Push it to the limit.

On Monday I headed west to fish two different places with my tanago rod. First stop was the River Forth where my target was the humble minnow. Normally there are lots around down the edge but for some reason there didn't seem to be any around at all. There were however a few small fish taking flies off the surface slightly further out so I decided to find out what they were. After catching and quickly returning a few small salmon parr I caught a little dace.

Dace are a lovely looking fish. I think I'll go back again soon with my float rod and centrepin to spend a day specifically targetting them.

My next stop was Magiscroft coarse fishery near Cumbernauld. Before using my tanago rod I fished maggot under an insert waggler out close to an island using a light float setup. My first two casts both quickly produced small mirror carp. Then, after a few roach and perch, I caught a few more carp which led me to believe the pond had been stocked with them recently.

Good fun on a very light float setup.

Lots of pristine roach too.

After a while I decided to switch to my tanago rod and dropped my pole float down right under its tip. With single maggot on a #26 Gamakatsu 6315 hook to 0.75lb nylon at the business end I was soon pulling out lots of small perch and the odd roach.

I employed a chop stick style grip on my 15g rod.

The main reason for my visit was to hopefully catch some gudgeon. They're a cool freshwater mini species and it had been a while since I'd caught one. Eventually, my persistance paid off when one beat the small perch and roach to my wriggling bait on the bottom. As gudgeon go it was pretty big and on my super light rod I'd go as far as to say it even put up a bit of a scrap!

A cracking gudgeon.

Keen to catch some more I carried on fishing close in but for a while all I caught was more perch and roach. Then, suddenly, my float shot under as something larger began chrging about the swim in front of me. My tiny rod was bent right over and I was worried about my hook bending out but after a few minutes playing the fish, dropping the rod to give it some line when I felt it necessary, I managed to tire out the fish and another small carp was drawn into my net.

This little fully scaled mirror really pushed my tanago rod to the limit.

I fished on for a while and caught a few more perch and roach but sadly no more gudgeon. I'm really enjoying fishing with my tanago rod at the moment. It's a very direct and fun way to fish. The small carp I caught on it has forced me to rethink what it's capable of. I'll be out using it again soon, targetting some saltwater species on a trip to Loch Etive and Oban with a few of my mates.

Tight lines, Scott.

Strictly no fishing!

This is Edinburgh Park, a large business park in the South Gyle area of the capital. In front of it there is a long pond called Loch Ross. I was reliably informed it contained fish.

On Sunday afternoon I decided to visit armed with my tanago rod, a chianti float rig and a pocket full of maggots. After half an hour or so sight fishing for the three spined sticklebacks and some lovely rudd that were in the pond I was approached by one of the site's security guards who politely informed me that there is to be strictly no fishing in the ponds. Pity, I love rudd.

Yet another rod added to my collection.

Last year after spending a day catching sticklebacks I decided to get myself a new rod for sessions targeting such small fish. After a bit of research online I treated myself to the smallest Shimotsuke Kiyotaki in the range, at only 180cm in length and weighing in at an incredible 15g I thought it was just what I was after for close range micro fishing. I think I'm correct when I say that technically it is actually a tenkara rod for use targeting small trout in small streams but to begin with I'll be using it to fish a variety of delicate bait presentations for little fish. This week I finally decided to do just that and have had several short sessions. My first was in Forthquarter Park behind the Edinburgh College's Granton campus. 

A lovely little pond in a nice park. Not sure if fishing is permitted.

The following evening after work I went out again with two of my mates, Gordon and Tomasz, to see if Inverleith Pond had any sticklebacks in it. Fishing the same float rig I managed a few including a few males resplendent in their full breeding livery.

The ambition of most Japanese tanago anglers is to catch a tanago (bitterling) that fits on a one yen coin. Completely wrong species of course but the smallest fish I caught almost fit on mine.

The following evening after work I went out again with two of my mates, Gordon and Tomasz, to see if Inverleith Pond had any sticklebacks in it. Fishing the same float rig I managed a few including a few males resplendent in their full breeding livery.

Lovely turquiose colour to this horny little stickleback's eyes and a bright red chin too. Mating season in full swing.

After an hour or so we walked to a nearby stretch of the Water of Leith where we found a pool to fish. I managed to pull out a few sticklebacks and a couple of small minnows. Tomasz was keen to try and tempt a brown trout so I let him borrow my "Bonito Basher". He set up a running ledger, was soon getting bites and before long he'd caught a fish. It was his first ever minnow and a fairly big one at that so a photograph was in order.

This greedy minnow took a #12 hook baited with double maggot.

Catching sticklebacks and minnows is fun but I wanted to see how my rod would handle some bigger fish so I headed to Eliburn Reservoir in Livingston on Wednesday evening. I've not fished there for a while and walking around it trying to find a peg to fish was tricky as there was a lot of weed around the margins. To be frank the venue's pegs could use a good raking out and all the weed made fishing tough. I ended up having to try and fish out beyond the weed and this meant I was fishing further out and deeper than was comfortable using the rod. Things were quite slow but eventually I managed a couple of perch.

Lots of these in Eliburn.

The rod handled these no problem at all and I'm still left curious just what it can handle. It was good to be out fishing again even if the sessions were very short. I'll be using the new rod again soon and will be targeting slightly bigger fish on it. I also have a strange desire to catch some gudgeon so it will be put to good use targeting them as well.

Tight lines, Scott.

More species hunting adventures on Lanzarote : Part 3.

After consuming a bit too much alcohol celebrating my epic light game bonito the night before we had a late start on the fifth day of our holiday. We decided to try a new mark and headed north to Costa Teguise where we found a small breakwater to fish from the end of. It had a large rusty sculpture at the end so we fished from the shade it provided. It was a fairly shallow spot with a sandy bottom so I was confident we might add a new species or two to our tally but it only seemed to hold one species, puffers. The amount we caught was quite frankly ridiculous and with not much else biting further out we decided to try fishing in very close amongst the boulders. Unsurprisingly this produced a few ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish but eventually we caught an emerald wrasse each as well.

A welcome change from pesky puffers!

I then spotted a red lipped blenny on a submerged rock but, as they usually do, it turned its nose up at my piece of angleworm. After a while I gave up pestering it and began dropping a split shot rig down deep dark cracks between the rocks. After a while my rig got snagged, or so I thought. Pulling it free it came up with a crab's claw on the hook so I used a rock to break it open and put the meat from inside onto my hook. Dropping this down into a big hole saw me catching a few ornate wrasse and then I caught something different which had me rather excited! My third new species of the trip and my first ever hairy blenny.

This one is a female. The males have a bright red head.

After I caught a second female hairy blenny, Nick had caught a solitary derbio and we got fed up of the puffers we decided to break for some lunch. Tasty tapas were enjoyed along with refreshing cold drinks but as it was the middle of the day rather than go fishing again we jumped back in the car and headed to Arrecife to do some Pokemon hunting from the comfort of our air conditioned hire car. As I did a tour of the city Nick scanned the area for his target. I think we were on maybe our third or forth lap when Nick suddenly shouted "STOP THE CAR!". Before I even had a chance to put the hazard lights on he was out of the car and heading off back the way we had just come. I don't know much about Pokemon but I could tell by his expression as I watching him jog back to the car in the passenger door mirror that he had caught it.

Corsola, the tropic region specific Pokemon Nick's son had asked him to catch.

Whilst driving around Pokemon hunting we had spotted some locals fishing so we decided to go back to where they were to see what they were fishing for. It turned out they were targeting mullet, using the usual crude method of a string of hooks in half a baguette so we decided to spend an hour or so fishing for them too. There were lots around so using a loaf of bread we had in the boot of the car and a little bit more finesse in our approach than the locals we had soon caught two types free lining small pieces of flake.

Most of the mullet were the thick lipped variety...

...with the odd golden grey in amongst them.

After we'd caught about a dozen mullet Nick sat under a tree to get out of the sun while I fished on for a bit. We'd seen some big bass coming up to inspect the mullet we'd managed to hook as they thrashed around and I was keen to try and catch one. I tried fishing small paddletails but I didn't have any luck  and when I returned to Nick he said he'd found the location of a nearby health centre and wanted to have the burns on his ankle looked at. A wise decision I thought so off we went. I thought we'd be there for a while but after producing his European Health Insurance Card and filling in a form Nick's burn was cleaned up and dressed after a wait of about only twenty minutes. Very impressed by the service provided we headed back to Puerta del Carmen for a break.

In the evening after something to eat we popped down to the small pier to the right of Playa Chica where we caught a few nice fish. I caught a few cleaver wrasse and Nick caught a few wide eyed flounder. Nick then hooked a nice fish that stayed deep and gave his drag a workout. Once he had played it out I went down onto the rocks at the end of the pier to land it for him. I recognised it as a drum but had to do some research back at the apartment later on to identify it as a shi drum.

A nice fish for Nick that gave a good account of itself.

As it got dark it started to rain and whist this was quite pleasantly cooling, with its arrival the action died off completely so we decided to have an early night with the intention of an early start the next morning.

Up before sunrise as planned we stayed local and headed along the back of Puerto del Carmen's harbour with our lure gear to try for bigger fish. We thrashed the water with various lures for about two hours with no reward. We did see another angler in a group along from us on the rocks catch a small bonito but apart from that nobody else caught anything. Later in the day, after Nick had visited the local health centre to have his dressing changed, we went up to Arrecife and headed out to the end of the long breakwater we'd fished from earlier in the trip. Keen to add more species to our tally we decided to fish small baits on our ultra light tackle. This approach saw us catching plenty of fish including our first combers of the trip.

Most combers were the common variety...

...but we both caught a single painted comber each too.

After a while we switched to our lure setups and began fishing a variety of lures to see if there were any larger predators around. Predictably this resulted in fairly large lizardfish attacking our jigs and paddletails.

This big atlantic lizardfish took a brightly coloured Savage Gear Sandeel fitted with a stinger.

Whilst I was reeling in a lizardfish that had taken a jig I spotted a large barracuda following it. At over a meter in length it was the biggest barracuda I've ever seen and I thought it was going to grab the hooked fish but as it got closer it lost interest, turned away and disappeared with a powerful burst of speed. It was quite exciting just seeing it. We carried on fishing for a while but when the Port Police pulled up and politely informed us and some locals who were fishing nearby that fishing wasn't permitted where we were, we apologised, quickly packed up and left, deciding just to call it a night and have a drink back at the apartment.

Our last full day had arrived and we were still keen to add a few more species to our tally. Having a think about what I'd caught the last time I visited the island but hadn't caught this time we formulated a plan and headed to the back of Puerto del Carmen harbour to a spot I though might produce a planehead filefish. After a few dozen puffers and ornate wrasse I managed to catch a few of them.

The planhead filefish is a rather funky fish.

After a while things slowed down and the all that was biting was puffers so we walked along the coast to the small pier to the right of Playa Chica again. Things were pretty quiet in the open sea there too so we turned our attention to some nearby rockpools where we had a bit of fun sight fishing for the super aggressive gobies and blennies.

There were dozens of these Madeira gobies on the bottom of the rockpools in plain sight.

The rockpool blennies were a little more timid but soon darted out of their hiding places when a piece of irresistible angleworm was dangled in their vicinity.

There's only so much fun you can have pestering gobies and blennies so we decided to try a new spot off of the rocks at the opposite side of the beach.

We hoped that this spot might produce something new.

It was relatively shallow and sandy area and with the wind at our backs we were able to cover a lot of water. Plenty of fish were biting and we soon caught a few greater weevers, lizardfish and this poor wide eyed flounder that a large lizardfish assaulted and swallowed as I reeled it in. The poor flatfish got regurgitated as I lifted its assailant out of the water.

Lizardfish snack.

The last fish of the session, or should I say the fish that ended the session, was a greater weever which, despite me carefully attempting to shake it off the hook without touching it, managed to flip itself up and sting my thumb, drawing blood. A tingling sensation soon became a gradually intensifying painful throbbing so we quickly packed up and headed off so I could seek treatment. Luckily we were near a restaurant that offered me first aid in the form of several cups of very hot water that I spent fifteen minutes holding my thumb in. Afterwards my thumb was rather numb but the sharp pain had gone so we headed back to the apartment for some (purely medicinal) alcoholic beverages.

The next day was our final on the island and as we had to be at the airport later that morning we didn't do any fishing. After packing up our stuff and checking out we had a couple of hours to kill so we went for a drive trough the volcanic landscapes of the island's Timanfaya National Park and then stopped off at the César Manrique Foundation on our way to the airport.

Examples of César Manrique's work can be found all over Lanzarote. This colourful metal sculpture is animated by the wind.

This piece of César Manrique art was obviously inspired by the islands volcanic origins.

  Manrique believed in the harmony of man and nature. A great example of his philosophy is this window in his home. It looks like the lava has poured in from outside through the glass.

Seeing a bit of the island's strange volcanic landscape and taking in a bit of culture was a nice relaxing way to end the trip and bring our adventure on Lanzarote to a close. I love that part of the world and leaving is always tinged with a little sadness but I'll be back soon for sure.

Farewell again Lanzarote.

It had been an fantastic trip and our species hunting had been a great success. Between us we caught thirty seven different species.

Here's a summary of what I caught, new species are in bold...

1. Annular Seabream
2. Atlantic Bonito
3. Atlantic Lizardfish
4. Axillary Seabream
5. Azores Chromis
   
6. Bass
7. Bermuda Sea Chub
8. Bogue
9. Canary Damselfish
10. Cardinalfish
11. Cleaver Wrasse/Pearly Razorfish
12. Common Comber
13. Common Pandora
14. Common Two Banded Seabream
15. Couch's Seabream
16. Diamond Lizardfish 
17. Emerald Wrasse
18. Gilthead Seabream
19. Golden Grey Mullet
20. Greater Weever
21. Guinean Puffer
22. Hairy Blenny
23. Macronesian Sharpmose Puffer
24. Madeira Goby
25. Madeira Rockfish
26. Ornate Wrasse 
27. Painted Comber
28. Planehead Filefish
29. Rockpool Blenny
30. Saddled Seabream
31. Striped Seabream
32. Thick Lipped Mullet
33. Wide Eyed Flounder

...here are the species Nick caught that I didn't...

34. Derbio
35. Shi Drum
36. White Seabream

...and I have to include the pesky Pokemon. A fair amount of time driving around Arrecife and a lot of money on mobile data were spent hunting for it.

37. Corsola

Overall we had a great time and obviously the highlight of the week for me was catching my first Atlantic bonito. On light game tackle it was an unforgettable, awesome experience that will really take some beating. Since returning my Rock Rover has been re-branded.

Cracking rod.

The trip wasn't without it's mishaps. Nick's sunburnt ankle and me being stung by a weever being the main two. These painful accidents are memorable all the same and memories is what it's all about at the end of the day. One thing we didn't do was take the ferry over to Lanzarote's northerly neighbour, La Graciosa. Maybe during a future visit to Lanzarote I'll make it over or perhaps La Graciosa warrants spending an entire holiday. Hmmm. There's a thought.

Tight lines, Scott.

More species hunting adventures on Lanzarote : Part 2.

On day four after my mild hangover had gone, Nick had got some dressings for his badly blistered ankle and we'd had a siesta to avoid the hottest part of the day, we were ready to fish again and headed to the back of the ferry terminal in Playa Blanca for an evening session. When we arrived there were quite a lot of small baitfish around and we spotted a few small barracuda lurking around, picking the odd one off at the margins of the shoals. As I only had my light game setup with me a small 7g metal was quickly clipped on and I tried to tempt one of the streamlined toothy predators. After a while I eventually managed to get a barracuda to follow my metal but unfortunately couldn't induce a take. After a while the bait fish slowly dispersed and the hunters disappeared so I switched to good old angleworm on a dropshot rig. It soon became evident that there were a lot of axillary seabream around and I was catching one almost every cast. Nick, who had been fishing larger metals on his lure rod, switched to similar tactics too and we were soon both catching lots of fish.

Axillary seabream are also known as Spanish seabream. They have a dark spot at the base of their pectoral fin (covered by my fat thumb) and the inside of their mouth is bright red (not photographed).

As well as the steady stream of axillary seabream we also caught a load of puffers and ornate wrasse whenever our rigs got closer in without us getting a bit further out. I also caught a few annular seabream and a cleaver wrasse. Cleaver wrasse are a very cool fish, colourful and quite unusual in appearance being very thin and sporting some weird goofy fangs.

Most of the puffers we caught were the fairly drab brown Guinean variety but occasionally a Macaronesian sharpnose puffer would get caught. They are quite nice to look at with their bright blue spots and yellow eyes. Still quite annoying when they're destroying your lure and line though.

Yet another seabream species was added to our trips tally with the annular seabream.

Cleaver wrasse are a very funky fish. They are also known as pearly razorfish and can bury themselves in sandy sea floors.

For a little while I tried fishing down in amongst the rocks to see if I could catch a hairy blenny. I didn't get one but after a few Madeira rockfish I caught a cardinalfish. Normally these are caught after dark so it was a good opportunity to get a good photo of one.

All head and mouth, Cardinalfish normally hide during the day and usually only come out into open water after dark.

As the sun got low in the sky I decided to clip on a metal jig again and see if I could tempt a barracuda. Having no luck after a while I decided to change to a different metal with a different action and I also added a dressed treble to it. It was a cheap lure but as the weight was distributed towards the back it wiggled nicely even on a slow retrieve. First cast with it and about half way in I felt a solid take. So aggressive that my rod was almost wrenched out of my hand in fact. My drag soon began screaming as something very powerful headed off on the first of many searing runs.

The fish heads towards Fuertaventura.

It was obviously a large fish, much bigger than the small barracuda that we had seen earlier so I was slightly worried that if whatever it was on the end had teeth it might cut through my 6lb leader but I managed to stay calm and resisted the temptation to apply too much pressure. Playing the fish cautiously it eventually began to tire but it was about fifteen minutes before an Atlantic bonito finally came into view. It still wasn't beaten though and it took another five minutes or so to get it in close enough to attempt landing it. Eventually the fish was beaten and I managed to get it in close enough to where Nick, who had scrambled some the slippery rocks into a landing position, did a superb job of grabbing it.

My first Atlantic bonito is a fish I'll never forget! It was 60cm long with an estimated weight of 7lb. What a powerhouse and it gave an absolutely awesome fight on my HTO Rock Rover.

The small metal that the fish took. I'm glad I swapped the treble out. It was stronger than the one it replaced but was still slightly bent out. The fish had been hooked in the upper jaw. Had it taken the lure inside its mouth my 6lb leader would been bitten through by its razor sharp teeth.

I was on quite a high having just caught easily the biggest and most powerful fish I've ever had on light game tackle. Keeping my cool, a huge slice of luck with the hook placement and Nick's fish landing skills had all played a part in successfully landing the fish and the fight it put up was incredibly exhilarating. My heart was still pounding as I sat on a huge volcanic boulder and as I tried to fully process what had just occurred it all felt a bit surreal if I'm honest. Nick fished on for a bit but after a while with no action we decided to head home to talk about what had happened over some food and a few celebratory drinks.

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the final part.