St Abbs : Before and after the storm.

Over the past two weeks I have been down to St Abbs a couple of times to meet up with our friend Ritchie. We have been meeting up and fishing around the harbour in the hope of wrasse but also enjoying some good flounder fishing too. On the first session I arrived before Ritchie and tackled up my LRF kit with dropshot rig, comprising of a #8 offset worm hook, 6lb flurocarbon leader and 7g dropshot lead. I rigged it with a section of red Gulp! Sandworm and began casting around the harbour mouth. There were large shoals of coalfish milling around and it took no time at all before they were eagerly attacking the lure. I enjoyed myself catching the little blighters and had racked up a fair few before a much heavier fish attacked the lure. This turned out to be a good sized flounder which did its best to try to dive into the weed before I had it on the surface. It weighed well over a pound and I didn't want to swing it up the wall with the rod as it was too heavy for it. I elected to handline it up but rather annoyingly it gave a head shake when halfway up and came off. Ritchie arrived soon after and we tried working our lures through the kelp and over sandy patches, but after a couple of hours of ceaseless coalies we decided to move further into the harbour.

The ever obliging coalfish were present in numbers!

The fishing was very slow inside the harbour but it was Ritchie who eventually got a follow off a good flattie. We were both quite excited by the sighting and we began to work the surrounding area using 2g #8 jigheads with a medium red Power Isome on mine and Ritchie was using a natural coloured Gulp! Sandworm. A couple of casts later I felt some taps at the Isome followed by the familiar feeling of a flounder seizing the lure and heading for the sand. I raised the rod and kept it from off the bottom and had to reel fast as it sped towards me and after a couple of attempts to dive into the weed I managed to land another nice flounder. It was quickly unhooked and I manged to get one picture before my camera decided it didn't have enough power! 

Another fine St Abbs flounder and another fat one!

After releasing the fish we made our way over to the back wall to try for wrasse. I went back to my red Isome on a dropshot rig and Ritchie stuck with the jighead/Sandworm combo. It only took a couple of minutes of fishing before we were both into fish, this time it was a double hook up of pollock! Both quickly landed, photographed and returned. We fished on but the wrasse were not about and soon I had to head back to Edinburgh, although Ritchie did manage to get a couple more flounder after I left.

I love the colouration of this pollock!

A week later I went back down to St Abbs to meet Richie and fish the bay north of the harbour. As we got to the shoreline it quickly became apparent that the big storm that blew up had really devastated all the kelp with big piles of it strewn about the beach. The sea was pretty cloudy and grey too and a really gusty offshore wind made fishing light very hard. We worked our way around the bay trying various methods but there was no sign of wrasse and hardly any kelp left to fish in for them. Ritchie as always was pretty quickly into a nice chunky coalie which must have been pushing 1.5lbs It put a good bend in his Troutizmo rod and a smile on his face. That turned out to be the only fish for the next hour so I decided to go long and broke out my 9'6 15-42g Major Craft Crostage rod with a 30g Nordic Herring type mini pirk. With the wind gusting behind me casting far was not a problem and I was enjoying hitting casts of 80 to 100 meters. This turned out to be where the mackerel were shoaling and we were soon enjoying catching them! I took 4 for dinner and swapped over to a Lunker City Ribster mounted on a 10.5g jighead in order to try for pollock. This however only yielded a few more mackerel and then the fishing slowed completely. As we had spent four hours at the bay we then decided to fish the last couple of hours at the harbour, hoping to find some flounder. Again the water was cloudy and the fishing very slow, I manged one nice flounder within about twenty minutes of fishing, on a dropshotted red Gulp! Sandworm but that was to be my lot for the day.

It took a while, but in the end this flounder fell for drop shotted Gulp! Sandworm.

Ritchie also managed to winkle one out but it took a good hour and a half and they just didn't seem to be around in the same numbers. All in all they were a fun couple of sessions with some good sized flounder caught and released and dinner in the form of mackerel thrown in for good measure! I know the flounder will move out of the harbours for winter, but I hope they leave it late as I will miss them when they've gone.

Tight lines, Schogsky.