More species hunting fun in Japan : Karatsu and Yobuko.

On the third day of our trip we took the train west to Karatsu where I had arranged to meet up with a fellow angler called Mindaugas, a Lithuanian who was brought up in Canada and after a few more moves had ended up in Japan working as an English teacher. We knew each other through an online fishing forum and I was really looking forward to our day out together visiting some of his fishing spots. After picking Lillian and I up at the train station he drove us around Karatsu, giving us a mini sightseeing tour before taking us up to the top of Mount Kagami for some great views over Karatsu.

Karatsu from the observation platform at the summit of Mount Kagami.

On the way to our first fishing spot we stopped for breakfast which was a very tasty Karatsu special burger. It's hard work being a Buddha lookalike and this certainly was a filling choice to kick start the day! The first spot we visited was a small harbour and after setting up my rod I quickly spotted some puffers, rigged up a small hook on a split shot rig and started catching a few. Sadly apart from the puffers, the odd multicolour rainbowfish and a single Bleeker's wrasse, the mark wasn't very productive.

My first fugu of the trip. There are several puffer species around the coast of Japan. This one is a grass puffer. I caught a lot of these and like their European cousins the novelty wears off almost as quickly as they can bite through your line.

Bleeker's wrasse has a fairly drab looking brown and green colouration. Pretty plain especially for a wrasse.

We persisted probably longer than we should have, trying different areas in the hope we'd catch something else. After a couple of hours we jumped back in the car and headed to a harbour in Yobuko. There were lots of people fishing, mainly catching Japanese horse mackerel using sabiki rigs jigged above a small plastic cage groundbait feeder filled with shrimp paste. I decided to fish a two hook paternoster rig with small hooks baited up with small sections of dried ragworm and was soon catching lots of fish, all small but I didn't really care as I was racking up lots of new species.

There were lots of cardinalfish around in the deeper areas. This one is a half-lined cardinal.

I caught a second species, this one is a spot nape cardinalfish.

This cheeky little chap is a sevenband grouper....

...and this is a threadfin emperor.

This is a mottled spinefoot. Despite knowing that spinefoot/rabbitfish have some venomous spines I usually handle them. I'll probably learn the hard way that it's probably not a great idea!

Mindaugas soon caught a cool fish that had a funky turquoise mouth that I was quite jealous of. I spent a bit of time trying to catch one myself by dropping a split shot rig down into the gaps between the submerged boulders on the outside of the harbour wall but sadly didn't emulate his colourful capture.

According to fishbase the funky turquoise mouthed fish is called a sunrise in English. I'm not sure why. In Japanese it is called an anahaze (アナハゼ ). I'm still gutted I never caught one.

The day was going fairly well and Lillian seemed to be enjoying herself too, getting involved where she could and helping take photos of the fish. By this point though a break was required so we went to a tiny restaurant in Yobuko serving bowls of something I'd never heard of before called champon.

Champon is simple dish of fried vegetables and pork with noodles in a rich broth. It was delicious!

Afterwards we fished at a couple of different spots around Yobuko. Things were slower here but Mindaugas eventually caught a Japanese horse mackerel and a really nice marbled rockfish. I was struggling a bit until we tried near a slipway where I finally caught a couple of small marbled rockfish and a really funky looking fish that I suspected was a wrasse. I'd later find out that it was indeed a wrasse but was another species that doesn't have an English name.

Mindaugas and I fishing away in Yobuko, a town that is famous for fresh squid. We really should have eaten some!

This cool looking fish is called an ohagurobera (オハグロベラ) in Japanese. Bera is Japanese for wrasse.

Mindaugas then suggested that we make a short drive to try one final spot before the sun set. It was a fairly shallow rocky area underneath the Yobuko Big Bridge. This mark produced lots and lots of wrasse. I was hoping to catch some small groupers but my weedless creature bait fished on a Cheburashka lead didn't even hit the bottom most casts before being aggressively assaulted.

Shallow and rocky. A nice spot for catching lots of wrasse!

I soon lost count of the number of star bambooleaf wrasse that I caught.

After a while the light went and the action died off with it so we headed back to the car and visited a tackle shop back in Karatsu. After a quick look around we picked up some worms so we could do a spot of ledgering for gobies at one final spot. A short drive later we arrived at a tidal stretch of a small river close to Karatsu station where we were able to park the car and fish right next to it. The gobies proved elusive but after catching a few spotnape ponyfish I hooked something a little bit more fiesty that turned out to be my first seabream of the trip.

My first ever yellowfin seabream.

By this time we were quite tired and I thought catching the new seabream species was a great way to end a fantastic day's fishing so we packed up and Mindaugas drove us to the station where we said goodbye. It had been great to meet up with him and we really enjoyed our day in Karatsu and Yobuko. I really couldn't thank him enough for meeting up with us, driving us around as well as introducing us to some delicious local food. The fishing was great with lots of variety and I caught several new species taking my tally for the trip to almost twenty. I'd caught more species in the first three days of the trip than I had over the entire duration of the trip the previous year! The following day we had another little day trip planned and whilst fishing wasn't high on the agenda I did have one strange little fish on my mind. One that normally lives out of water!

Tight lines, Scott.