More species hunting fun on Okinawa: Part 2.

As the two of us fished away in Ginowan Fishing Port, a few other anglers arrived and starting fishing just along from us. One of them was fishing with live baitfish, so there may have been some bigger fish around, but Ryan and I were content targeting smaller fish and trying to rack up as many species as we could. The next species I caught was a Campbell’s goby.

I’d caught Campbell's goby previously on the South Korean island of Jeju.

This was followed by my first ever unicornfish which was pretty awesome. I’d discover later it was a bignose unicornfish.

They develop their "big nose" when they become an adult.

The species just kept coming. It was quite remarkable really. Almost every other fish we caught was an addition to our tally. For Ryan, every species he caught was a new one and for me, about half of them were new.

I then caught a sapphire devil which Ryan was a little bit jealous of. I was sure he would catch one.

Next up was another new species for me, a Batu rainbow wrasse.

Followed by a Yellowfin surgeonfish. I caught one of these in Phuket last year.

We then caught a few of these staghorn damselfish.

Shortly afterwards, I caught my first threadfin butterflyfish of the trip.

Two more new species then took my small pieces of prawn. The first was this yellowtail emperor.

It was followed by my first ever brown dottyback.

I also caught a whitespotted devil, which confusingly has blue spots.

By this point, we’d been fishing for about three hours, and things eventually started to slow down a bit. Perhaps the commotion caused by dozens of fish being hooked and wound in by the two of us had spooked the rest from the area, or maybe it was due to a change in the tide. Either way, or whatever the reason, we were also aware that it could also start raining at any moment and that any dry weather window was precious, so we decided to move to another venue not too far away to try our luck there. Hopefully it would be just as productive!

Tight lines, Scott.