Dedicated a couple of hours to light wrassing on a recent trip to Cornwall. I wasn’t confident that there were any big fish present at the popular mark I fished, so I focused on fishing 2-inch creature baits on the free rig with my 22g Nebular rod.
It was really good fun. I switched over to the wrasse gear from the LRF I was doing because I found myself at the bottom of the tide as it started to flood. The way the rock mark was set up was rock platforms jutting out into deeper, kelp-filled water. And as the tide started to flood you could start to pick out the Ballans making their way up the rock gullies in only a couple of feet of water. It was exciting to see. This is probably standard fare for a lot of you but the majority of the marks I fish more local to home don’t allow me the position to see this happen with my own eyes.
The start of the flood was the trigger for the Ballan Wrasse to feed. They were on it. It wasn’t very hard at all to draw one out the weed by skipping a creature bait slowly over the fronds of weed. They were so focused on their meal that they didn’t see me looking over them as they hammered the lures.
One of the lures I have been playing with recently was a Japanese purchase. The Hideup Stagger Wide Hog 2.2″. Hideup’s Stagger range of soft plastics has been around a long time, but this Wide Hog just screams wrasse at me. The characteristic wide profile screams Free Rig. A nice slow, weightless descent. But instead of the standard paddle tail or huddle tail, we have creature style appendages. In this colour especially, this lure could easily be a crab, a prawn, or even a fish. So far, the wrasse seem to agree.
The only downside with the Wide Hog is that the thin profile is easy to tear. So obviously, Ballan Wrasse destroy quite a few. I have already been busy trying to glue a few back together, but I don’t think it will be too long until I am out of these lures.