I had my suspicions that a shore caught cuckoo would end up being a tricky customer, and unfortunately, they were! The trouble is that cuckoos generally like to live in deep water, and that isn’t something that’s super abundant within casting range of the Dorset coast… I would guesstimate that most of my favourite Dorset rock marks aren’t much deeper than 10-15 feet, and that’s at a push!
Planning some fishing for my last few weekends of summer freedom I stumbled upon deepest Cornwall for the mysterious cuckoo. In my Google searches I’d found credible reports of them frequenting the stretch of coast between Land’s End and Mousehole, and I’d soon read enough… I was sold, all in, pot committed. With a polybox full of frozen prawn and crab I drove the five and a half hours towards Penzance in a fishy daze.
The spot of choice oozed classic Cornwall; at the end of a bushy lane of stone fisherman’s cottages, sprawling gunneras, echiums and blue hydrangeas – sporting a trouty babbling brook and cobblestone slipway. The aqua-blue shallows of the cove quickly gave way to deep water that was chock-full of kelp, with a 2oz lead taking a good ten plus seconds to hit the deck. I arrived on a warm Friday afternoon, fishing the slightly easier to access side of the cove to avoid a nuisance string of crab pots. Once set up on the rocks I fished hard with prawn for a good 3-4 hours; the ballan were incredibly obliging in a deep and shadow-filled gully at the cove’s end, but the cuckoo remained elusive.
Dodging a seal, I cut back along the rocks to fish the main belly of the cove, flicking a few whole prawns out around 25 yards, towards another string of pots. My tip was soon being yanked, but it was all very subtle – sporadic pings, sometimes seconds or even minutes apart. They were positive, but not quite bites. I eventually connected with one – a small ballan – and then, unexpectedly, a second. Whatever I’d hooked spent a few seconds writhing on the seabed, not wanting to budge, before lolling over and coming in like a floppy banana peel… When the slender form of a cuckoo broke the surface I wound like a mad man!
Bringing it in, grinning from ear to ear, I admired the elongated form of the last wrasse I needed to collect. It was a stunning creature – as bright as brass – and this example was truly intersex, with the neon blue face paint and yellowy shimmer of a male but the strawberry blush of a female. It was neither a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, but a flamboyant in between. The sixth and final chapter of ‘Labridae’ could be closed – the deed was done! Six species of colourful wrasse, all shore caught from around the south coast… It’s a properly daft achievement, but a special one.
