More species hunting fun on Okinawa: Part 1.

Arriving on Okinawa in the evening and driving to our accomodation, it was dark when we arrived and we were pretty hungry, so we went out for something to eat. After a large bowl of tasty Okinawa soba, we went for a walk along the back of Araha Beach before heading back to our apartment. Checking the forecast for the next few days, it had improved slightly, but with rain still forecast we decided to fish the following day at a venue where we could be close to the hire car, so we could take cover quickly should the conditions deteriorate.

The next morning, we headed to the supermarket to pick up some snacks and a bag of frozen raw prawns to use as bait. We didn’t venture too far, driving south to Ginowan Fishing Port. Fishing over the railings next to its concrete slipway, straight down the side using small hooks, it didn’t take me long to start catching some cool fish. The first few I caught were ones I’d caught before during previous Asian trips.

First up was a Kupang cardinalfish, a species I also caught the first time I visited Okinawa.

Then I caught a few anchor tuskfish.

Next was this honey-head damselfish.

Ryan didn’t get off to quite as good a start as I did, losing a couple of rigs to rough patches meaning he had to tie up new ones as a result, cutting into his fishing time. When he did open his account, catching his first ever tropical fish, it was a small threadfin butterflyfish, so he was over the moon.

A very cool first species to catch on Okinawa.

With tiny mouths, using very small hooks is essential to catch many of the tropical species. We were using #20's!

Casting out a bit, we both started catching a few different species, including some small triggerfish. I had no idea which species they were, and would later discover they were in fact juvenile titan triggerfish.

Not exactly titanic as juveniles, but when fully grown they are one of the fiercest, most aggressive triggerfish species in the ocean.

Fishing away, casting to different areas, produced a great variety of species. About half of them were new species and some, like the titan triggerfish, were identified later on in the trip.

My first ever lemon damselfish.

A few colourful manybar goatfish were caught.

We both caught a few fire-tail dottyback.

We also caught our first brown damsel species of the trip. This one is a blunt snout gregory.

Hooks were being bitten off occasionally, and we eventually caught some of the culprits. This one is Valentin’s sharpnose puffer.

Another brown damselfish. This one had a distinctive black stripe on its cheek. I’d later discover it’s a black and gold chromis.

Our first session was going pretty well. Non-stop action and a good amount of species from a relatively small area. Ryan was getting snagged a lot more than I was for some reason, which he was getting a bit frustrated about. We debated a change of venue, but as we were catching plenty of fish and there was no sign of any rain either, we opted to stay put for a little while longer to see what else we could catch.

Tight lines, Scott.

Even more species hunting fun in Japan: Tokyo and Enoshima.

I flew out to Tokyo at the beginning of November to begin another Japanese adventure. My fourth time visiting, it’s one of my favourite places in the world! Travelling with my girlfriend Lillian and my mate Ryan, we had all been greatly looking forward to our three week long trip. It was Ryan’s first time visiting Japan, so it was all new to him. For Lillian and I, we were revisiting places we’d been to before and a few new ones too.

Arriving quite late in the evening, we were all feeling pretty tired after almost thirty hours of travelling, so we got some snacks from a kombini near our apartment and headed off to bed soon after. The next day, we got up fairly early and had a busy itinerary planned. We visited a Samurai Ninja Museum, a pig café, Nakamise-dori and Sensō-ji temple, before continuing east on foot to visit Tokyo Sky Tree for some expansive views of the city.

A very expensive set of armour on display in the samurai ninja museum. 

As part of the experience, we got to throw some shuriken. 

The pig cafe was very relaxing and the pigs were incredibly friendly. 

Strolling up Nakamise-dori, Ryan spotted an unlikely tourist up on the roof.

Sensō-ji Temple was very busy. 

We spotted our first fish of the trip in the temple’s grounds. 

No directions necessary! Sky Tree is so tall you can see it from a great distance. 

The scale of Tokyo is utterly mind-boggling!

Afterwards, having walked all day, we put our Suica Cards to use and visited Akihabara, where we spent a couple of hours strolling around. Visiting the retro gaming floor in the GiGO building, we played Street Fighter II and downstairs, I wasted a few yen on a claw machine game. My efforts trying to win a female anime figure with enormous breasts proved futile. At that point, we all felt jet lag starting to kick in, so we decided to head back to Ueno for something to eat before calling it a night.

Akihabara is a cool place just to wander around. 

On our second full day in Tokyo, we took public transport to Wakasu Seaside Park, so that Ryan and I could do a few hours of fishing.  Lillian and I visited the fishing pier there the first time we visited Tokyo, but I failed to catch anything on that occasion. The pier was very busy, but things were quite slow and fishing little pieces of raw prawn, we weren’t getting any bites close to the bottom. There were some silver fish flashing their flanks just under the surface, so I tied on a tiny hook and baited it with an equally tiny piece of prawn. Flicking this out and letting it slowly fall through the water column perhaps wasn’t the best choice of approach, but a bit of persistence doing this produced my first fish of the trip in the shape of a Japanese sardinella. 

A set of sabiki would no doubt have been more effective, but I’d still managed to catch my first fish of the trip and also my first new species.

After a while, with not much happening, we decided to head away from the fishing pier to fish from the rocks to the southeast of it. By the start of the pier, we spotted some small rockpools and dropping a tiny piece of prawn in, we both caught a few small goby. 

I’d later discover they were fork-tongued goby.

Working our way along the rocks, we didn’t have any luck locating any other fish. It looked so promising, but seemed to be completely devoid of fish! Eventually, another angler caught a decent fish just along the rocks from us, but we couldn’t see what it was other than it was something silver. 

What’s he caught?

Frustrated, we walked all the way to the northeast corner of Wakasu, fishing for an hour or so near the North End Observatory. This wasn’t particularly productive either and to make matters worse, the bottom was very snaggy. Ryan got busted up by something bigger that took his bait and charged off around some rocks. This gave us some encouragement, but after losing a fair amount of tackle and retying several rigs, all I was eventually rewarded with was a crested grunter. 

I've caught this species before in Japan and other parts of Asia.

After persisting for a little while longer, we both agreed it was time to admit defeat and headed off to make our way back to Ueno. In the evening, we took a walk around the area, passing through Ueno Park before having some delicious yakitori and a few beers in an izakaya near Ueno Station. 

Lanterns all lit up at night, Bentendo shrine sits in the middle of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park.

Here's to catching a few more fish!

The next day we did a bit more sightseeing, but to kick the day off, we visited a Joshya fishing tackle shop. Afterwards, we visited Tokyo Tower and then spent a couple of hours in the teamLabs Borderless digital museum.

With an incredible amount of very cool fishing tackle, it was quite hard to maintain control. Luckily, Lillian was with me to offer some support.

Tokyo Tower may not be anywhere near as tall as Tokyo Sky Tree, but it’s still an iconic landmark in the city. 

From the top deck we took in the views, including Mount Fuji to the west.

Unlike anything I've ever done before, it was sensory overload in the maze like teamLab Borderless digital museum. 

In the evening, we visited Diver City to see the huge Unicorn Gundam statue and also to visit the miniature Statue of Liberty on the shoreline nearby. Lillian and I had seen both of these before the first time we visited Tokyo, but during the day, so it was nice to see them after dark all lit up.

All lit up at night, the statue also "transformed", although the parts that moved were disappointingly minimal.

Forced perspective that Peter Jackson would be proud of. Being roughly one seventh the height of the real thing, this replica is actually not that big.

On our fourth day in Japan, we took a train south out of Tokyo to Ofuna Station, transferred to the Shonan monorail and rode that to Enoshima Station, before walking over a bridge to the island of Enoshima. Only a few hundred metres from the mainland, the island is a popular day trip from Tokyo. I suspected that the fishing might be better there too!

My first time riding on a monorail. Public transport in Japan is brilliant!

Once over on the relatively small island, we kicked the day off with a spot of species hunting from the popular fishing spot near Shonan Port Lighthouse, where a small fenced off area for fishing faces the open sea.

Dedicated fishing areas are fairly common in Japan. The railing could use a lick of paint, but otherwise a clean, safe platform to fish from for locals and visitors alike!

The fishing, as I expected, was pretty productive with bait not lasting on the hook very long before a fish was hooked, or it had all been stripped off. Sadly, the variety in the species wasn’t as good as I'd hoped, with just three species of puffer and three species of wrasse making up our catch. 

Finepatterned puffer were the most common of the three puffer species. 

Red naped wrasse were the most common of the three wrasse species. 

We both caught a few of these Cupid wrasse. 

Multicoloured rainbowfin was the third species of wrasse we both caught. 

Ryan caught a rather large red-eyed puffer. 

We also both caught a few of these brown-lined puffer too. 

Packing up for the day, we did some sightseeing around Enoshima, treating ourselves to a squid cracker on the way up through the temple to the Enoshima Candle at the top of the island. Afterwards, we walked back over to the mainland and caught the famous Enoden electric train along the coast to Kamakura. There we visited an enormous bronze statue of Buddha and enjoyed a bowl of shirasu before heading back to Tokyo again. 

This huge bronze Torii gate sits at the beginning of a busy street selling souvenirs and food to tourists. Up past this street, you can visit various shrines on the way up to the top of the island.

We couldn't resist a squid cracker, made by squeezing whole squid and some batter in a large press. They were most delicious!

At the top of the island sits the Enoshima Candle.

It offers panoramic views, including this one of the spot we had fished earlier in the day.

This enormous bronze statue of Buddha in the seated position is the centrepiece of the tranquil Kotoku-in temple.

Baby sardines over rice. Half is eaten with a wasabi and soy sauce dressing, then a raw egg yolk is added to give a completely different taste experience. Almost two meals for the price of one! We all enjoyed this meal. It turned out to be a real food highlight of the trip. 

For our final day in Tokyo, we decided to visit a few shrines, and then we spent the afternoon wandering around Ueno Zoo. The highlight for me were the aye-aye, a very strange looking nocturnal primate with large ears and very long fingers. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a good photo of one in their almost pitch black indoor enclosure. For some strange reason, none of us took any photos of the other animals either. Possibly because it was Saturday and the Zoo was incredibly busy. In the evening, we packed our bags in preparation for our flight to Okinawa the following day. Checking the weather forecast for the coming days, Ryan and I got a bit of a surprise when we discovered that rain was predicted for pretty much the entire duration of our stay there. With lots of fishing planned on the Japanese tropical paradise, this wasn’t exactly the weather we were hoping for, but we were determined to make the most of our time there.

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the next part.

Photo opportunity.

A few days after getting back from my trip down south, I met up with my mate Ryan for a short session locally on the western breakwater of Granton Harbour. We’re off to Japan next month, so we spent most of the afternoon talking about that. Fishing away as we chatted, I caught a couple of wrasse and Ryan caught a long spined sea scorpion from around a group of large submerged boulders at the base of the sea wall we were fishing from. This area was very snaggy though, and after losing a few rigs, we turned our attention to fishing further out onto some cleaner ground. This quickly started producing lots of small whiting.

Catching dozens of small whiting wasn’t very exciting. In fact, this is the first whiting that I’ve bothered to photograph this year!

I was hoping that a passing striped red mullet might get to one of my ragworm baits, but even in the highly unlikely event that there was one around, the ravenous whiting weren’t letting anything else get anywhere near them, hitting them as soon as they hit the bottom. After a few hours, we opted to bring the session to an end, with some dark clouds rolling in making the decision just a little bit easier. Hopefully the next whiting I catch will be a Japanese one!

Tight lines, Scott.

Two fishes, one tank.

At the beginning of last week, I made the last minute decision to drive down to the southwest coast of the UK for three days to do some species hunting. Based on what some other anglers had been catching in September, I had five targets in mind. Four of them I’ve caught before, but never in the UK. These were...

Black faced blenny. I caught this one on São Miguel, in the Azores.

Comber. I caught this one on Gran Canaria.

Common pandora. I caught this one on Madeira.

Couch's seabream. I caught this one on Lanzarote.

I also had some reliable info from my mate Donny on a spot where I could perhaps catch a Couch’s goby, a rare species that I’ve never caught before. There are very localised populations of this species of goby in the UK, but they are also found in Ireland and in the Mediterranean, where this one was photographed...

A Couch's goby, photographed in Croatia. Note the second dorsal fin is taller than the first, a key distinguishing feature.
Like Couch's seabream, both species are named after Jonathan Couch, the Cornish ichthyologist and naturalist.

I decided to base myself in Weymouth, and arriving midafternoon after the long drive down, I headed over to Portland to check out a black faced blenny spot my mate Donny had found whilst snorkeling and had shared with me. The shipwrecks and reefs inside Portland Harbour are known to hold a healthy population of this diminutive species and over the last year or so, lots of anglers have been wading and snorkelling in various coastal spots around Weymouth and Portland both observing and catching the UK’s only resident triplefin.

The spot is only really fishable over low tide, and quite by chance the tide was still dropping and approaching low when I got there. It's also great because it allows you to sight fish for the black faced blenny without having to get wet! I fished for just over an hour, and in that time, despite the wind creating a bit of unwanted surface disturbance, I did manage to spot a couple of black faced blenny! Sadly, when I presented my small ragworm bait to them, I managed to spook both of them, and they quickly shot off out of sight. Feeling tired, I was encouraged by successfully locating them and would return two days later when the conditions were calmer, which might help me present my bait a little better. Before heading off to check into my accommodation, I fished nearby and caught some sand smelt, juvenile pollock and wrasse.

The following morning, I got up very early and drove west to Devon, where I met up at first light with a group of light rock fishing enthusiasts. The Big Lerf Weekender Worldwide Species Hunt had just taken place the weekend previously, and a visiting angler from Switzerland named Mathias, who was one of the anglers I would be fishing with, had caught half a dozen comber whilst participating. It’s a species that has been turning up more often this year, caught mainly by boat anglers, but also occasionally from the shore, so we were all hopeful that we could perhaps catch them too! Being a very aggressive predatory species, I knew that if any were around, there was a very good chance that we would catch them.

Rather disappointingly, it was a very slow morning, with the bites being few and far between. A few juvenile pollock, a whiting and a couple of black goby were all I caught, and the other guys also struggled. Just before high water I caught a nice ballan wrasse, but other than that the fishing was very poor.

This small ballan wrasse was the only real highlight of a very poor session.

In the afternoon, when the tide was almost fully out, the fishing became even slower. I tried moving around, but all I caught were a few more pin whiting and some sand goby. Feeling like I had caught the sun, I had a break and a spot of lunch. Meanwhile, some of the lads tried to keep themselves entertained by seeing who could be the first to catch a trio of goby species.

Donny, Rich and Aaron battle it out to see who can be first to catch a black, rock and sand goby.

It was around that point that I decided to call it a day and make the drive back to Dorset. I was feeling pretty shattered and might have stayed for longer if the fishing had been good, but it had been nothing short of terrible really, and I just didn’t think it was going to improve that much when the tide came back in, so I said goodbye to the lads and headed off.

The next day, I had a much-needed lie in. Feeling slightly refreshed, I drove back to Portland for another go at catching a black faced blenny. The wind had changed direction, and as a result the surface of the sea was nice and flat. This helped me to sight fish and I located a large specimen fairly quickly. Slowly lowering my split shot rig down fairly close to it, at first the fish didn’t react at all, but then it suddenly turned around, greedily ate the small piece of ragworm that I’d baited my tanago hook with and then sat motionless again. Quickly striking, the fish was hooked, and lifting it up out of the water into my waiting hand, I’d caught my first ever black faced blenny in the UK! Quickly unhooking it, I carefully popped it into my photo tank and put the lid on.

I’ve been after one of these in the UK for a very long time. I had my first attempt on Swanage Pier over a decade ago!

Having added a species to my UK lifelist, I was keen to add a second and as the Couch’s goby spot wasn’t very far away, I headed straight there. I thought it might be a fairly easy one to catch, as most goby species are not in the least bit shy. Three hours later and all I’d manage to catch on my one up one down rig with tiny pieces of ragworm on size 26 hooks were a few corkwing wrasse and over a dozen rock goby.

A few corkwing wrasse located and ate my tiny pieces of ragworm.

There were plenty of very hungry rock goby around.

I was beginning to think perhaps I wasn’t in the right spot when I finally caught a smaller goby that looked a little different. I moved away from the water’s edge, carefully unhooked the goby, and gently placed it into my tank for a better look to confirm my suspicions.

My first ever Couch’s goby! Difficult to make out in this photo, but its second dorsal fin was noticeably taller than its first.

Very pleased to have added two species to my UK lifelist, I headed back to my Weymouth to get some food and an early night as I planned to make an early start the following day.

I didn’t sleep very well that night, and when I got up in the morning, I couldn’t decide if I should make a seven-hour round trip to Cornwall to fish for common pandora and Couch’s seabream, or just forget about adding species to my UK tally and make the much shorter drive to Swanage Pier, where I could just have a relaxing day fishing. In the end, I tossed a coin and ended up “heading” all the way to Cornwall. I wish I had flipped tails, because after driving all that way, I didn’t get a single bite!. Not a single nibble! A blank was a terrible end to what was overall a pretty poor three days' fishing. By the time I got back to Weymouth, I was completely shattered and decided just to drive up the road the next day.

So, it was without doubt the worst fishing I've ever experienced in Devon and Cornwall, but thanks to the information given to me by Donny, Dorset had produced two of my five target species, so I can’t complain too much. I’d probably have settled for catching two new UK species at the start of the trip! Next year I'd like to spend more time down there over the summer, hopefully the fishing will be much better, and I can add a few more species to my UK lifelist. I've now caught eighty-nine species from saltwater in the UK, and I'd like to get that up to one hundred!

Tight lines, Scott.