We’ve a six week old baby at home – our first – so my days roving around the South Coast in search of big ballan wrasse are on somewhat of a hiatus for now.

All things considered, I’ve been incredibly lucky to manage two days fishing this month. Instead of the usual roaming around remote and rocky stretches of the coast I’ve been keeping close to the car, and making sure I’ve had reliable phone signal at all times! I’m not complaining though, and the light rock fishing (LRF) for tiddlers that I’ve been enjoying around Dorset’s harbours and piers has been really rewarding – and just the light relief needed with the intensity of things at home.

Somewhere in the blurry midsts of the last few weeks I hatched a plan to attempt to catch all six of the UK wrasse species from the shore. A wrasse Grand Slam, if you will… I’m thinking it must have been the effects of sleep deprivation! These next couple of posts are my first attempts at making a dent in that challenge. Ballan, Baillon’s, Corkwing, Cuckoo, Goldsinny and Rock Cook – I’ve been lucky enough to catch two of these to date; the ballan and the corkwing. I suspect one of the remaining wrasse will prove trickier to catch from the shore than the others, but in the weird and wacky world of LRF you never know what’s around the corner…