Wrasse bashing

Fished today with my brother using soft plastics and bait for Ballan Wrasse on one of my top wrasse marks and as usuall it was blindingly good fun! you gotta love the absolute smash grab and crash dive fight of the ballan on the correct gear! the fact they are prob the most beautiful fish in UK waters being all different colours from bight reds and oranges to lumo blues and electric whites :-)This Ballan nailed a megabass spindle worm on a delelande jig you can see how aggressive they are when fished for correctly as you can only just see the jig in the mouth! after a scrappy fight right under the rod tip i managed to get it to the surface, great fun on a 25g casting weight casting rod coupled with a shimano curado e7 and 30lb braid! the action on bait was pretty much non stop...... soon as our mini fixed pats touched the bottom the rag worm was nailed instantly! plenty of smaller fish hammerin the bait the second it was in there, with the larger wrasse smashing the worm and pretty much nailing them selfs on our rigs which are deadly! it wasnt long before my brother was landing fish

Joe into only a fish not even 2lb but they dont half put a bend in powerful spinning rods like this Speedmaster above from shimano this is a saltwater specific lure rod designed for large bass and tropical species yet look at the bend this wrasse puts on it :-) again fished with 30lb powerpro braid if youv never had the pleasure of under the rod wrassin you do not know what your missing

Even the smaller fish fight like troopers...... it was awesome wathing my brothers face when he hooked these ballans as you think youv hooked a beast then up pops little fellas like this pretty little fella. the tide had turned and i knew that the monsters would start to show there faces..... it was long before the proper bites started to show. and i didnt have to wait long before my rod was looped over trying to pull me off the ledges :-) it never fails to crack a smile on my face and iv litterally caught hundreds and hundreds of ballan wrasse

with litterally hundreds of missed takes it really does do your head in its impossible to not get frustrated as these fish do you over most times you hook them, in this venue iv had ballans over 6lb so these smaller 2 and a half pounders arent all that special but there cracking fun..... its all about fishing these gin clear coves where all you can see is deep clear blue ledges coverd in kelp and weed the mind certainly gets going when the rod first taps over and we even had a first today from this spot..... and a cool little critter tooa very cute but aggressive sea scorpion :-) certainly a first for me here in the UK we'v caught loads on the costa brave in spain where they get well over a foot long and weigh a couple pounds and the bite it gave me on my bait rod was awesome i honestly thought i had another ballan on the end until i struck like a loony and felt this little bugger on the end i think i ruined his day lol. off out bassin again in the week so watch this space :-)

Danny