Species hunting adventures on São Miguel: Part 1.

At the end of March, Lillian and I flew from Edinburgh, via Lisbon, to Sao Miguel in the Azores for a ten day long trip. We'd be joined after three days by my mates Lee and Ross, who were flying direct from London Stansted. After a fairly long journey but excited to be somewhere new, Lillian and I explored the capital of Ponta Delgada on foot for the first couple of days, and then picked up a hire car the day before the boys arrived. The weather in the Azores at that time of year is similar to the UK in that it can change very quickly. One minute the sun is shining, the next it's cloudy or raining.

Hardly a cloud in the sky. Black volcanic rock and buildings painted white are a feature of Ponta Delgada architecture and the theme is also used on lots of pavements too.

After wandering around some of Ponta Delgada's quaint narrow streets on the morning of our first full day, we strolled down to the open coast to a small harbour, so I could do some fishing. Someone was already fishing when we got there, usually a good sign.

The local angler's tactics involved bread paste on treble hooks, fished under a float using a rod made of a piece of cane. I love that sort of thing. A reminder that expensive tackle might be nice but is not always neccessary to catch some fish.

After watching the gentleman catch a few seabream, I got quickly set up along from him and was soon pulling out lots of small fish myself on pieces of raw prawn. Ornate wrasse were the first species of the trip. No surprise there really and lots of them. A few other fish did manage to beat them to my bait eventually.

A nice blacktail comber...

...a damselfish that managed to get a relatively big hook in its mouth...

...and a few Guinean puffers. I'm not a massive fan of puffers. I might have mentioned that before.

This was the spot I'd just fished. By the time we left the clouds had rolled in.

We then took a slow stroll back into town, following the coastline. Walking past the main marina inside the town's huge harbour, I had a look to see what fish were in it. As well as shoals of mullet, lots of ornate wrasse and various types of seabream, I soon spotted some black faced blennies sitting still on submerged boulders close to the edge, occassionally shifting their position slightly. They are a tiny fish but the males have a bright yellow body, so they were easy to pick out against the dark volcanic rock. Whilst I was excited, as it was my first time I'd ever come across the species in the sea, I also knew that fishing there was strictly off limits. In fact, whilst I was pointing the black faced blennies out to Lillian, a couple of locals passing by, seeing that I had fishing tackle with me, warned me that the Marina had a security detail. They told me that they were very strict and should they see me fishing, they would be straight over, and I could end up with a hefty fine. Whilst I really wanted to catch a black faced blenny, I also didn't want to risk getting into trouble, so, feeling frustrated, we headed off again.

Full of fish but strictly off limits. The clouds had almost all gone again.

Walking further along the harbour's promenade, away from the marina, we found a small slipway behind a seafood restaurant and I did some fishing there. The chefs were out regularly tossing fish scraps into the water, meaning the area was full of fish. Freelined raw prawn chunks were soon doing the business.

Sun out again. Fish on again!

I caught plenty of these rather plump thick lipped mullet...

...and some small derbio that went off like little rockets and were great fun ...

...and a female emerald wrasse.

Feeling we had perhaps been exposed to a little bit too much sun, we decided to get into the shade and headed to one of Ponta Delgada's botanical gardens. As well as enjoying the cool cover the many different species of trees offered and admiring lots of nice plants, there were also some beautiful, very colourful birds strutting about.

A lovely looking cockerel.

The top of my head felt like it was almost as red as the cockerel's we had seen in the gardens so after getting some aftersun and a bottle of pineapple liqueur from the supermarket we headed back to the apartment to relax, and after a lengthy cold shower each, we enjoyed copious amounts of both. 

The next day we picked up our hire car and headed out of the capital to explore. We drove round its western end, making some short stops at roadside viewpoints to enjoy the scenery before carrying on to visit a few potential fishing spots. Mosteiros was our first destination where we checked out a small pier and then its natural swimming pools. 

São Miguel Miguel is lush with lots of grassy fields. Cows were also a fairly common sight. It could easily be mistaken for somewhere in the UK.

There are several deep rockpools at Mosteiros that people can go swimming in.

Rockpool blennies swim about in them too, rather unsurprisingly!

Leaving Mosteiros, we drove east along the northern coast to Ponta da Costa, a tiny slipway at the bottom of some huge cliffs. The winding path down was pretty steep and to be honest the fishing wasn't great when we eventually made it down to the bottom. I didn't realise it at the time, but I later discovered that I'd caught my first new species of the trip whilst down there.

The slight swell rolling in made fishing difficult.

As well as lots of ornate wrasse, I also caught a few very darkly coloured rainbow wrasse. I'd later discover they were blacktail rainbow wrasse, and also that looking back through my old catch report photos, I'd caught them on Madeira previously and mistaken them for...

...Mediterranean rainbow wrasse. The shape might be almost identical as they're from the same group of wrasses, the Coris genus, but the different colouration of the adult males of the two species is pretty obvious really.

Before we headed back up to the car I also caught a few bogue on small metals fishing out into deeper water.

The climb back up the cliffside paths to the car was pretty tiring so we headed back to São Miguel, visited the supermarket and chilled in the apartment that evening, enjoying a nice meal with some beers and a few passion fruit liqueurs. 

The following day the weather was pretty miserable being both quite windy and wet. We drove east along the south coast to check out the small harbour at Porto de Pescas da Caloura. A fair swell was running out in the open sea and the inside of the harbour didn't produce anything at all.

This spot is supposed to be a good mark to target moray eels after dark so if nothing else it was good to check it out in daylight.

We then drove further east before cutting inland and driving north into the island's interior to visit the Caldeiras das Furnas nature preserve. It has several steaming geothermal pools and geysers. The smell of sulphur is pretty pungent to say the least. Whilst there we also spent an hour or so in the Microbial Observatory of the Azores, learning about some of the types of life that exist in the extreme environments, like the ones found there.

Lillian's not usually a fan of smelly gasses when I produce them, and my gases normally don't smell half as bad as the stench these constantly produce.

To get the smell of rotten eggs out of our clothes we headed up to the north coast to the small harbour of Porto Formoso, a venue I would return to for a boat trip with Lee and Ross later in the trip. With the sea nice and flat due to the wind now being offshore, I fished for a while from the rocks at the outside of the harbour's mouth, but it was very tough going. It also rained pretty heavily for a brief spell while we were there and we both got a bit of a soaking.

It looked quite promising, but I really struggled to catch fish here.

A small common two banded seabream prevented a blank. If memory serves it was the only fish of the entire day!

Heading back up to the car we finished the day by following the coast all the way around the eastern end of the island, stopping off again at various viewpoints to take in the scenery.

The next day the wind had dropped off again and we headed east along the island's southern coast again to visit Ermida de Nossa Senhora da Paz, a small church perched on the hillside at the top of over one hundred steps.

I was happy with this photo but Lillian insisted we climb all the way up.

At the top I spotted a big harbour down below we could explore.

After driving down and visiting a small tackle shop in Vila Franca do Campo we headed to its harbour. Again a friendly local, upon spotting my fishing rod, was quick to approach us and tell me where I could and could not fish. I heeded his advice and headed well away from all the fancy, and no doubt very expensive, moored yachts. As we wandered along, I spotted the yellow bodies of some black faced blennies, sitting on the submerged rocks close to the edge. Out came a packet of tanago hooks, I quickly rigged up an ultra light running ledger and lowered the rig down onto one of the boulders where the black faced blennies were. After a few missed bites, I managed to hook a small fish that I initially thought was a female black faced blenny, but in my hand I recognised it to be a Montagu's blenny.

Only my second ever Montagu's blenny.

A little more persistence eventually paid off when I watched one of my targets take the tiny piece of raw prawn on my equally tiny hook into its mouth and I gently struck, successfully hooking it. My second new species of the trip was quickly swung up to hand. Having been after one of these for years, making several trips to Swanage Pier in Dorset to try and catch one, I was ecstatic to finally get one.

A male black faced blenny. Chilling out on a rock their head is jet black and their body is bright yellow. When caught their coloration dulls and is a little bit mottled. The female on the other hand is a fairly drab looking fish, being a mottled brown colour.

I carried on fishing, trying a few different spots around the harbour and caught quite a lot of fish. Mainly ornate wrasse, blacktail rainbow wrasse in the mix, as well as a solitary ballan wrasse and a nice striped red mullet. That's definitely the furthest west I've ever caught a ballan wrasse! I also managed to add a couple more species to my trip tally and my third new species of the trip in the shape of a blue wrasse, a cousin of the corkwing wrasse that is endemic to the Azores.

In amongst all the wrasse I caught this nice striped red mullet fishing over a clean sandy area.

I also caught this single small male parrotfish. Parrotfish males are the drab sex of the species.

Here's a ruby red female parrotfish I caught on Tenerife a few years ago.

While we're on the subject of sexual dimorphism in wrasse, I think this is a male blue wrasse but could be in the middle of a transition...

...and this ornate wrasse is in the middle of a sex change too I think. It has some colouration features of both. Most wrasse species can change sex from female to male when the need arises.

Anyway I've digressed. It's fascinting but that's enough fish gender politics! So, we were enjoying our time on São Miguel. Despite the fishing being a little hit and miss, I'd made a pretty good start to my species hunting. I was over the moon to catch the black faced blenny and also the two new wrasse species, even if technically I'd unknowingly caught one of them before. With six days left in the Azores we were both looking forward to Lee and Ross arriving as we hadn't seen them for a while due to the pandemic, so it would be great to catch up again and fish together again too.

Tight lines, Scott.

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