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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