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Writer's pictureMaster Baits

St Johns Point - a wrasse fishing paradise along with other species


For those who haven’t caught them yet there is something exhilarating about fishing for wrasse, jigging a soft lure along the sea bed from the rocks or a float fished worm bait and all of a sudden… BANG !!! And you are in for a fight of a life time. Great fun on light gear, wrasse tend to nibble the presented offering of a bait or lure feeling like a few small knocks and then the rod arches over as the wrasse attempts to evade behind/under any crevice, nook or cranny. It’s a scrap of a lifetime !




Donegal has some exceptional sea fishing within the county but St John's point is absolutely fantastic. A 10km peninsula jutting into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean holds many sought out species such as conger, bullhuss, mackerel, pollock, scad and garfish to name a few but I find the wrasse fishing here tends to be most prolific. I had many a wrasse here which fell to soft plastic lures although many will float a crab or worm bait in pursuit of their intended species. Lure fishing is probably the easier of the methods as it will let you manoeuvre around rocks more freely without getting bogged down with a bait set up. Going through archives you'll find record weight wrasse have been taken from Donegal Bay from the shore in which St Johns is at the heart of this area.


A 4.7lb specimen captured in Donegal Bay


Location

The beauty of fishing at St John's point is that all marks hold impressive numbers of species. You don't need one set mark or a specific rock to fish from as it is a case of parking the car and walking towards sea. Once on marks, care should be taken at all times, but particularly during south west gales as ground swells can cover the rocks. Some marks in particular can be outlined and explained in the videos below.






Gear

For fishing wrasse I don't like to go too heavy. I fish a 4000 spool reel teamed up with a rod capable of casting an once (28g). Now people will tell you to use heavier rods and higher casting weights to throw larger lures and to throw them further but I feel most wrasse I have caught have been close in under my feet feeding in the rock shelves. People may want to use heavier gear also should they want to target larger deep diving pollock. Light or heavy is fine but I prefer light due to personal preference.



While lure fishing I use soft plastics usually up to 10cm in length. People will say to go larger but I always get nips on the tail end of the lure wile the fish miss the hook, so for this reason I prefer a smaller bait to maximise chance of hookup. Any form of soft plastic with a wriggly tail will do the trick.




There's two ways I rig the lure. Method 1 is a Texas rig set up. This is a simplistic method of presenting a a bait, with the weight running free above the hook, and using a weedless hook and 10g drilled bullet, to avoid snagging in the rough terrain wrasse feed.




Method 2 entails the bait being rigged on a jig head attached to a leader. This method requires less thought as it quite literally only a hook and a swivel required.




Now when I say St John's is a wrasse paradise I am not messing but just know that essentially it is not limited to wrasse. There plenty of double figure conger and pollock for those who venture out to target them as well as good shoals of mackerel in season. On the topic of wrasse, St John's most certainly has heaps of ballans but corckwings and cuckoos can also be caught if searching hard enough!

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