier's structure normally holds lots of them. After a few hours, and with our evening tope session in mind, we switched our attention to catching a few mackerel to use as bait. Once they turned up, we quickly caught what we needed and headed off to our tope mark. 

After driving an hour or so east, we made our way down onto our chosen rock mark and got setup. Big baits on long pulley rigs were cast out as far as we could at regular intervals, to hopefully create a strong enough scent trail to draw in any nearby tope. Sadly, after several hours of patiently waiting for a run, neither of us got one. A little disappointed, we drove back west to Stranraer, where we were staying for the night. 

In the morning we decided to forget about catching tope and instead headed south to Portpatrick where we clambered onto the rocks there to try and catch some wrasse on heavily scented artificial baits. 

The rocky shoreline to the north of the harbour village of Portpatrick looked like the perfect wrasse holding habitat. 

Ryan decided to fish with some Gulp! Sandworm, whilst I opted to fish with Mini Isome. I tried a couple of different presentations. 

Very simply, hooked once through the “head”.

When this produced no bites, I switched colour and tried wacky rigging it. 

This corkwing wrasse fell to the wacky rigging style. 

I expected us to catch a few more wrasse after this, but it was a real struggle to get any more bites, so we moved around and tried a few more gullies. 

Ryan clambered down to the edge to fish in close, but his efforts weren’t rewarded. 

Feeling a little frustrated, we decided to head further south to Port Logan where we could dig some small lugworm and then spend a little time fishing for small flatfish in the breaking waves on the beach there.  

Port Logan, a popular beach for relaxing, dog walking and where boat anglers launch their vessels.

Fishing a simple running ledger rig baited with a small blowlug produced a small turbot for me fairly quickly, but after that we didn’t get any more bites. With some fresh bait to use, we decided to head all the way down to the Mull of Galloway to fish from the rocks on its northern side. 

Only my second fish of the day. Not exactly epic fishing, but I love mini turbot, so was happy to catch this one. They’re such perfectly formed versions of their adult counterparts. 

Arriving at the Mull of Galloway, walking down the steep grassy slope, and then carefully climbing down onto the rocks, our decision to dig some lugworms was very quickly paying off. Casting out beyond the heavy kelp bed in front of us, the resident ballan wrasse were hammering them pretty much as soon as our rigs hit the bottom. 

Small blowlug, the perfect size bait for small ballan wrasse. 

Also readily taken by bigger specimens too! This one was a real test of my Rock Rover with a heavy kelp bed directly in front of us, but I managed to bully it through. 

While we had a supply of small juicy worm baits, we caught a few other species too. Ryan caught some pouting and poor cod, whilst strangely I caught only pollock.

This small pollock came up and grabbed my bait as I wound it in. 

Eventually, we ran out of worms however, and switched over to fishing with Gulp! Sandworm. The drop-off in interest was noticeable, as you would probably expect, so Ryan suggested we collect a few limpets and use them as bait. This was a good idea, and we were soon catching a few fish again.

Ryan into one of many limpet caught fish. 

He caught a few cuckoo wrasse. 

Hidden in this lump of weed was a goldsinny wrasse Ryan also caught on a piece of limpet. 

I caught a few more ballan wrasse on limpet slivers as well.  

As the tide rose, and we retreated up the rocks, I spotted a few blenny moving around on the bottom of a newly formed rock pool and dropped a tiny piece of limpet down in their vicinity. They immediately began fighting over it, and one quickly got hooked. 

Another lover of limpet. 

A tough day’s fishing had turned into a fairly action packed session, and before we knew it, it was time to call it a day, climb back up to the car park and make the drive back to Edinburgh. It had been a trip of mixed results, but in the end a quite enjoyable one, even if we spent four fruitless hours targeting tope. The toothy shark will probably have to wait until 2025, when I think we’ll go a bit earlier in the year when there are more tope around to be caught. I’m heading back down the Solway Firth tomorrow evening with my mate Nick. I’ve enjoyed my sessions down there this year, but I’ve not caught a starry smoothhound yet. Armed with some peeler crab, my fingers are crossed that they won’t be as elusive as the late season tope!

Tight lines, Scott.