All winter I dream about using light tackle for lure and bait fishing from the many beautiful rock marks that the UK has to offer, just waiting for the first glimmer of sunshine, warm temperatures and calm winds that bring the many UK summer species inshore to feed. So around the end of the month of April when all the signs look favourable I will plan a fishing session that is all about fishing for pollack and wrasse using these tactics.
For me there is nothing better than hooking into a hard fighting ballan wrasse or pollack on a fairly light set up. I love savage gear rods and they have never let me down. I have a 8’3”, multi purpose predator rod rated at 12 to 35 gram which along with my preferred Daiwa Ninja 3000 reel which I find is the perfect, cheap, small fishing reel for bait fishing ragworm into those kelp filled wrasse lairs!
We headed to Burrow Head in Scotland for our first and hopefully fish filled day out, ideal wrasse and pollack country, absolutely full of rocky, kelp filled gullies and places to cast a line! I’ve been here many times and the summer wrasse fishing can be exceptional. However the often numerous pollack in the main are on the small side for some strange reason.
It’s a 3 hour drive and an early start from Newcastle so our alarms were set at 5 am to make sure we were set up and fishing by 9am in Scotland.
I prefer this area during the flooding tide up to high water during the larger tides which seems to bring more fish to the hook, I’ve found. However on this occasion our visit was to coincide with very small tides at low water which a although a concern, I hoped would still be fairly good.
After a short scramble over some extreme looking rocky points, no wonder this place is so snaggy! We cast our ragworm and peeler crab baits out about 20 yards into deep water and settled down for some fishing. We always bring along two rods and with our other spinning rods, cast multi coloured metal lures in the hope of finding a hard fighting pollack. As expected we had soon caught a few small pollack and the blank was nicely off.
It’s only April and Robbie unexpectedly went and hooked a very early mackerel on a lure! It seems that these fish are beginning to show up earlier each year on our UK shores due to climate changes, June to October is normally the time these fish turn up. The smile on his face says everything and it was his birthday after all!
As the tide began to flood in we suddenly had a rush of wrasse bites, get in!, with some real rod benders that tested our gear and our skill. I was using ragworm for bait and Robbie fresh peeler crab. I call these fish the pit bull’s of the sea, hook one over 3lb on really light gear and you will find out why!
We always use braided mainline on our reels at 25lb breaking strain, with braid having zero stretch and incredible sensitivity our rods were nearly dragged into the sea due to the savage bites of the bigger wrasse and only quick reactions saved us from that terrible fate!
Corkwing wrasse are a smaller type of UK wrasse that have vivid blue/green bands on the head and I caught three or four of these lovely looking fish too.
A nice looking colourful ballan wrasse for the birthday boy!
We had more pollack and coalfish but none were of any great size and as quick as that after 7 hours of at times hectic fishing it was unfortunately all over and time to drive the three hours back home, boohoo! We both absolutely loved this fishy day out in the sunshine and smiled all of the way back home to Newcastle.
So what worked for us will work for you. I fished a simple three way swivel rig kind of old style where I could get my bait up and over the snaggy sea bed by around 4ft. This helps reduce losses and I combined this with a weak rotten bottom link to my 1 ounce weight. My hook length was made from 25lb mono to a 1/0, Kamassan hook. Robbie opted for a one ounce oval ball rigged texas style immediately above his 2/0 mustad viking hook that was baited with peeler crab, both methods were very effective and we caught at least ten wrasse and multiple small pollack and coalfish.
Lures, we mainly used cheap and cheerful ones bought for next to nothing from Temu. This type of fishing can be done with relatively cheap gear and is definitley not for the tackle tarts who cry like babies with a single scratch on their £500 quid rods and reels. I can’t stand a tackle tart haha!!! Our rod and reel set ups are relatively cheap and scratched to bits, the scars of good fishing and many a tough fighting fish. This is an exciting, wonderful way to fish that I can’t get enough of!, I hope you can also enjoy it too at some point.
Cheap and cheerful Temu lures and three way swivels set up correctly are all you need to catch fish from the rocks.
I hope you enjoyed this post and if you did, I’d love it if you left me a comment, tightlines and all the best, David!
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