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.

Effort and reward.

I headed off on a two day trip with two of my mates, Nick and Ryan, last Tuesday. We visited several marks on the west coast and attempted to catch as many species as we could. Greenock was the first stop, where we were joined by a forth angler, Gordon, who like myself is a keen species hunter. He'd sent me a photo of a lumpsucker that had been caught there last week, so it was definitely worth a visit.

We had the harbour breakwater in Greenock to ourselves. Despite a strong wind, the conditions were OK, and we all caught a few fish. 

I was hoping to catch a common dragonet and got one first cast!

I followed this up with lots of goldsinny wrasse,..

...a few juvenile pollock,.. 

...a single black goby,..

..and a solitary ballan wrasse. 

After a few hours, the four of us headed along to Gamble Steps in Gourock, a mark I'd heard of, but had never fished before. Gordon told me he had caught some tompot blenny there in the past, so I was hoping to get one myself.  The four of us fished away and things were slow to start with, but by dropping to smaller hooks we all began catching a few goldsinny wrasse. Ryan had a small cod before I caught a single black goby too. After a while, a large shoal of fish arrived, swimming just below the surface of the water. I cast my rig out and let it fall back towards me through them. This worked a treat and after a few taps I hooked one of them. They turned out to be sand smelt. 

 

Only my third ever sand smelt from a Scottish venue.

After another hour or so we were all pretty bored with catching goldsinny wrasse, so Nick, Ryan and I said goodbye to Gordon, and we drove down to Troon where we tried to catch rock goby. The bottom of the larger rockpools there were all covered in ripped up kelp however, and all we managed to catch was a few common blenny. Jumping back in the car, we headed further south still, to the picturesque Portpatrick harbour. There we spent a couple of hours fishing into darkness. Nick caught a flounder and I caught a pollock before we started targeting shore rockling at the harbour’s mouth. 

Perched on the rocks, I waited for a fish to show interest in my ragworm. It didn’t take long to get some, and it was the target species. Odd as it wasn't even dark!

A very small shore rockling, but I didn’t care, it was my first of the year. 

Nick and Ryan waited patiently for some more rockling to start feeding. Ryan ended up catching three before we headed to Stranraer, where we spent the night in a hotel.

The next day we got up early and headed down to Ardwell Bay Beach on the west coast of the Rhins of Galloway. Our targets there were flounder and turbot. It quickly became apparent that there was a lot of suspended weed in the water, but after moving to the northern end of the beach, we all caught what we were after on small strips of mackerel fished on three hook flapper rigs tied up with small hooks. 

Ardwell Bay Beach. It's a lovely spot.

I caught my first flounder of the year. 

Ryan was first to catch a small turbot,..

...but we eventually all caught at least one. 

For our afternoon session, we drove to Port Logan and headed up and along the high cliffs to the south of it. This was more of an exploratory session as none of us had fished there before. Compared to all the other marks we'd fished, where we literally jumped out of the car and started fishing, this was going to require a fair bit of climbing up, scrambling down, jumping over streams, as well as navigating gorse, barbed wire and electric fences!  There was no path along the clifftop which slowed our progress in places, but it was a pleasant afternoon, we took our time, enjoyed the views and after an hour or so we eventually found a place where the gradient was shallow enough that we could get down to fish. 

The cliffs were massive and most of the sea was inaccessible. 

A fall near the edge would no doubt have proved catastrophic. 

Eventually we found a spot where we could get down to the rocks with relative ease.

Unfortunately, for all the effort we put in getting along to this spot, it only produced one fish, a small pollock that Ryan caught almost straight away. There was a large pod of dolphins in the area, so that may have had something to do with the lack of fish. Despite fishing with bait rods and lures, none of us caught anything else after persisting for a few hours, so we packed up, climbed back up to the clifftop before making our way further south still along to Clanyard Bay. From there we cut inland and followed some B roads back to Port Logan.

The sandy shoreline of Clanyard Bay. 

So, a fairly productive trip, during which I’d added nine species to my 2023 tally. Nick, Ryan and I had a good laugh and caught lots of fish. The mark we found north of Clanyard Bay is definitely worth another visit. I had high expectations of the fishing there, but it wasn't to be. Funny how we caught way more fish at the easily accessible marks! I've caught grey gurnards, tub gurnards, plaice and short spined sea scorpions whilst boat fishing in the area in the past, so I know there are fish there to be caught. It was also great to catch up with Gordon again too, and we'll be fishing together again tomorrow. We’re going to try and target some unusual mini species in Scottish sea lochs from his SIB. I'm really looking forward to it!

Tight lines, Scott.

Creatures of habit.

Last Monday morning after breakfast whilst I waited on the local tackle shop opening I had a few casts around Stranraer Harbour. As well as killing time  it was nice to try somewhere new as you never know what you might catch. The water was quite coloured up but I fished away for half an hour or so and managed to catch a solitary long spined sea scorpion before heading to get a box of ragworm. I suspect if the water clarity had been better it might have produced some more fish.

A grey start to the day.

Long spined sea scorpions are pretty funky looking fish. They look like little gargoyles.

As the afternoon approached the clouds soon started to disappear but it was still fairly windy. It had been my intention to head down to the Mull of Galloway to target small wrasse from the rocks on its northern side, another spot I've never fished from before, but I was unsure what the conditions would be like down there so I popped to Portpatrick first.

Clouds all gone but because of the wind blowing down the coast and the accompanying slight swell I decided to have a fish in shelter of the harbour.

In the past amongst other species I've had from Portpatrick harbour I've caught sand gobies and rock gobies and the capture of  either would have added to my annual tally so I setup to try for them. My scaled down one up one down rig with #14 hooks and tiny chunks of ragworm wasn't tempting anything to bite though so I worked my way around the harbour until I ended up fishing in its mouth. There is a lot more kelp and snags in it though so I switched to a one up rig and eventually caught my first wrasse of the year, a small ballan.

Wrasse love ragworm. I could have fished with the ever reliable Angleworm too but really if I have the choice of that or quality ragworm then the bait wins every time.

I carried on fishing but feeling quite frustrated by the lack of further action I decided to bite the bullet and head down to the Mull of Galloway to see what the sea state was like. Getting down there I found that the north coast of it was a bit too rough to fish for wrasse and whilst the southern side looked a lot calmer most of it was inaccessible or involved dangerous climbing. Given my recent rock climbing misadventures I decided against that and instead parked the car at East Tarbet and headed north from there to try and find a sheltered gully to fish.

The Mull of Galloway lighthouse in the distance. It was a pleasant walk along the clifftop footpath and I did head down the grassy slopes to the rocks to try a couple of spots but the water just wasn't deep enough really and I had no luck finding any wrasse.

It was turning into a bit of a frustrating day really and after some head scratching I headed back up to Portpatrick. This time I explored some gullies to the north of the harbour and managed to catch an additional three ballan wrasse. It was hard work though and I had to do a fair amount of rockhopping to find them. Still it was good to cover some new ground that I'll no doubt return to during future visits to the village. 

I love ballan wrasse. Even small ones scrap hard and you need to react fast to get them away from their lairs quickly.

Later in the evening I returned to the mouth of the harbour and managed to catch a small coalfish, a small pollock and a couple of corkwing wrasse, another welcome addition to my 2015 Scottish saltwater species hunt.

A nice male corkwing wrasse.

I fished on for a while hoping that as light began to fade later in the evening some shore rockling might start feeding as I've caught them there before. I switched to a running ledger with a bigger hook baited with a large chunk of mackerel from a couple of fillets I'd kept from the fish we'd caught the day before. This didn't produce any bites though and feeling quite tired from the day's fishing, driving, clifftop walks and clambering around on rocks, I packed up and headed back to the B&B. The wind was forecast to drop off the following day and I was heading to the Isle of Whithorn to target small wrasse again as well as tompot blennies at a spot my mate Martin and I had caught them at last year.

After checking out of the B&B and picking up another box of ragworm last Tuesday morning I made the drive around Luce Bay and down to Isle of Whithorn. It was a lovely sunny day and as forecast the wind had almost died off completely although it was blowing onshore so when I got down to the rocks I found there was a little bit of a swell running. I also found someone already in the spot I wanted to fish but luckily he was just leaving.

An old gentleman tends to his lobster pots. Pulling an empty pot up from the gully I wanted to fish in he decided to drop it elsewhere which was great for me.

With goldsinny and rockcook wrasse in mind and to combat the tackle hungry kelp I went with a single #14 hook at the end of a very short snood on a one up rig baited with a little piece of ragworm. Things were slow to start with but once the tide started to flood I started getting some positive bites which I soon started converted into hooked fish. Ballan and corkwing wrasse were the first to be caught but eventually I caught a few goldsinny wrasse too.

A nice little brown and biege mottled ballan wrasse was my first fish of the day. 

All of the goldsinny wrasse I caught were beautifully coloured with golden undersides and vivid dark spots on the leading edge of their dorsal fin and top edge of their tail roots.

A few more ballan, corkwing and goldsinny wrasse followed although I caught no where near the amount of fish that I did when Martin and I visited mid July last year. After a quiet spell I started getting more bites again though and landed a few more wrasse. Eventually I caught my first rockcook of the year.

Again a particularly vibrant example. Not sure if I prefer these or male cuckoo wrasse. Both are quiet stunning when their livery is bold.

With the wrasse species having added another four species to my annual tally I swapped my hook for a slightly bigger one and used a larger piece of ragworm to try and tempt a tompot blenny. After a few more ballan wrasse I caught a blenny and got excited for a brief moment before hoisting it to hand and realising it wasn't the right one.

A common blenny. The one I was after is much rarer in Scottish waters.

Last year Martin and I caught two tompot blennies each so with it being only mid afternoon I was confident I'd get one if I just kept plugging away. I also remembered that we caught them after the tide rose past a certain level and not long after it reached a similar height I caught one. This brought a huge smile to my face.

Tompot blennies are funky looking fish. I was over the moon to catch another Scottish one. Another species ticked off that may prove pivotal in my quest to catch fifty from Scottish saltwater this year. 

Mission accomplished really and I was in two minds about what to do with the rest of the afternoon. Should I stay where I was and try fishing other methods to see what else might turn up or head off somewhere else? In the end I decided to head up the coast to try somewhere new. Walking back to the car I bumped into another angler who was on his way down to the rocks I had just left to try and catch some mackerel. He told me that there was a nice little pier along the coast at Garlieston so I headed up there to use up the last of my ragworm.

Fish are creatures of habit and so am but I try not to be all of the time. Fishing new spots is a great way to perhaps discover somewhere else that produces fish. You might also get a surprise species too. 

Fishing a one up one down rig with #10 hooks I didn't have any joy fishing it out onto the sandy bottom around the end of the harbour. Dropping it down closer in onto some patches of small rocks resulted in a steady stream of kamikaze shore crabs and a dozen common blennies before a female corkwing wrasse took my final piece of bait.

Once I managed to get my hook back off them rather than make good their escape the shore crabs become rather aggressive, arching up and spoiling for a fight.

A nice little fish to end the trip on.

All in all a productive three days fishing if a little slow at times. Five species added to my tally whilst out in Spike's boat with Martin and another five added whilst out species hunting on my own. That's twenty eight down and twenty two left to catch, a much better position to be as the half way point in the year approaches than when I left Edinburgh last Saturday night. Looking at my list of remaining viable targets I can see more visits to Dumfries & Galloway on the cards.  Portpatrick, Killantringan, Mull of Galloway and another day out in Spike's boat all offer opportunities to add quite a few things to my tally. Some of these trips will be to places I've fished before but some will involve trying new spots too. I better start planning when I can fit these trips in!

Tight lines, Scott.