Duration: 9.30am - 2pm
Tide: HW 3pm
Weather: 3mph NE winds blazing sunshine 27 degrees
Bait: rag and mack for the conger gear
Rigs: 1 hook rotton bottom rigs and conger gear
Results: 4 ballan wrasse
Report: with jordan dropped off to school i shot up the coast like a man on a mission,,, a wrasse mission
. after being reliably informed that one of our deep water rock marks was fishing again i set off in search of my first wrasse of 2010 
. i arrived at the mark to find it deserted, great stuff!! within 10 mins i had a rod out at distance and one in close and a conger bait on the bottom. this place is a bit of a tackle graveyard so simple 1 hook rigs with rotten bottoms were the order of the day. no sense in chucking the good rigs away 
the bites were almost instant and i lost the first 3 fish to the kelp and one of them felt like a monster 
even with the line caught in the kelp he was still bending the rod but even after paying him some line back i could'nt budge him and the inevitable twang happened and he returned to the kelp to munch his prize of rag 
. i came here well prepared too as i was using the reels loaded with 50lb braid. but your effectively casting into a kelp forest as thats where the fish are patrolling, so you just have to take the losses on the chin and rig up again i decided to put one of the rods away as you had to have lightning fast reactions to set the hook and lift the fish out of the kelp becasuse if he gets his head down into the kelp it's game over and the fish is the winner. so at the first notion of a twitch on the rod tip i just struck and started winding like a madman and felt a good fish on the end 
. he gave a good account of himself zipping from left to right, then back again. a lovely ballan wrasse broke the surface and he was a fair size too 
. i carefully waited for a wave to sweep him up onto the rocks and unhooked him in double quick time as i had noticed his swim bladder had started to protrude from him. sadly the only drawback from fishing deep water marks where you have to reel in fast 
. so a quick drop in the sling and a single pic revealed him to be a whopper at 3lb 15oz. probably my biggest shore caught wrasse in the north to date unfortunately i spent the next 10mins sorting his swim bladder out and nursing him in a wee rock pool before he was back to fighting fit health and returned him to the sea where he shot off like a skud missile back to the kelp none the worse for his ordeal 
. that fairly much set the pace for the rest of the session with me losing about 3 fish to every one i landed. only problem was, that the sun was frying me to a frazzel and i'd no sun cream out with me. and to be honest i started to feel a bit woozy after a bit. head was thumping and i'd left all the cans of juice in the motor . i've never had sunstroke before, but when i started to feel like i was gonna hurl i thought enough was enough and packed up and headed for home 
in the end i lost 12 leads, 8 hooks and 4 complete rigs to the kelp. but the 4 fish i landed and the 12 i lost more than made up for it right enough of this reporting caper,, i'm away to lie in a bath of cold water for an hour or so seeing as i'm now the same colour as the wrasse
mighty scrapers & the 2lb + ones can fight like a fish twice the size 
