Mission accomplished!

Hearing reports of numerous bluemouth being caught recently on a charter boat running out of Burghead, I booked a couple of places for myself and my mate Nick out with skipper Barry of Moray Firth Fishing Charters on Saturday. With a nasty storm on the way, it was touch and go whether or not the trip would be cancelled, but in the end it went ahead. We drove up the evening before and stayed in a hotel so that we wouldn’t have to make the four hour drive up there early in the morning on the day. It was a good decision and as the boat didn’t depart until 10:00 we were up, had breakfast and headed down to the harbour early, feeling well rested and were both raring to go. 

I had a short stroll on the beach to take a look at the rotten remains of an old boat. 

I’m not sure why, but I had a really good feeling about the trip. Over thirty bluemouth had been caught over the last two rough ground trips, and when I told Barry I was hoping to catch one, he boldly told me I was guaranteed to catch one. Within an hour of reaching the rough ground mark, about ten miles to the north of Burghead, he was proved right. Fishing mackerel strips close to the rocky bottom, after catching a few cod, ling, poor cod and pouting, I saw a bright red rockfish coming to the surface and very quickly swung it up into the boat. 

My first ever bluemouth, also known as the blackbelly rosefish. Much more importantly though, I’d caught my one hundredth species of fish in Scotland!

Mission accomplished! A small specimen, but I was over the moon!

I’ll be honest, I would happily have headed back to dry land there and then. Not because I had caught what I’d wanted, but because the sea was pretty rough and the boat was rolling around as it drifted, making fishing pretty challenging, and at times, quite uncomfortable. One person was soon suffering with sea sickness and decided to stop fishing. I don’t know how more people didn’t get ill to be honest. Being so far off shore in a strong southerly wind, it was very rough. Probably the roughest sea I’ve ever fished afloat in! As the day went on, a steady stream of fish were boated. I think everyone on board caught at least one bluemouth, Nick caught a few and I ended up catching five in total. In addition to lots of ling and cod I also caught some nice male cuckoo wrasse and a solitary short spined sea scorpion. 

Bluemouth weren’t the only colourful fish down there.  

I was hoping to catch a really big short spined sea scorpion, but this small one was still most welcome. 

Towards the end of the trip, we decided as a group to head back in an hour early. I think the swell had taken its toll on most. Despite the difficult conditions, it had still been an enjoyable day out with Barry, and I’d caught my one hundredth Scottish fish species. So what now? Having reached this personal milestone, I’ve every intention to keep trying to add further species to my Scottish tally. Next year though, I’m going shift my focus a little and spend time trying to add to my UK saltwater species tally. I’m currently on eighty six and I sure you can guess what my target is? No doubt a few trips to the south coast of the UK will be on the cards, although I can still catch new Scottish species that will also add to my UK tally too. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Short, but sweet.

Back in August, I was contacted by fellow species hunter, Luke Ovgard, about fishing around Edinburgh, as he was going to be spending a weekend in the Scottish capital with his two brothers in October. Not a particularly great time of the year to go fishing, I warned him, but I agreed to meet up with him when he was here to try and help him catch something new. Luke has travelled all over the world and caught over 1350 species along the way, including many of those found around the coast of this part of Scotland, so he sent me a spreadsheet containing all the species he’s ever caught. Having a look through it, I spotted a few species he hadn't caught that we could try to catch. If the conditions were favourable, I felt that we could possibly encounter ballan wrasse, butterfish, leopard spotted goby, pollock, poor cod and Yarrell’s blenny. Luke arrived from Stuttgart, where he currently lives and works, last Thursday evening, and spent the weekend sightseeing in Edinburgh and exploring further afield, making it as far north as Fort William. I had a couple of sessions last week in preparation for ours, just to see what was around. For the first session, I collected some live prawns to use as bait. Netting them out, I found a couple of tiny fish in my net with them.

Probably the smallest wrasse I’ve ever seen. I believe it’s a corkwing wrasse.

In amongst the prawns was also a tiny sand smelt.

Over the two sessions prior to meeting up with Luke, I caught a few fish, but the conditions were far from ideal. The temperature had dropped, and it was very windy too, making fishing quite unpleasant. The sea was pretty rough too and was coloured up as a result. Given the effort required to catch hardly any fish, I was concerned that we might struggle.

At St Abbs I did catch a few coalfish, but it's a species Luke had caught already, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Maine.

At the inlet area at Torness Power Station, I caught a few juvenile cod. Luke had caught this species already as well.

Trying to catch a ballan wrasse proved to be a bit of a waste of time, with only this solitary long spined sea scorpion taking my ragworm section. Another species that Luke had already ticked off.

During the second session, I caught a solitary poor cod. The only fish I caught over the two trips that Luke hadn’t caught before!

We had originally planned to meet up on Sunday evening, but the highland road trip Luke's brothers had organised that day ruled that out. In the end, we met up early on Monday morning, only fishing together for just over two hours, the only time available before Luke had to head to the airport. Arriving at the inlet area of Torness Power Station, the wind had dropped off, had also changed direction and the sea was pretty flat. Whilst it was still very cold, we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of fish we caught. In amongst them, Luke caught his first ever poor cod and pollock, which he was over the moon about.

Luke's first ever pollock.

I was really enjoying his company, and while we fished away we had a great conversation about some of the species we’ve caught, some of the places we’d fished and some of our future species hunting plans. Before we knew it though, it was time to pack up. Focusing on the fishing and our discussion, I hadn’t even taken any photos during the session. It had been great to meet up and when I dropped Luke off, he surprised me with a parting gift, a copy of his book “Fishing across America”, which I am currently reading. I really hope our paths cross again in the future. If he visits Scotland again, which I've suggested he does and next time during the summer months, I’m sure we could travel around Scotland for a few days catching lots of fish! It would be a pleasure to fish together again, and hopefully I could help him add a few more species to his already very impress tally!

Tight lines, Scott.

No need to be koi.

So, it’s come to my attention that the koi carp isn't the same species as the other carp species found in the UK. It was recently recognised that they were in fact originally bred from the Amur carp, Cyprinus rubrofuscus, not the Eurasian carp, Cyprinus carpio, as is commonly erroneously stated. This means that I've gained a Scottish species and now only require one more to hit my target of one hundred!

Scottish species number ninety nine, and I didn't even have to leave the house to add it to my tally!

The taxonomy of fish is ever evolving as different studies improve our understanding of it, and on this occasion I’ve definitely benefited from such a development. On a related note, the bullhead has also been the subject some taxonomical reclassification in recent years. What was once considered to be a single species, encompassing several continents, is now understood to be a complex of at least fifteen distinct species. Two separate studies have discovered that the species found in the UK, native to northern England and introduced into southern Scotland, is in fact cottus perifretum instead of cottus gobius. I’ve edited my lifelists to reflect this but as there’s still only one bullhead species in the UK I’m not gaining a species in this instance. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Species hunting adventures on Malta: Part 3.

On our penultimate day on Malta, we visited its capital, Valletta. Parking in the Valletta Ditch Car Park, before walking up into the ancient city, we headed to a rock mark on its northern shore. The fishing there was reasonably good, but we didn’t catch anything new. The bottom was rocky and painted comber were yet again present in large numbers, aggressively hitting our worm baits. I did manage my second Mediterranean rainbow wrasse of the trip, a small male.

Mediterranean rainbow wrasse proved to be fairly few and far between at the spots we fished.

After loosing several rigs to the rocky sea floor, and getting fed up tying new ones up, we tried fishing small metals for a while, but had no luck with those. It was the hottest day of the trip, so we headed back to the car, put our gear away, and walked up into Valletta. Its narrow side streets provided some respite from the beating sun, and a cold drink in The Pub was followed by a stroll up to the Upper Barrakka, just in time to witness one of the cannons there being fired.

One of the many, very picturesque narrow streets in Valletta!

A lot of thought obviously went into naming this traditional British drinking establishment. In 1999, the late great actor Oliver Reed had his last ever drink here whilst having a drinking competition with a group of Royal Navy sailors. He had a heart attack and died aged 61.

Boom! Despite knowing the cannon is fired at 16:00, and the gunner shouting loudly that he was about to fire it, several spectators almost ruined their underwear.

Leaving Valletta, we stopped at a tackle shop and replenished our supply of live worms before driving back to St Julian's, where we fished from the end of Spinola Pier. Dropping our rigs straight down the end, Gordon caught his first blue runner and I caught a small dusky grouper. Casting further out, we caught lots of painted comber and a few seabream species. I was hoping to catch a black scorpionfish once it went dark, but sadly didn’t manage to get one. Switching to freelining small pieces of worm, saw us both catching a few cardinalfish, saddled seabream and our first bogue of the trip, before we called it a night.

Spinola Bay from the end of Spinola Pier.

Dusky grouper are an awesome ambush predator!

Bogue are awesome food source for a variety of predators!

On the way back to the car, we passed a statue of a fisherman sorting his catch and a cat hoping to be fed.

Up early on our final day, we drove north to take the ferry over to Gozo. On the way, we stopped at the western end of the beach by Għadira Bay, where we quickly discovered that fishing was not permitted. Fishing from the rocks at the end of the beach, I reasoned, was not fishing from the beach, and a few casts from them produced a solitary striped seabream.

No fishing on the beach. Where does the beach end though?

Where the rocks begin surely?!

Our first striped seabream of the trip! Well worth being a little bit naughty.

Once on the ferry and up on its open deck, we quickly realised that we really should have checked the forecast before deciding to visit Gozo, as it was very windy and there was a bit of a swell running. This was blowing from the north and meant that some of the marks I had planned to take us to might not be fishable, but we decided to visit them anyway. First we headed north to a small pier located between Qbajjar and Marsalforn, where we found waves coming up over the end of it. On top of the pier’s wall there were some religious slogans. One sounded strangely familiar.

Sounds a bit like the slogan of a very popular energy drink?

Luckily, we managed to find a spot close by that we could fish from, and dropping small worm sections down at close range we caught a few wrasse and seabream species that we’d already had earlier in the trip. Soldiering on, I eventually added a black seabream to our tally.

The first and only black seabream of the trip

Next we headed to Dwejra Bay over on the west coast of Gozo. Driving down the winding road that leads to it, it was immediately obvious that we wouldn't be doing any fishing, but we parked the car and walked down to take in the scenery.

Fungus Rock sits in the middle of Dwejra Bay. I wanted to fish from the rock on the right had side of the bay, but the waves coming over it meant that was out of the question.

Heading back to the car, we discussed whether there were any freshwater venues on Gozo. Gordon did some Googling, and it turned out there was a small pond not too far from where we were. The website he found also mentioned that the pond was home to the endemic painted frog as well as the introduced Eastern mosquitofish! Having caught these tiny, aggressive fish whilst in Florida earlier this year, I was sure they would be an easy target. We were sitting on twenty nine species, so catching one would see us achieve our goal leaving the remainder of the day to perhaps add a few more.

San Raflu Lake. The only naturally occurring body of freshwater on Gozo.

Using a tanago hook baited with a tiny fleck of worm, I very quickly caught the smallest fish of the trip. The Eastern mosquitofish is a super aggressive little swine.

Mission accomplished, we headed down to our next spot, Xlendi Bay. We grabbed lunch, then found a spot to fish. The first area didn’t produce any interest, so we moved along the rocks to a second. This proved to be a good decision. After spending an hour or so catching a few wrasse and painted comber close in, I felt like I needed a boost and popped to a nearby café, to get myself a can of Jesus blood. Sorry, an energy drink.

The town of Xlendi sits at the end of a gorge.

Did it offer eternal life? No. All the caffeine and sugar gave me a much needed boost though!

When I returned, Gordon had began casting further out, locating a large patch of sand. Something we’d not enjoyed a lot of success fishing over at any point during the trip, but we were both getting bites straight away, and I was sure lesser weever were responsible for some of them. We didn't end up catching any weever species, but the sandy area soon began producing some of the other species you’d expect to catch over one. I caught a few Atlantic lizardfish and a nice common pandora, we both caught a few striped seabream and Gordon caught a lovely plain red mullet.

Burying themselves in the sand, the Atlantic lizardfish darts out to attack its prey.

Prey that stand little chance of escaping from its cavernous, tooth filled mouth!

The common pandora is a very pretty fish with its pink colouration and blue markings. This would be our tenth and final seabream species of the trip.

A lovely plain red mullet for Gordon. The first time he'd caught a member of the goatfish family.

Early in the evening, we decided to head back to the ferry port. We had a reasonable amount of worms left, so before we boarded the ferry, we used them up fishing in the harbour. Dropping whole worms down into the harbour’s deep water, we were hoping that something bigger would eat them, but this approach only produced a few painted comber and a few seabream species. As light faded, we were treated to a beautiful sunset and once it was dark we both caught a black scorpionfish each. A nice final species to add to our tally, taking it to thirty-four, a very good achievement I felt.

Whole worms didn’t produce bigger fish sadly! 

In the zone! Gordon's relaxed stance gives no indication of the level of concentration being employed. Being an accomplished shore match angler, who has also competed for Scotland in several international boat fishing competitions, he can hit bites and hook the culprits better than most!

We were treated to a cracking sunset.

I was over the moon to catch a small black scorpionfish, shortly after Gordon caught one. Scorpionfish are so cool!

Once the worms were used up, we caught the ferry back to Malta. Another foreign species hunt had come to an end. Arriving back pretty late, we went out for a nice meal and a few pints of the local lager Cisk, a lovely way to end a great trip.

I really enjoyed my last minute trip to Malta. It was a real shame that Gordon fell ill, I know from experience that there’s nothing worse than being sick when you’re on holiday. At least he recovered reasonably quickly. Whilst the average size of the fish we caught was slightly disappointing, the diversity was not. Below is a summary of what we caught during the trip. Sadly, I didn’t catch anything new.

1. Annular Seabream
2. Atlantic Lizardfish
3. Black Scorpionfish
4. Black Seabream
5. Blue Runner
6. Bogue
7. Brown Comber
8. Cardinalfish
9. Common Pandora
10. Common Two Banded Seabream
11. Damselfish
12. Dusky Grouper
13. East Atlantic Peacock Wrasse
14. Eastern Mosquitofish
15. Five Spotted Wrasse
16. Gilthead Seabream
17. Goldblotch Grouper
18. Golden Grey Mullet
19. Incognito Goby
20. Mediterranean Rainbow Wrasse
21. Ornate Wrasse
22. Painted Comber
23. Parrotfish
24. Rock Goby
25. Rusty Blenny
26. Saddled Seabream
27. Salema
28. Striped Seabream
29. Thick Lipped Mullet
30. White Seabream
31. Wide Eyed Flounder

Gordon also caught…

32. Bass
33. Ocellated Wrasse
34. Plain Red Mullet

On reflection, and whilst I did enjoy my time there, I didn’t realise how densely populated Malta was. This made finding places to park a bit of a nightmare at times. As I mentioned at the beginning of my first Malta post, the standard of driving was also pretty shocking. On congested, sometimes very narrow roads, we witnessed some of the most aggressive driving we’ve ever seen, and some of the manoeuvres being undertaken on the major roads were nothing short of recklessly dangerous. Every journey was a real test of my hazard perception skills! Malta is easily the worst place I’ve ever driven a hire car! As a result, I think I preferred the slightly more relaxed feeling on the less populated island of Gozo, and if I were to return to Malta, I’d perhaps base a trip around staying and fishing on that island.

Tight lines, Scott.

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, we 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.

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