FIND BOULDERS AND YOU FIND WRASSE!!

A bold statement but just recently I have been having the most success for numbers and size of wrasse by fishing for them in and over some serious boulder grounds. One look at the photos below and you would think its mad to fish such hostile tackle grabbing terrain but its where the wrasse are to be found and tackle losses are so low its crazy, providing you keep it all simple and use a texas rig.

 

Some of these boulders are the size of small cars and believe me, when you hook a proper big old wrasse in amoungst ground like this you are in for a hell of a scrap!!!!!!

A quick look around the rocks and in the rock pools and you can see why wrasse love this area. Gobies and small blennies were darting in the pools and under the small rocks were plenty of crabs and small squatt lobsters. On the rocks were limpets everywhere so there was certainly a right old feast for the wrasse to munch on when the tide floods the area. By using this information as to what the wrasse would be feeding on I decided to match the hatch and rigged a Jacks Hawg Crazy Craw texas style and flicked it between a couple of large boulders. As it sunk to the bottom I felt a tap as a curious wrasse decided to have closer inspection using its teeth. Struck but to no avail, at least I knew the wrasse were around and hungry. I flicked it back to the same hole and this time let the wrasse have abit more time, strike and fish on. I dont know who was bullying who but I managed to slide the net under a lovely conditioned 3lb fish.

As I was netting the fish I had noticed that the disturbance had brought another couple of fish following the hooked one so I cast back to the same area and a couple of twitches later got hit by a train. No stopping this one in such close quaters as it did me on the barnacles!! A very brief battle that had my 20lb fluorocarbon leader torn to shreds. I tied on a new leader and made afew more casts in and around where I had lost the brute but only small fish sadly.

A move back up inside the bay was needed as I felt sure that the wrasse would be moving inside with the flood. A couple of casts and my thoughts were correct as wrasse after wrasse were hitting the lures often on the drop as the lures were beeing twitched over and down the boulders.

The Jacks Hawg Crazy Craws were certainly proving a great success so I decided to try afew other lures in different colours to see if there was a favourite colour again. Had a couple of wrasse to brown senkos, a few others to purple patterns but by far the most deadly being watermellon green. The Jacks Hawg Wild Stickbait outfishing any other lure today. This wrasse was the best out the boulder field today with it going to 4.2lbs.

A slightly smaller wrasse but stunning green in colour, that went 3.3lbs.

Despite being struck down with the dreaded man flu for the last couple of days (fishing and fresh air always makes me feel better) I had managed to get out for 2 hours and had 30 wrasse to 4.2lbs so not a bad effort considering. As I was packing up I noticed a splash in the shallow water behind me and saw a wrasse's tail out of the water as it was trying to get something out from the weed. As the rod was still together and had the lure attached I quickly cast over it and twitched the lure frantically back to resemble what ever the wrasse had cornered. BANG the wrasse nailed it!!!! The water was being thrashed so much that it was more like foam considering it was barely a foot deep as the wrasse tried to get back into deeper water, mental stuff!!!! As the wrasse tired I slipped the net under her, not a massive fish but the biggest of the day taken in the shallowest water!!!!

At 4.10lbs it fought like a much bigger fish  but it just goes to show you dont need deep water to catch plenty of wrasse, you just need the right ground. Next time you walk past a bouldery stretch, have a couple of casts into it, you might be surprised!!!!!