Sunday, January 29, 2012

A nice calm day.............

Went to a local mark yesterday with a view to picking up
a few wrasse lrf but even though it was a calm day with little 
or no wind the swell was very heavy and i found it very difficult
to keep in touch with the lure or indeed to keep the lure in one place.
I tried for around 2hrs with bites or even a touch so i decided to drop
sizes and do a bit of lrf rockpooling for a while to see if the swell would
die off 
I armed up with a 0.5g jighead size12 hook and rigged it with a small section
of gulp neiris in red after a couple of chucks a nice blenny 


Had plenty of Blennies from various pools around the place 



I had began to give up on any other species when all of a sudden i got smashed by
a very big long spined sea scorpion around six inches in length certaintly the 
biggest specimen of this fish i have caught it actually took a little bit of line and was
perfectly camoflaged in the pool almost like two fish joined together with its strange 
colouration of a black/brown tail and sandy front end






This was the first of around 10 scorpionfish i had it was strange like the blennies switched off and they switched as i had no mix of species it was all of one kind then all of another 







The variation in colour of these fish is incredible with no 2 fish looking the and the way that they display 
by puffing up , growling and vibrating in the hand one fish even flipped over in the hand to display a pair of bright blue fins and and bright golden underside which was a first i had never seen one do that or actually have these colours whether they are a threat or used for mating i cant be sure and will probably never know.

I also spent almost an hour at one particular pool i had a blenny and a scorpionfish in but had spotted 2
wrasse most likely corkwings or maybe goldsinny or even rockcook trying to get these fish to take my
lure plenty of interest but didnt even touch the lure.

I came across this interesting guide to mini species the other day and thought it might be of interest
to any rockpooling or lrfing
Mini species guide

I went back to try for ballans afterwards but the swell hadnt really died down a whole lot so i called 
it a day and headed home

Tight lines

Jay


8 comments:

  1. Fantastic number of Scorpion fish Jay, good stuff.

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  2. Great write up lad, nice to see the weather improved just after i left!!! typical!

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  3. Thanks Paul they just switched on all of a sudden .

    Thanks Steven yeah it cleared up nice but today was brutal

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  4. Hey, great catches! I'm from the other side of the pond, just came across your blog. We have similar 'sculpin' fish over here too, very fun to catch.

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  5. Hello Jay

    Great post. These are the type of articles most bloggers don't bother about and it's very refreshing to find someone who takes a closer look.

    The scorpion fish I've seen often enough. There are several types here in northern Spain and the next time I catch one I'll send you a picture so you can see the size they can get to be. I have a couple of friends that have been stung and the pain is near enough unbearable.

    The blennies I've never seen. to be honest they look just like the fish in The Simpsons!

    Fantastic blog, and thanks for taking an interest in mine as it lead me to yours. Frank

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  6. Hi Frank
    Thanks for your response glad you enjoyed my blog I find all aspects of lure angling enjoyable but recently I've gotten into lrf fishing with ultra light gear and lines for a whole range of species
    We have 2 types of scorpion fish here
    Long and short spined sea scorpion the pictures above are of long spined
    Neither of which are poisonous
    The blennies we have 5 types I'm tryin to find all of them not easy though.
    Thanks again for reading and I'm really glad you enjoyed it

    Tight lines

    Jay

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