Wrasse and Eel spotting on Bute

I took a trip to Bute with mate and fellow blogger Scott Hutchison on Sunday. The weather was superb and despite being pretty tired after my Bass trip I decided to make the best of Lynne being away for the weekend to squeeze in another session, this time for Wrasse. I've never fished here before but Google maps provides enough information to go at when prospecting new areas such as this.

I spotted the finger of rock below on Google so we set off for it and started working our way along it. We split up and covered more ground.

Scott got hooked trying to winkle out some Goldsinny and Ballan Wrasse from a gulley on one corner of the rocks. He kicked off by catching his trademark species the mighty Common Blenny.

Now, he's got a soft spot for these little creatures and I can sort of see why. When I look at them I just think Bass &  livebait. He gave me a sideways look later in the day when the subject turned to my plans for his little mates sometime this summer, sorry Scott!

I took a walk over for a  chat and a catch up and then headed off to try a new section of rocks.

Jake and Scott put me onto these Lunker City Ribsters last year, handy little SP this. The Wrasse in Kerry loved them so I tried this colour as well as a laminated two tone version on an Owner 10g finesse jig head. I started to find little pockets of fish but as usual lost more than I caught on this method. A lot of the time the fish were tearing off holding on to the end of the bait or missing the hook altogether.

I think it was this fish above that took me about 10 minutes to catch.It followed the lure up the rocks and across the white barncle covered splash zone many times before I eventually hooked it

The above fish was the best of the bunch I landed.

Not big fish but good fun.It's also difficult not to look like a goon sometimes with a selection of gems here as I tried to keep my head from being burnt.

Scott was having a bit of a nightmare and was struggling to land a Wrasse. As the tide dropped off the bites stopped for me as well and it was time to head home.

As we walked back across the rocks the gulley behind us had emptied out. In fact the top end of it looked to only really get flooded on big tides being filled with weed and algae. As we passed it Scott spotted a little bit of movement amongst the weed. On closer inspection it was an Eel and the more we looked into the water the more movement we saw. Now it would have been easy to keep walking but Scott decided to have a crack at catching this Eel for his species hunt as well as salvaging something from the day.

This man wont be beat!

Straight away he got some interest on the jig head and Gulp worm. The Eel seemed  pretty agressive and had a go at the lure the minute it got within range but spat the hook and then ran for cover. We spotted a few more Eel's and Scott stalked them in the sunshine.

So, here is the Eel stalker...  and another species and a nice little bit of angling to be honest.

A nice day out with some laughs and some fish with superb weather. There are a few other spots to try so we will be back and the Wrasse should be a little bigger later in the summer.