St. John's Point - Donegal

People: Me

Duration:6pm to 9pm

Tide: Dropping

Weather: Light westerly, overcast

Bait: Crab, ragworm & sandeel

Rigs:Float rig

Results: 27 ballan wrasse 4 corkwing wrasse 1 rock cook
3 pollock


Report: Much better wrasse session than last week, right from the go the float was being pulled under. I was fishing no more than 15 yards from the shore and to begin with it was mostly small wrasse that were taking. As the tide started to drop the average size went up to 3lb although the biggest of the evening went just about 4lb, did have one fish snap my line. Crab again proved far better at finding the better stamp of fish.

Ragworm though picked out the corkwing and rock cook. I had a look at fish ID book recently to see what corkwing looked like so that If i caught one I'd know it. Quite similar to ordinary ballan so easily mistaken, once I seen one this eveing I knew I'd caught them before but just thought they were unusually marked ballans. Rock cook was tiny but had really cool neon blue markings underneath and alongside the lower jaw. Will put picture up once I figure how to downsize the damned thing :oops:

nice one pete,sounds like a good wrasse session.i haven`t had a good days wrasse fishing in a while.they have been very quiet down here for the past two months.i had 4 species of wrasse in a session two weeks ago,wouldn`t mind getting all 5.maybe next time :)

Good session there Pete. I have had some good wrasse from St Johns, and like you say crab nearly always sorts out the better stamp of fish.

Like yourself i was looking at the fish ID pages there recently and caught a Corkwing wrasse a few days later at Portrush, and that fell to rag. Must have had them before as well as other species of wrasse but never really took the time to ID them.
It was really down to reading posts from Ronald and Davey that made me look at the different species of wrasse around our coasts, and how to ID them.
Good luck Davey on achieving the 5 species in a day, i will just be happy to get a few more of them, never mind how long it takes.

Cheers lads. Same as that Mo it was seeing Davy and Ronald's wrasse lists that made me take an interest in the other wrasse species :D

There is another wrasse in our waters, Scale eyed wrasse, but it is rarely caught which I think is due to its habit of living under rocks and cliffs...so i've read. Now six wrasse species in the day would be something cool :lol: !