Big ballan buzz
A small town in Devon is a hotspot for hard-fighting ballan wrasse running to bigger than average sizes
Heading to a new venue always gives me an extra buzz, but add the mere mention of specimen size ballan wrasse into the mix and I am oozing with enthusiasm and excitement, just like a young child entering a sweet shop. On this occasion my target destination was Budleigh Salterton, a small seaside town situated midway between Seaton and Exmouth on the South Devon coastline.
Joining me for the road trip was Steve Lawrence from Poole, along with Stuart Withyman from Honiton and Darren Bell from Exeter. Our target venue would not be the main beach at Budleigh, but the eastern end where the River Otter spills from a
winding estuary a few hundred metres to the east of the main car park.
With Stuart Withyman having a wealth of information when it comes to fishing along this stretch of coastline, we had been warned that it is only really viable to fish the last three hours of the flood with big peeler crab baits. The target species would be bass and ballan wrasse, with the latter nearly always over 3lb.
The ground is also pretty rough in places, meaning the fishing tackle needs to be chosen accordingly, with pulley rigs and size 2/0 hooks recommended.
While this is mainly a summer venue, forget weekends because the whole stretch can be very busy with a variety of watersports enthusiasts. We chose an evening tide when, hopefully, the majority of beach users would have headed away.
INSTANT BITES
Pulling into the car park at 4pm the beach was still busy, but with high water at 8.30pm, around dusk, there was plenty of time. As Steve and me headed along the spit to where the Otter flows out, an exodus of the holiday hordes had thankfully begun.
Arriving at the area directly in front of the reef, the tide was still a couple of hundred metres from the shoreline, but you could see it was making at a rate of knots. Although it was still early in the tide, we were keen to get baits in the water. We had some ragworms because Stuart was supplying the peeler crabs. Within a few minutes of the baits hitting the water, the rod tips started to rattle away. The culprits turned out to be school bass, not really the target, but it gave us hope of better things to come.
The water was flowing out to the left of
the reef, but sometimes it will flow out to the right depending on the recent weather conditions.
Right on schedule, just three hours before high water, Stuart and Darren arrived, meaning the serious fishing could start. While Stuart favoured peeler crab baits, Darren chose a whole squid for both bass and wrasse. With various baits in use it was going to be an interesting session.
They expected we would catch only a couple of bass and ballan wrasse each if we were lucky. Even though the ground looked perfect for dogfish, neither of them had seen one caught from this venue. Well, on that point they would both be proved wrong.
Stuart launched a decent-sized peeler crab bait, secured on a size 2/0 hook, which landed just short of the reef in the rapidly making tide. Five minutes later his rod started to show signs of life before the tip buried as something very angry was violently shaking its head. Stuart played the fish through the shallows and was soon holding a strikinglooking ballan wrasse. As he had predicted, there are only bigger ones along this section and it was certainly over 3lb.
With that fish safely returned, it was Steve who was next to sample the action. He landed an equally striking fish; these South Devon ballans certainly give a good account of themselves and shoot off like rockets once released.
While I was taking the last pictures of Steve’s fish, Stuart shouted out that one of my rods was bouncing. Alas, by the time I cantered over to the rod the fish was long gone. Fortunately, only a few minutes after re-baiting, my rod was bending over once again. This time I made no mistake and
soon recorded yet another ballan wrasse, which, like the other, really shook its head as it entered the shallows.
I was certainly on a roll as two more equally good ballans followed in consecutive casts. Three hefty ballan wrasse within with the space of 15 minutes left me like a trembling wreck but, unbelievably, there was still better to come.
VIOLENT TAKE
Darren who was using a very large squid bait had missed one bite, but then made no mistake a few minutes later when he had a really violent take. A fish slammed into his rod with considerable force and the ensuing fight was fairly dramatic. After a few minutes he guided a superbly coloured ballan into the shallows; it was a real cracker.
After I took a few quick pictures, it was released. It was interesting that it had grabbed the large squid, which would not be my first choice of bait when targeting wrasse. I will certainly be using it in the future.
After Darren returned his ballan, the wrasse suddenly switched off as the water was rushing into the estuary. You have a very short window of opportunity to make contact with these hard-fighting fish. Blink and they are gone, but there was another twist to the story.
Slowly recovering my composure after a hectic couple of hours rushing around with the camera, I had a more aggressive bite; definitely not a wrasse. Initially I thought it was a bass as it put up a really good account of itself in the fast flooding tide, especially when seeing flashes of silver as it neared the shallows. Much to my surprise the culprit turned out to be a black bream. Stuart stood with his mouth open; in all the years he had fished this mark he had never seen a bream landed.
There is always a first time for everything and Steve was just about to press home the point. With the light rapidly fading towards high water, we were ready to call it a day when he had a series of small pull-down bites. They were nothing like the bream or wrasse previously caught. A few minutes later he beached a dogfish, which left Stuart really puzzled. It proves in this fishing game that the unusual can always happen.
In the space of twenty minutes we had caught two completely unexpected species. It’s a funny old game. ■