Species hunting adventures on Malta: Part 2.

On the morning of the third day of our trip, I woke up to find a text message from Gordon letting me know that he was feeling ill, had been up all night coughing, and as a result had endured a pretty sleepless night. He told me he was going to stay in his hotel to try to get some sleep and later on visit a pharmacy to get a Covid test. I decided to have a lie in, and in the afternoon fished locally around Balluta Bay, just in case Gordon felt better and wanted to wander down to join me. Sadly, he didn’t, so I ended up fishing solo until the sun set. It turned out to be quite a productive session, using small chunks of raw prawn as bait, that I bought from a supermarket and transferred into a wide mouthed flask to prolong their frozen state. Fishing both in close, and then at range out in the bay, I added a few more species to our tally and caught my first Mediterranean rainbow wrasse of the trip.

I caught a couple of small salema, dropping my bait straight down the wall of the platform I was fishing from.

I caught a couple of cardinalfish from down in amongst some rocks on the bottom. A nocturnal fish, they hide away in dark places during the day, but still be caught.

This small blue runner also fell for a piece of prawn and gave a great account of itself on my Rock Rover rod.

I was expecting the Mediterranean rainbow wrasse or the ornate wrasse to be the most common wrasse species we would catch, but that was not the case. East Atlantic peacock wrasse were the wrasse species we caught most often.

The following day, Gordon still wasn’t feeling great, so I headed out on my own again. I stayed local, walking down to Balluta Bay again, fishing with small pieces of raw prawn once more. I tried a new spot around the back of the waterpolo pool, but didn’t catch anything new. Painted comber, damselfish and seabream species making up my catch.

A particularly colourful painted comber.

A common two banded seabream. One of several small seabream I caught.

Gordon came down to join me early in the afternoon, but said he didn’t feel up to doing any fishing. He’d tested negative for Covid, which was obviously good news, said he was feeling a little bit better, and would hopefully be back species hunting with me the following day. He also said he didn’t want to give me whatever he did have, but I told him the chances were if I was going to catch it, I probably had already, given we’d been together for two days and had been sharing fishing tackle, bait and a small bait towel during that time! Rather than Gordon just standing around watching me fish, I suggested I pack up, and that we drive north so we could spend a few hours at the Malta National Aquarium. I’m a sucker for a good aquarium, and it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours out of the sun. The aquarium had many impressive displays, but my favourite was a relatively small tank with some mudskipper in it, one of my favourite groups of fish!

Mudskipper are awesome! I’ll be fishing for them when I visit Asia next month!

After driving back and dropping Gordon off at his hotel so he could try to catch up on lost sleep, I walked down to a fishing tackle shop to see if they sold live worms. Located near the small stone bridge over to Manoel Island, after confirming that they did stock small boxes of live worm, I went over the road to see what fish I could see hanging around in the shallow water around the bridge. Lots of mullet were present, so I bought a small loaf of bread and set up a two hook rig that I fished under a 1g Avon float. Throwing in some free offerings, they were soon eagerly attacking them and becoming confident. Casting my rig into the chaos, I hooked about half a dozen fish fairly quickly, successfully landing three of them. 

The first I successfully landed was a small thick lipped mullet.

This was followed by two golden grey mullet. Another two species added to our trip tally!

Thankfully, the following day, Gordon was feeling better, and was ready to start pulling his weight in our species hunt! We headed to get a couple of boxes of live worms, and then drove to Senglea, where we fished from a small platform next to the car park beneath Gardjola Gardens. It was a nice spot with panoramic views across the bay. 

Valletta across the water to our left.

Directly out in front of us was fairly deep water that I thought could perhaps produce some different species for us. Looking straight down though as we set up our rods, I spotted lots of juvenile saddled seabream, so we quickly dropped down our rigs down into them caught a few, adding another species to our tally in the process.

There were several small shoals of these juvenile saddled seabream directly below the platform we were fishing from.

A positive start to the session! Casting further out, all we caught initially were lots of painted comber and seabream species, until I finally caught a tiny brown comber. It was so small I didn't even feel it biting!

The brown comber is the smallest of the comber species in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic. Even so, this was a tiny specimen.

An absolutely massive cruise ship then arrived. As it moored opposite us on the southern shore of Valletta, its manoeuvring thrusters stirred up the sea floor. Slowly, the water in front of us went from a lovely clear blue to a slightly murky, pea green colour. The action further out slowed down as a result, so we tried closer in again. This saw us catching some wrasse, a few seabream and I also caught a tiny goldblotch grouper.

The third new addition to our tally of the session was yet another juvenile in the shape of this tiny goldblotch grouper. They all count where you're species hunting!

After that, the bites dried up completely, so we decided to head south to fish Birżebbuġa again. Revisiting the concrete slipway there to begin with, I quickly ticked off a parrotfish, the reason I wanted to fish there again.

Gordon had caught a few on day one, but I still wanted a parrotfish for this year's species tally.

Some local anglers soon turned up to float fish, so we left, letting them have the spot to themselves. Heading back along to the large rockpool by the waterpolo centre, I set about trying to tempt the fussy blenny we had seen during our previous session there. Sure enough, it was out enjoying the sunshine again, sitting on its favourite rock on the bottom. Dropping a tasty fresh piece of worm down in its vicinity, the previously stubborn fish showed immediate interest and moved over, eagerly taking the bait into its mouth. I quickly struck, but pulled the hook straight out of it again! The startled fish swam off across the bottom of the rockpool, disappearing under a large flat rock. Meanwhile, Gordon had spotted a small bass in the rockpool swimming around with a group of small mullet and focused his attention on catching that. Freelining a whole worm, it didn’t take him long at all to successfully do so, adding yet another species to our tally. Patiently waiting for the blenny to reappear, I repeatedly checked to see if it had whilst fishing in the open sea to the right of the rockpool. After catching a lot of painted comber, a few wrasse and seabream species we’d caught already, I caught the first ornate wrasse of the trip.

Another species closer to our target. I never thought I’d be so happy to catch an ornate wrasse!

After a while, the blenny finally came back out again. Lowering a section of worm down near it, the fish greedily snaffled it up again, and this time I managed to set the hook firmly in its top lip. Quickly swinging it up into my hand, I was hoping that it would be perhaps a species I'd never caught before, but it turned out to be a rusty blenny, a species I've caught many times over the years.

Only the freshest, juiciest worms will do! This fussy eater would end up being the only blenny of the entire trip.

To end the day's species hunting, we headed back around to fish over the sand at Pretty Bay. We spent thirty minutes fishing small metals out into the open sea, letting them sink before retrieving them fairly quickly,  using lots of small jerks to try and imitate a panicking bait fish. This saw a tiny barracuda have a go at my lure right at the end of one of my retrieves, and shortly afterwards I caught my second blue runner of the trip, when it smashed my metal as it got about halfway back in. Just before we left, we both caught some juvenile gilthead seabream from shallow water, drawing them out into gaps in a large seagrass bed on the inside of the small pier we were fishing from with small sections of worm.

Without a doubt, the smallest gilthead seabream I've ever caught. Like I said, size doesn't matter when species hunting. Big, small or tiny, they all count!

With two days left of our trip, we were well on our way to achieving our goal, having passed the twenty species mark. On the last two days of our trip would planned to visit Valletta and take the ferry over to Gozo. We were looking forward to visiting both and hopefully catching the remaining species we needed to achieve our objective.

Tight lines, Scott.

Species hunting adventures on Malta: Part 1.

A couple of weeks ago, whilst I was in the Edinburgh Angling Centre picking up some bits and pieces, my former workmate Gordon asked me if I had ever been to, and fished on, the islands of Malta. He was thinking about booking a last minute holiday there. I hadn’t been, but told him what I thought he could expect to catch if he decided to go and took some fishing tackle with him. A week or so later, I sent him a message to see if he was going. He told me he had booked up and was going on his own at the end of September. I’ve always fancied visiting Malta, so I thought about it briefly and asked him if he wanted some company! He said yes, that would be great, so I booked my flights, accommodation and a hire car for us to explore Malta in. Easily the most impulsive, last minute foreign holiday I’d ever decided to go on, we flew out from Edinburgh and arrived in Malta early in the afternoon. On the flight down there, as we passed over Sicily, I spotted something off in the distance.

Smoke rising from Mount Etna off in the distance. Other budget flights are available.

After picking up our hire car and dropping off our luggage at our hotels, we were on our way to wet our lines. The standard of driving on display during the short twenty odd minute drive was a real test of my patience and hazard perception to say the least! Thankfully, we made it to the south coast town of Birżebbuġa in one piece and parked the car next to a large rusty statue.

This artwork celebrates the end of The Cold War.

Fishing with small pieces of dehydrated ragworm, we were both quickly catching a few small fish. As we did so, I suggested we set ourselves a target of thirty species for the week. As is usually the case at the beginning of a trip, we got our species hunt off to a good start. Within an hour or so, we’d caught nine between us. I caught damselfish, painted comber, East Atlantic peacock wrasse, common two banded seabream and annular seabream. Gordon caught some five spotted wrasse, parrotfish, Mediterranean rainbow wrasse and a solitary ocellated wrasse. Somehow, neither of us had caught any of the species that the other had!

There were lots of damselfish around. Expert bait strippers!

One of the larger East Atlantic peacock wrasse I caught.

Further out there were a few annular seabream.

After a while, the bites dried up considerably, and we were struggling a bit in the heat too, so we headed around to the side of the Birżebbuġa Waterpolo Club, a few hundred meters away from where we had started our first session, where we were able to fish in the shade. There, we found a large rockpool and set about catching a few mini species from the bottom of it. There were lots of goby on the sandy bottom and a couple of large blenny sitting on rocks. The goby proved very straight forward to catch, but the blenny weren’t so easily tempted by our small pieces of dried worm. 

There were two species present. The majority were incognito goby.

Amongst them, usually hiding, was the odd rock goby.

Next, we switched our focus to fishing in the sea next to the rockpool, where as well as a few more of the species we'd already caught, I managed to add a few five spotted wrasse to my own tally.

The five spotted wrasse, so named due to the five spots on its dorsal fin. These aren't always well-defined. It belongs to the same genus as the corkwing wrasse.

Before we left, we walked around the outside of the waterpolo pool to the end of the beach in Pretty Bay. After taking a short break on a bench, where we enjoyed some fried chicken, chips and some cold drinks, we spent some time fishing over the sand as the sun set. Surprisingly, this wasn’t very productive and only produced a couple of small white seabream. Still, it had been a fairly fruitful start to our species hunting. We were into double figures after only a few hours fishing!

These small white seabream were caught by casting back towards the shoreline, very close to the beach.

On day two, I picked Gordon up from his hotel and we headed west, to fish from the rocks near Zurrieq Valley. The sea inlet there is where all the boats leave from to take their passengers to see the famous Blue Grotto, one of the most popular tourist attractions on the island. Gordon and I stopped briefly at the cliff top view point on our way there and took in this stunning geological feature from above.

Perhaps the most visited tourist spot in Malta.

Once we made our way down, parked the car and clambered down on to our chosen spot on the rocks, the never ending boat traffic, and also multiple groups of divers passing by, made fishing very difficult. We quickly used up the small amount of dried ragworm we had left and switched over to using Gulp! Angleworm, but neither hook bait produced a single fish! Breaking for lunch in a small restaurant, we decided to head south in the afternoon to fish from a small breakwater near Delimara Power Station. Before we paid the bill, we asked the chef for a small portion of raw squid, so we could cut it into little strips to use as bait. Unfortunately, the fishing there also turned out to be very challenging. The bottom was very snaggy, and we lost a fair amount of end tackle. It felt like we spent more time tying up rigs than we spent fishing, but eventually our persistence paid off when I caught a small wide eyed flounder.

I love catching wide eyed flounder. I'd love to catch a bigger one, having only ever caught palm sized specimens.

After losing a few more rigs, we moved to a second spot right next to the power station’s gates where the bottom was much cleaner, but this only produced a few small painted comber and seabream species that we had caught already. It had been a difficult morning’s fishing, and we’d only added one species to our tally. We decided to head to a third venue, the pier on the left hand side of the entrance to Portomaso Marina.

The entrance to Potromaso Marina with the Hilton towering over it.

In terms of numbers this turned out to be a great spot, but the species were fairly limited, and we didn't add any new species to our tally sadly. As well as the occasional damselfish and annular seabream, the odd Mediteranean rainbow wrasse for Gordon, which were proving elusive for me for some reason, all we caught were lots of common two banded seabream and even more painted comber.

The area held lots of these little common two banded seabream.

Painted comber are plentiful around Malta. This colourful, aggressive, toothy predator was by far the most common catch from the pier.

So, day two had very much been a game of two halves, a tough morning during which we had only added one new species to our tally, and an action packed afternoon that had failed to produce anything we hadn't caught already during the trip. Fitting then, that in the evening we went out for a meal, then enjoyed a few drinks whilst we watched some football in a bar down in St Julian's by Spinola Bay. We were still on track to reach our target of thirty species, and with plenty of venues for us to try during the coming days, I was quietly confident that we'd be able to hit it.

Tight lines, Scott.

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