I’d got a couple of days off last week and was looking forward to fishing with a long time fishing mate, Colin Albert from Cardiff and a member of WSF. The original plan was to fish Mumbles Pier for the chance of a trigger fish and then move on to Llangennith for a golden grey mullet. Our plans changed with the weather forecast which was, to say the least, bad! Southwest winds backing south then south east, swinging south again and the Shipping Forecast was giving potentially force 8 gales at times.

Instead of me travelling south, Col came north and we opted for a session on Holyhead Breakwater. Not a venue I’d choose normally, but it is a good banker for smaller species, which given the forecast looked the best bet.

We set up not too far from the end section. The weather forecast, for once, was bang on. It was blowing a steady 6 and gusting close to 8 at times, plus was intermittently raining heavily. There were also huge rafts of weed running on the surface with the tide close to the inside of the inner wall making ledgering at range difficult to say the least! The sea was also full of suspended sediment and looked not the best for fishing.

We went out at distance on to the cleaner ground and picked up dogfish and the odd small whiting, but it was obvious this was all we’d get on the distance baits, but we persisted with them with intermittent success.

We were both looking to add to our annual species count, so set up very light dinking gear with rigs using hooks as small as size 20 fished right down the side of the wall to target the mini species.

Over low water and the first of the flood this quickly built up a respectful species count. Col Picked up goldsinny, corkwing and ballan wrasse, plus shannies, small pollack, plus the dogs and whiting. I had all these, plus added codling, coalfish and shore rockling to make it 10 species for the day, though most fish were pretty small.

We’d got a few fresh soft crab, so once the water depth had built up enough on the flood I dropped a double crab bait in just a few yards out and winkled out a half decent ballan wrasse, but even this was under 2lbs. Not a good day by normal standards, but a day rescued from the clutches of being fully blown off just about everywhere else.

The codling, coalies and rockling gets me up to 33 for the year so far, but it looks like I’ve dipped out on the triggers and golden greys again this year, which would be totally new species for me, as I’m now set to work away from home a fair bit for the rest of the summer. Always next year, I guess, but these repetitive poor and windy summers are becoming too set as a pattern for my liking!