Friday, July 26, 2013

My annual viviparous blenny hunt begins.

When I woke up this morning I looked out of the window to find it was a nice sunny day contrary to most of the weather forecasts I'd looked at last night. Perfect I though for a couple of hours down at Granton Breakwater before work to begin my hunt for a viviparous blenny, a species that has eluded capture despite me having several goes over the last couple of years at catching one. My plan was to fish small baits on a #6 hook close in on a simple running ledger rig. When I got to the tackle shop though they were out of ragworm, my first choice bait, so I popped along the road to a supermarket and got a bag of frozen raw prawns instead. Parking the car and heading right to the end of the breakwater I was soon fishing in about six feet of water between the rock I was standing on and the remains of the wooden pier that many years ago was at the end of the breakwater. Bites came from the start and a string of small coalfish were caught and quickly released. 

One of the bigger specimens. Quite a fat little coalfish too! 

Just when I thought a move was in order I caught a long spined sea scorpion so I decided to stay put to see what else I could catch. 

Perhaps there were other species down there who could battle through the coalfish hordes to my bait?

After a few more coalfish I felt the distinctive taps of a wrasse and managed to hook the culprit, a nice little dark brown ballan wrasse with subtle gun metal grey spots.

My first wrasse from the venue. 

You can see the gun metal grey markings on the fishes gill covers too. 

Quite pleased with this I then caught another wrasse, this time a rather large battle scarred corkwing that had a chunk missing from his dorsal fin. 

An old warrior. 

As the tide started to flood I caught a second corkwing that I thought might be the same fish but a quick check of his dorsal fin told me he was a different wrasse. A second ballan wrasse soon followed before I had to get back onto the main breakwater as the tide was about to cut me off on the large rock I was fishing from. 

Before leaving I had a few casts to see if I could hold bottom out in front of the breakwater but my 1oz lead was quickly being pulled sideways so if I want to try there on future viviparous blenny hunts I will require heavier tackle I think. 

On the way back to the shore the heavens opened as predicted by the Met Office, finally getting it right for a change! I got a soaking but I still had a big smile on my face after a very enjoyable short session. So, no sign of my target species but with plenty of prawns left over and with reports of them being caught there recently I will be back and the hunt will continue...

Tight lines, Scott.

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