St Mary's Island 20/07/13

We often visit St Mary's a few times per year.  It is a local mark that provides some good rock fishing and can throw up some lovely red codling in the summer months.
As we had not been down there in 2013 we took the opportunity to do so while the weather was still pleasant.

An hour on our favourite spot saw me bag a few small red codling.  They turn red due to long periods in the weed beds that are prevalent around the island.

The weed beds can make fishing heavy going and some sessions can see you lose rig after rig due to snags

While we were fishing with our big rods we noticed a lot of small Blenny's in the rock pools around us.  They ranged in size from an inch to maybe 4 inches.

After a successful attempt to catch one by hand I had the genius idea of trying for the smallest hook-caught fish of the night.  Mark had some carp hooks in his box (I have no idea why as we don't fish for carp??) so I took the smallest he had and some 15lb mono and set to work.  The first few attempts came to nothing but a little persistence snagged me a lovely 2.5 incher!  Mark managed a slightly larger one later.

After about a further hour, and a few HUGE Velevet Swimming Crabs later..... we moved to fish the main gulley as the sun set.  Mark managed to snag a lovely Wrasse (the first I have seen from this area) and I followed with a good Common Eel and then another codling to end the session.

I managed to get a handful of shots worth keeping.  However with conditions being overcast and the sun setting fast it was tough to get the shots I wanted.

But never mind..... It was fish I was after anyway