More species hunting adventures on Tenerife: Part 2.

On day three of our holiday, we drove up the east coast of Tenerife towards its capital Santa Cruz and then headed up to the north coast. The swell forecast wasn’t great for those parts of the island, but we wanted to see for ourselves just how bad it was, and it was also an opportunity to check out some new spots that we could return to later in the week if the wind dropped off as was predicted. As it turned out, the first series of places we visited were completely unfishable due to breaking waves, and it wasn’t until we reached the picturesque village of Garachico, that we finally found a sheltered spot where we were able to fish. My first cast produced a nice emerald wrasse which was followed by lots of ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and puffers.

I’ve only caught a handful of emerald wrasse over the years. My first was at the very same place just over ten years ago!

The fishing wasn’t producing anything interesting, so we decided to drive up the incredibly steep and windy Camino Real las Arenas, through the mountains and then back down to Los Gigantes to spend the afternoon fishing into deep water from the rocks. Given its location and the direction of the wind we weren’t expecting much of a swell there, but when we arrived the sea was rolling in, crashing violently onto the rocks periodically. After walking along the coast for a while, we eventually managed to find a spot that we could fish that was fairly flat and elevated above the water. Nick and Ryan spent their time casting jigs and hard plastics around on heavy tackle, but had no joy. I tried to fish small baits on the bottom, but the current made that difficult, and all I caught were a few ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish.

The massive cliffs of Los Gigantes.

All things considered it had been a bit of a wasted day as far as the fishing had gone. In the apartment that evening, after going out for dinner, we formulated a plan for the next day and decided we'd try somewhere new in the morning  and then head out in the evening with our heavy gear to target stingrays.

The following day we headed down to a rock mark near the small coastal village of El Puertito. We had to walk a fair distance from the car down to the spot, but it looked quite promising when we arrived, and we quickly set up our gear.

Tenerife's nearby neighbour La Gomera off in the distance.

Again, Nick and Ryan spent a bit of time casting jigs and lures to see if any larger fish were around, but had no joy. I fished the bottom initially, and quickly discovered that Canary damselfish and ornate wrasse were present in plague proportions yet again.

They might be colourful, but I soon got fed up catching them.

Feeling slightly frustrated, Nick and I decided to do some float fishing. Again I went with a small bait under a small float to try and catch a needlefish, whilst Nick put out a large bait under a cigar float to try to tempt something big. After a short wait, my float jerked to the right a couple of times. Suspecting it may be what I was after, I let the bite develop to ensure the fish had taken the bait all the way inside its mouth before winding down. A small needlefish was then quickly wound in and hoisted up, but was it my first new species of the trip?

As far as I know, there are three species of needlefish present in the waters around the Canary Islands. The garfish, the Agujon needlefish and the keeltail needlefish.

Having done some research before the trip on the key identifying features of the three species I knew by examining the fish’s tail, which was obviously flattened out, that I’d caught my first keeltail needlefish.

After that, I float fished for a while longer, hoping that an Agujon needlefish would pass by and take my bait, but only the occasional ornate wrasse swimming up from the submerged reef as my float drifted over, was all I caught. Before we left, I switched to bottom fishing at distance to see what else was around, but disappointingly, all I caught was a steady succession of Canary damselfish.

In the evening, we headed down to Playa de Aguadulce, to have a go for stingrays after dark. Arriving just as the sun went down, we got set up at the top of the beach’s steep slope and lashed mackerel and sardine baits onto the dongle hanging from the circle hooks on our pulley rigs. Casting them out as far as we could and setting our rods into our tripods with the drag on our reels backed right off, we got as comfortable as we could on the beach’s large stones and patiently waited.

The waiting game begins.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how productive the session was going to be, but not long after it got dark, my rod started nodding away and then line started coming off my reel as a fish moved off with my bait. Picking up my rod and tightening up the drag, I felt the weight of something decent. A ten minute fight then ensued, with me following the fish along the beach as it moved off to my right. Scrambling over the loose stones was quite difficult, and I almost lost my footing a couple of times. Luckily, I ended up at an area where the gradient of the beach was a little less steep. This made it easier to land the fish and Ryan came along to give me a hand. Eventually a nice spiny butterfly ray appeared in the breaking waves and using them to my advantage, I successfully got the fish far enough up the shore that we could quickly lift it up away from the breaking waves. Ryan did get wet feet in the process though! Since the tail on the spiny butterfly ray is very small, the risk of its stinger coming into contact with you is neglegable unless you get really close to it. Regardless, I exercised caution and stayed in front of the fish whilst I carefully unhooked it. The debarbed circle hook was easy to remove having worked perfectly, ending up in the corner of the fish’s mouth. After a couple of quick photos, we carefully lifted it back down to the water’s edge and released it again.

I was over the moon to catch my first ever spiny butterfly ray. It was also my second new species of the trip.

After watching it disappear from sight, I took a few moments to catch my breath before carefully heading back along to where I’d started. Using a good amount of bait elastic, I prepared my second bait of the night. Lashing two sides of mackerel taken from the tail end of the fish together, flesh side facing outward around my dongle. Casting this back out to roughly the same spot, it didn’t take a great deal of time for my rod to show signs of interest again. Much smaller indications, but they were clearly out of sync with the breaking waves. After letting the bite develop, I lifted my rod to feel the weight of a much smaller fish. This time it was easily wound in, and thankfully I didn’t have to scramble about on the stones too much.

My first ever common stingray was a very small specimen. They can reach weights of several hundred pounds! Despite being so small, I took great care unhooking it due to its stinger. Holding its tail by the tip using a wet towel, again the circle hook was nicely placed and removal was very straightforward.

With such a good start to the evening, I was sure that Nick and Ryan would soon get in on the action too. Ryan and I were sharing a tripod, whilst Nick was located about twenty yards to our left. He seemed to have a few snags directly in front of him though and had lost a couple of rigs. Then, whilst winding in to put on a fresh bait, his lead had got stuck in the stones down in front of him where the waves were coming up the beach. Trying to release it, the lead suddenly came free and flew straight back towards him, striking him hard in the face. The first Ryan and knew about this was when he came along towards us with blood pouring out of his nose and over his face. I thought perhaps he had lost his footing, fallen and hit his face on the ground, but then he explained what had happened. Ryan and I were obviously concerned about his well-being, but he assured us he was fine, so we helped him clean up his face and kept a close eye on him for the rest of the session.

Despite taking a 7oz gripper straight to his face and being bloodied and sore, Nick managed to crack a bit of a smile!

A couple of hours went by with no further action, despite fairly regular bait changes, until Ryan’s rod started nodding away. Lifting it from the tripod he had a fish on. Unfortunately after a short fight it somehow managed to throw the hook just before we caught sight of it, which he was very upset about. Not long afterwards we ran out of bait and called an end to a quite eventful session.

The next day the wind had dropped off, so we decided to try a couple of spots up the east coast near the island’s capital Santa Cruz. Rather than taking the quickest route, directly via the TF-1 motorway, we took a leisurely drive up into the island’s interior and through the Teide National Park. Stopping at various spots to take in the incredible views and alien lava field landscapes as we headed north.

Driving through strange volcanic landscapes,…

…eventually you find yourself almost 3km above sea level, up above the clouds,…

…where you can take in stunning views of the majestic snow capped Mount Teide, Spain's tallest mountain.

Driving back down to sea level, we spent an hour or so fishing from the sea defence boulders near the Castillo de San Juan Bautista. Again it looked like a promising spot, but it didn't seem to matter where we cast, all we caught from the open sea were Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse and puffers. I spent half an hour dropping baits down into gaps in the boulders, hoping to pull out a hairy blenny but all I caught were even more ornate wrasse and a couple of Madeira rockfish.

The Castillo de San Juan Bautista is almost four hundred years old. The modern concrete builing in the background is the Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín. Build at the start of this century, I'm not sure that'll last as long.

By that point in the trip we were all quite fed up of catching ornate wrasse.

Heading back to the car and making a short drive slightly north of the capital, we parked up and made our way to the Muelle de Cory, one of two small stone piers that run parallel to each other with a slipway between them. It was quite windy, but there were a few locals float fishing and they were catching a few fish, mainly bogue. Heading to the end of the structure, we tried fishing down the side and casting around in various directions, but our efforts only produced endless puffers.

Guinean puffer were also beyond annoying by that stage. Bait stealing pests with razor sharp beak like teeth that damage line. They can also bite hooks clean off.

Again feeling a little frustrated, we decided to head along to a concrete platform situated near the edge of a public swimming area. As we made our way there, we reached a point where we had to scamble up some rocks to reach the platform. Just before we went up, I had a look down the side to see if I could spot any fish. In amongst the Canary damselfish and ornate wrasse I spotted a few Azores chromis, so I quickly tied on a small hook and caught a couple of them.

Another species added to our trip’s tally and a very welcome change to the repetitive catches we’d suffered all day.

There were a couple of women fishing on the platform, but we didn't see them catch anything. The three of us caught some fish, but there are no prizes for guessing what they were! Heading up the east coast to try out luck had proved to be very unproductive. All three of us were thoroughly bored of catching ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and puffers. It wouldn't be so bad if occassionally other species got to your bait first, but it didn't seem like there were any other species around!

Tight lines, Scott.

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.

Click here for the next part…

Something to look forward to.

I had a short session on Sunday evening with my mate Ryan, scratching about at Newhaven Harbour. Rockling were the target species again, but for the majority of the night the resident whiting had other ideas. They were straight onto our black lug baits as soon as they hit the bottom, sometimes before they got there!

We caught plenty of small whiting, but it wasn't exactly exciting.

There was very little wind, but it was quite cold, and it rained lightly constantly, making things a little unpleasant. Casting our rigs in towards slightly rougher ground, I caught something that I knew wasn't a whiting as I wound it in. It turned out to be a beaten up long spined sea scorpion that was a little bit tatty around the edges and had a damaged tail.

A bit of an old warrior. Life is tough sometimes.

Over low tide, things went very quiet, and we didn't get many bites until it began to flood. Not long before we called it a night, Ryan struck into a decent bite and pulled in a rockling. Having caught a shore rockling during our last after dark session down in the Scottish Borders, he was hoping it was a five bearded rockling, but was disappointed when he lifted it up over the railings and realised it was a shore rockling.

Ryan's shore rockling was a nice deep reddish brown colour.

After catching a few more whiting, it was getting quite late, so we decided to call it a night after having a few "last casts". Rockling are probably my favourite target species in winter, but I've got to be honest, I'm not really a massive fan of venturing out at this time of year. Most of the time the conditions are, at best, pretty miserable, and at worst, downright rotten. Strong easterly winds the remainder of this week, mean I probably won't get out targeting rockling. Perfect winter cod conditions, but fishing for them just isn’t my thing! Luckily, I'll be getting a break from the cold Scottish winter next month when Ryan and I head down to Tenerife with our mate Nick. Should hopefully be a bit warmer down there, and whiting definitely won't be a problem! Not sure that I'll catch any rockling either mind you,although there is a spotted rockling found there so you never know!

Tight lines, Scott.

Starting again from scratch.

Another year has begun, and for us species hunters, it's time to reset our annual species tallies. Last year, I caught one hundred and ninety one different species of fish, including forty three new ones. Not too shabby, all things considered! On Saturday evening, I headed back down to Cove Harbour with my mate Ryan to spend a few hours in the freezing cold targeting rockling. A bit of a swell was still running following the latest storm, which made fishing with light tackle fairly testing, but before too long I had pulled out my first fish of 2026.

The five bearded rockling was also my last species of 2025.

As the night progressed, we caught a few coalfish and the odd small cod on our small black lug baits. Despite the conditions, the fishing was enjoyable, and in between bites we chatted away. We mainly talked about our recent trip to Japan and all the things we were missing about it. We also discussed some potential destinations for trips this coming year.     

There were plenty of these reasonably sized coalfish around...

...as well as some small cod.

Towards the end of the session, we both caught a shore rockling each. These are easily distinguished from their five bearded cousin as they possess two fewer "beards". They also grow a bit bigger too.

The shore rockling has three beards. So does the three bearded rockling, but in my opinion the two species look nothing alike due to their very different colourations!

Before we knew it, the time had come to head back up the path to the car and drive back up the A1 to Edinburgh. It had been another enjoyable winter session and I think Ryan and I will be out again for more of the same over the next few weeks, although we may fish more locally.

Tight lines, Scott.

I needed perking up.

Last month I was still suffering from post Japan trip depression, and I hadn’t been fishing for a while. Between Christmas and Hogmanay, I headed down to East Lothian to meet up with wildlife cameraman, author and fellow fishing fanatic Jack Perks. We only had a few hours together and Jack was keen to catch a flounder and a shore rockling, so we started the session off at Belhaven Bay. Crossing the Bridge to Nowhere, we were soon at the water’s edge, fishing into the breaking waves at close range. The conditions looked pretty good, but the timing of the session meant we were fishing the last couple of hours of the ebb on a neap tide, a combination I’ve found in the past to be hard going. The flood on a spring tide is usually a much better time in my opinion. We gave it a go anyway, and it was nice to catch up with Jack. As I suspected, we struggled to find any fish that were biting, although eventually I did catch a solitary small flounder. We stuck it out for a few hours, but when light started to fade, we decided to head to Cove Harbour and turn our attention to fishing for shore rockling. The fishing there was much better, and it didn’t take us too long to catch a few rockling, dropping small sections of black lug down the walls at the mouth of the harbour. 

My first five bearded rockling of 2025 and also the last species I caught in the calendar year. Not the one we were after, but I was happy enough catching them. I have a bit of a soft spot for rockling!

After catching about half a dozen five bearded rockling between the two of us, and also a few juvenile codling and some coalfish, Jack switched to a piece of prawn on his hook and subsequently lost a bigger rockling on the surface that he was sure was our target species. Shortly afterwards, he landed a smaller rockling, that on inspection turned out to be the first shore rockling of the night. Mission accomplished! It started raining shortly afterwards, so we called it a night and made the walk back up to our cars. It was nice to get out fishing with Jack again and hopefully we can do it again this year at some point. A UK wels catfish is on my to do list this year and there’s a fishery down south near Jack that we might visit, or we might meet up on the south coast. The second half of our session was also a reminder of how much I really enjoy catching rockling, and will be out again soon hopefully to catch some more. 

Tight lines, Scott.