Twilight at St Abbs

Last Sunday we headed down to St Abbs to meet up with our friend and local angler Ritchie, who has been having a lot of success down there fishing into twilight. We arrived at the mark at 7.30pm after a scramble and a climb over the rocks. Ritchie and I had both brought ultra light gear and light spinning gear, Scott had just brought his light set up and was hoping to get some pollock practise in before his forthcoming Applecross trip. We would only have about an hour and a half of light till sunset, so I tackled up with the LRF gear and went to search for late evening wrasse. Scott was targeting the bigger pollock, but it was Ritchie who was first in with a chunky 1.5lb coalie on a Gulp! Sandworm rigged on a Berkley 5g #4 jighead. I watched his Savage Gear Troutizmo rod bend with envy as coalies are great sport! He released that and a couple of casts later caught a jumbo mackerel, the biggest I have seen this year at about 1.5lb, which again put up a great fight before he landed and released it. Ritchie then announced he was going to try for flatties and using the same set up started casting and slowly bouncing and twitching the lure along the sea bed. I decided to join Ritchie in targeting the flatties, so I rigged up a small Pink Power Isome on a 3.5g #8 Cultiva Mebaru Shot jighead and began to search the area. Ritchie was soon into a nice flounder but as it surfaced we realised it was just holding onto the lure below the hook! Unfortunately for us it also realised this and promptly let go of the lure! I then had a couple of little bites followed by a feeling of weight as a flounder grabbed the lure. This one was hooked nicely and after a fun fight it was landed, photographed and released.

As most of my Flounder come from harbours, this open coast rock mark flounder was most pleasing!

Ritchie then manged to land a good sized flounder as well before switching tackle to fish for large pollock. I kept searching the area and was soon rewarded with a feisty little pollock.

I love the copper coloured honeycomb markings on this pollock.

I had just released the fish when I heard a shout from Scott and watched his rod bend into a good fish. He had hooked it at distance and had got it half way in before it started making powerful dives to get under the rock ledge in front of him. Scott had a real tussle with the fish before he managed to land it with it making a couple of attempts to get into the kelp in front of him. A fine pollock of 4.5lb which Scott decided not to bother photographing the fish as he wanted to get it back in the water. I swapped over to my heavier gear and rigged up a Lunker City Ribster on a 10.5g #2/0 football jighead. I worked the lure in a sink and draw pattern, bouncing it over the top of the kelp. I had a bite and struck into a fish that tried to dive back into the kelp before coming up in the water to reveal itself. Bright orange, at first I thought it was a wrasse then as it broke the surface I saw it was a chunky red codling! Marvellous! I love cod and to get one on the Ribster was great fun as they do fight well on light gear. I quickly landed photographed and released it and carried on working the Ribster over the twilight kelp.

The Ribster claims another species in this lovely orange codling.

Richie then caught another couple of nice size coalies and capped it with a lovely 3lb cod of his own again a stunning orange colour. Scott had another pollock before I got my last fish of the session, which turned out to be another jumbo mackerel, again on the Ribster, this one came home with me and was very tasty indeed! 

That was about it for the session as it had got dark and we had to make our way carefully over the rocks to get back. The journey back took a while and was quite challenging, clambering and climbing over the rocks in the dark. Aided by Ritchie's guiding skills and our torches we eventually found ourselves back at the car. We all agreed it was an excellent session with five species being caught and some good sized fish thrown in. I can't wait to get back down there again!

Tight lines, Schogsky.