More species hunting adventures on Tenerife: Part 1.

At the end of last year, I booked a trip to the Canary Island of Tenerife for myself and two mates, Nick and Ryan. It's always good to get some winter sun and the weather conditions here in the UK over the last couple of months have been absolutely dreadful, so when we headed to Edinburgh Airport earlier this month we were really looking forward to getting away! Also, it had been just over ten years since I last visited Tenerife, and that was a family holiday, so I was keen to return to see what I could catch on a dedicated fishing trip. We had plenty of tackle packed, from ultra light all the way to very heavy beachcasters, and we planned to target a wide variety of species. I was hopeful I’d catch some species for the first time too and had researched a list of potential targets, some more likely than others!

It was an early morning flight, so we arrived just before noon. As soon as we'd picked up our hire car and dropped off our luggage at our apartment, we drove down to San Juan Harbour and went fishing at the end of its outer breakwater. Fishing in Spanish harbours and marinas is normally forbidden, but there's an area at the end of San Juan's large port where fishing is authorized and it’s popular with locals and tourists alike. Fishing with light tackle, using small pieces of raw prawn, it didn't take us long at all to catch a few fish. To begin with, I focused on the submerged rocks straight down the end of the breakwater. We were all expecting ornate wrasse to be the first species to be caught, but surprisingly, a few others grabbed our bait before they did.

My first fish of the trip was this small Madeira rockfish. These have poisonous spines, so handle carefully!

It was followed by a few Canary damselfish,...

...and a solitary parrotfish.

At one point my rig must have dropped into a gap in the boulders and up came a cardinalfish. They hide in dark places during the day and come out after dark.

Eventually we all caught ornate wrasse. Ryan somehow managed to avoid them for a lot longer than Nick and I did, but eventually, this one took his bait.

After a while, I began casting my rig out as far as I could to see if I could catch a few different species from the deep water out from the end of the breakwater. The bottom was mostly clean, with the odd rocky area. I caught a wide eyed flounder, a few more ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish, and then my first puffers of the trip. They wouldn't be my last!

Wide eyed flounder are fairly common over sand in the Canary Islands, but they don't get that big and have relatively small mouths.

Puffer are a pain, but at least the Macaronesian sharpnose puffer has some beautiful markings.

The following day, we headed to the outskirts of Los Cristianos, where we fished from a small concrete platform. Ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and puffers were all we caught to begin with. The venue was pretty busy, with most anglers float fishing, so we were restricted to fishing in the gaps between them initially, but in the afternoon a group of them packed up and left, so we then had a bit more freedom to cast our baits into some new areas. Eventually, I found a small sandy patch diagonally out from the corner of the structure, and this produced a couple of Atlantic lizardfish, and a solitary greater weever.

Like the wide eyed flounder, the Atlantic lizardfish is commonly found over sandy areas.

As is the greater weever! Both similar in colouration, with browns and electric blues, confirm what you’ve caught before you grab to unhook!

In an attempt to catch a needlefish, I then switched to fishing a small bait under a float. There are two species of needlefish present in the Canary Islands that I have never caught before, so I was hopeful that at least one of those would be in the vicinity. Nick also switched to fishing with a float, although he opted for a heavy spinning rod so he could fish a larger bait under a much bigger float. I didn’t have any luck with my target species sadly, but after a while Nick’s rig drifted over a shallow reef and his float disappeared. He got a bit of a surprise when he wound in an eight legged culprit. 

Probably not what Nick was hoping would grab his big fish bait. 

Having no luck adding anything else to our trip’s species tally from the open sea, I decided to wander over to the nearby rocks where I was confident I could quickly pull out a couple of species from the small rockpools.

Intertidal rockpools should not be ignored on a species hunt! I wasn’t expecting anything unusual and only caught the two species I suspected I would. 

There were lots of super aggressive rockpool blenny and I caught one almost immediately.

In their midst were a few Madeira goby. Still aggressive but not as fast to attack my bait as their rockpool companion, it took me a little bit longer to catch one of them.

Our trip had gotten off to a fairly productive start, but having only visited spots that I had fished the last time I was on the island, I was keen to explore some new spots. There was one slight problem however. We may have left the cold and rain behind in the UK, but the wind was blowing strongly from the north east and this could perhaps throw a spanner in the works. We decided to go for a drive around the island the following day to find out how bad the swell was on the eastern and northern coasts. I was hopeful we’d be able to wet a line somewhere, but if not we could just drive back to the south west and find some shelter there. 

Tight lines, Scott.