By Lucas Theocharides

Although I am currently based up North, it was growing up around the stunning Devon coastline that gave me a fascination for the marine environment and the many interesting species of fish that live there. A recent holiday to Devon gave me a chance to revisit the area that kick-started my enthusiasm for fishing, and hopefully get amongst the amazing lure fishing opportunities present.

Day 1
Due to other commitments on the first proper day of my holiday, I only had an hour or so of fishing. I quickly headed to a pier where I had spent many hours in the past, catching an impressive variety of species. Given the limited time I had I kept it simple, fishing a split shot rig down the side with a section of gulp. I had plenty of bites from corkwing wrasse, tompot blennies and a long spined sea scorpion. The highlight though came on the first drop with a stunning rock cook wrasse, my first of the year. A promising start.

Day 2
On my second day, I was happy to fish with Will Birch for the day, a young but clearly skilled lure angler. Given the low tide, we agreed to start in a set of rockpools. It was slow going, most likely due to the scorching sunshine (not complaining though), but we both soon managed rock gobies and many shannies by fishing split shot rigs with Gulp or Isome around any structure. I also lost a small ballan wrasse. After this we headed to the same pier I visited yesterday, although it was much slower. We both had fish though and I added goldsinny wrasse, tompot blenny and a hard-scrapping ballan wrasse to the days tally. 

We then moved onto something a bit different in the evening, pike fishing with big lures. We visited a lake which, although it has suffered from poaching, still holds a decent population of pike. We both were quickly into jack pike barely bigger than the lures, but by moving round the lake we were soon into bigger fish, with my biggest being a very hard scrapping fish of around 6 pounds falling to a Savage Gear line thru roach. Will managed a stunning near double figure pike on a top water frog as well. Some may disagree with summer pike fishing, but all fish were out the water for the bare minimum amount of time and swam away very strongly! Also had some small perch by bumping an easy shiner around on the lrf gear.

After dropping Will back home and grabbing some food, I decided to head back out to a local harbour for an hour and a half in the darkness. My plan to bump a split shot rig around was quickly ditched when I saw a lot of activity around the street lights, always a good attractant for small baitfish, and subsequently predators! These predators were being very fussy though and ignored most offerings. An easy shiner fished with a 2 gram jighead on the drop eventually did the business, resulting in a chunky mackerel as well as 3 small but spirited bass. An exciting way to end day 2!

Day 3
Met up with Richard Salter on this day for some relaxing Lerfing across some varied marks. Started on the same pier I visited over the past few days and although I managed a ballan wrasse and some colourful corkwing wrasse, it was slow so we moved on. The next mark was interesting, a partially man made rockpool which at times holds a ridiculous number of rock gobies. It wasn’t quite like that on this day, although we both did manage some rock gobies as well as a small ballan each by fishing between the sunken boulders. The final mission of the day was to Brixham, an LRF mecca. Although it was tough on this day I eventually found a gap in the rocks that was full of fish, and by fishing a dropshot rig into it I managed many goldsinny wrasse as well as ballan and corkwing wrasse. Messed around with different tactics after that with varied success, although I did manage a better sized ballan on a Cheb rig as well as a solitary pollack on a Savage Gear metal.

Day 4
The next day I planned a few hours further afield to a remote rock mark. Arriving just before low tide, I fished a split shot rig with a piece of gulp into the very deep rockpools around the low tide mark. Took me a while to get going but I eventually managed a couple of small ballan wrasse and my second ever tompot blenny from a rockpool by fishing amongst the kelp. As the tide started to flood I was pushed off the deeper pools, but still managed to catch shannies and a shore rockling from some of the smaller pools. Also caught a few giant gobies which, while protected, are numerous and tough to avoid at this mark.

At some point, I ditched the rockpools and broke out the HRF gear to try for some of the big ballan wrasse that patrol the shallow gullies as the tide floods them. None of the real brutes showed themselves but a few hard-fighting ballans up to around 2-pound nailed the Cheb rigged 4” Daiwa D-fin bounced down the gullies.

Headed back after this happy with how the day went, but as the sun started to set on a perfect evening I found myself heading back to the local pier. I quickly saw that there were pollack everywhere, clearing the water chasing baitfish! Once again, an easy shiner produced the goods, resulting in good numbers of hard-fighting pollack up to a pound or so. However, as darkness properly fell the pollack vanished and I turned my attention to the pier wall. Looking around with my headtorch, I had a very specific target in mind, a quirky species that can be seen sitting on the pier wall after dark. I quickly spotted the target but missed the take on a split shot rig, prompting a change to a jighead. It didn’t take long to find another fish which took the jighead lowered in front of its nose instantly. This time my target was swung to hand, my first topknot of the year! What a way to end the day!

Day 5
My final day in Devon involved a couple of hours spent fishing a set of local rockpools. On arriving I quickly found a pool with a strange number of dead crabs in it, which had attracted an impressive variety of species scavenging the remains. However, these well-fed fish proved very tricky to tempt and losing a big tompot blenny was as close as I came to catching one of these fish. Moving from pool to pool I soon managed a few rock gobies and shannies before arriving at a crevice where I had caught a leopard spotted goby once before, but had never seen one since. To my surprise dropping into the crevice two leopard spots quickly appeared to have a look. They were quite small and proved fussy and I needed to downscale to a size 20 hook to eventually land one of the stunners! This was definitely the highlight of the day. I also spent an hour in the evening trying for an early Bream but only caught a couple of micro pouting.

Cornwall
After the Devon trip, I spent a couple of days on the stunning west coast of Cornwall before returning north. This was very much a non-fishing trip but of course I couldn’t help but sneak in a few half hour sessions here and there, catching ballan wrasse, corkwing wrasse, rock gobies, black gobies, shannies, long spined sea scorpions and pollack. The highlight though came in the form of a very decent sized (for the species) and colourful montagus blenny, sight fished from a rockpool.