East Lothian : Two quick sessions.

With Scott away up at Applecross and a busy week for me work wise, I managed to squeeze a couple of very short sessions in last week. The first quick session I decided to pop down to Dunbar to try for wrasse around the back of the harbour. Conditions weren't great though, with a brisk wind blowing onshore making working light jig heads a real pain! The wrasse however were conspicuous by there absence and the mark only yielded a few small coalies and three small pollock, one of which leapt clear of the water to get the lure, before I had to leave. The pollock were fun on the light tackle though and put a good bend in the rod, which kept me grinning all the way up the A1 as I headed back.

This little coalfish has a most excellent "Arkansas Shiner" colour scheme.

The fight of small pollock on LRF gear is great fun and highly addictive!

On Thursday I had a few hours to spare in the afternoon, so I grabbed my bass gear and headed down the coast to my usual bass mark. Conditions were bright and calm and I arrived just as the tide had finished its flood. My tackle consisted of my 9'6" Wright and McGill medium drifter rod, Shimano Aernos reel loaded with 20lb Sunline Momentum braid, a 4' leader of 12lb Flurocarbon and on the business end a Lunker City Ribster in Arkansas Shiner mounted on a 10.5g #2/0 Lunker City football jighead. I began to work the lure by casting out and allowing the lure to sink before gently bouncing it back along the bottom, bouncing it over the rocks and kelp with little lifts and twitches of the rod. I always try to picture what my lure is doing in the water and I was trying to create the look of a small injured blenny or sandeel, panicking and fleeing from rock to rock. I was obviously doing something right when after about ten minutes of fishing I felt a thump, then the wonderful feeling of weight on the line as the fish grabbed the lure and shot off with the tide. The fish put up a good fight for its size but was soon landed.

The only Bass of the session fell for a Lunker City Ribster, one of my new favourite lures!

At this point I bumped into fellow The Lure Forum member Paul Mouat and his mate. Paul had manged two bass earlier but it had gone very quiet. The reason for this lack of action became obvious when we discovered a large gill net covering the bay. This had literally killed off the fishing and it was quite hard to bear the sight of the guys emptying all sorts of fish from the net, before they reset it. I fished on for a bit but decided just to call it a day for the bass and headed back to the car. Seeing the net being used was a not a pleasant sight. The mark is very heavily pressured from anglers anyway and now nets, there has to be a limit to how much fishing it can sustain. Even though I fish catch and release I think I'll have a break from the bass fishing there for a bit and concentrate a bit more on some other species.

Tight lines, Schogsky.