South Coast Ballan Wrasse PB

[CKB]

This is a belated post. Back in summer, I was catching tons of Ballans using soft plastics and also using scallop frills when I could get them from my pal, who is a diver. He'd often get me to drive the dory and sit waiting for him to finish his thirty-minute dive or one-hour dive. At the end of the session, he would shell around one hundred scallops and let me have the non-edible parts (frills). They really stink, and because this has been a local practice for years, the Ballan wrasse, bass, black, and gilthead bream have gotten very used to the free food.

The fishing can be excellent, and on this particular day, it was exceptional. I hooked into an absolute steam train that surfaced like a carp after multiple runs. I knew it was a PB, even from 15 feet up, as I stood on the wall and arranged the drop net. This beast weighed 6lb 4oz.
During the session, I had 10 in total before it went quiet, and I hopped on a tractor up the hill. I had a 4lb 6oz, a 4lb 3oz, a 3lb 7oz, and a bunch of 2lb+ fish. By far the best session I have ever had. Now that the temps have dropped and the mixed weather has come, I wish I'd had more time to dedicate to wrassing this summer.





Thanks for reading.
Chris Kennedy

 

[CKB]

A few other summer fish of note...

 

[CKB]

 

[Trampster]

Nice one Chris - good report and some great photos! Well done you!

 

[Andy1962]

Stunning Pics & report..Great PB Ballan

 

[Topwater]

Wow what lovely wrasse Chris I wish we had them in our area!

 

[nearly70ty]

Never a dull moment when it comes to the colouration of a wrasse, well done om catching a few beauties.

 

[Warby72]

Some absolute crackers there mate well done.
Scallop frills are one of the best baits there is for just about everything.

 

[Mr Fish]

Brilliant wrasse and do love using the frills for bait.

Unfortunately on the mainland when you can buy them they look like they were frozen down 50 years ago, more mush than flesh.

I used to buy a bag of frozen frills from Mick’s Fishing in Guernsey and they’d last me a week.
Hit and miss when they were available though.

 

[Valleyboy]

Brilliant wrasse and do love using the frills for bait.

Unfortunately on the mainland when you can buy them they look like they were frozen down 50 years ago, more mush than flesh.

I used to buy a bag of frozen frills from Mick’s Fishing in Guernsey and they’d last me a week.
Hit and miss when they were available though.

Bream love them as well, decent ones not that sandy frozen shit.

 

[Mr Fish]

Bream love them as well, decent ones not that sandy frozen shit.

Yep had plenty of bream on them in the Channel Islands but those were either fresh frills, or at least fresh frozen, not the gross stuff you can occasionally buy here

 

[CKB]

Thanks for the kind words lads.

On the island; we all think that scallop frills are useless once they’ve been frozen.

 

[Mr Fish]

Thanks for the kind words lads.

On the island; we all think that scallop frills are useless once they’ve been frozen.

As a visiting shore angler I did buy bags of the stuff as said and it was obviously frozen in bulk off the boat, you got quite a bit for a couple of quid.
It seemed to work okay for bream.

When we came over on a charter from the mainland either the skipper or us would make contact with the scallop boats and get fresh.
I say ‘fresh’. It sat in the bait bin for a couple of days and still caught.

Never really used it for wrasse except did have a few smaller ones on the float with it.
Tbh didn’t think to bulk it up as a bigger bait the way you have.
At the time, if I was targeting them I used live hardbacks as the locals showed me.

 

[Wolf]

Great catches.