Not more species hunting adventures on Crete?!: Part 3.

For the majority of the third night and well into the following morning it rained heavily. When it finally stopped, we decided to head out, despite the fact that it was pretty windy and even more rain was forecast. I had a deep water fishing spot that I wanted to check out, so we drove to that. Upon arrival though, the terrain looked ever so slightly more difficult than I had imagined it would be. As I told Lillian, it’s something that can be hard to gauge when you're looking at new fishing spots on Google Maps!

The spot I wanted to get to. The rocks on the far side of this peninsula at the left hand side of Istron Bay.

Given it could be difficult to access, and more rain was probably on the way, we opted instead to take the elevator of the Istron Bay Hotel down to the lower levels of the resort and then make our way down through those to the beach. Once on that we headed along to the small harbour at its eastern end.

The Istron Bay Hotel from the end of the small harbour where I would fish and Lillian would read a book. The whole time both of us keeping one eye on the heavens, looking for signs they were about to open!

It didn’t look particularly promising to start with, being very shallow and without too many obvious features, but the little harbour actually turned out to hold a variety of species. To begin with I tossed in some bread and freelined small pieces of it in amongst the fish that arrived to feed. Doing this I managed to catch some small derbio and, after much frustration, a solitary boxlip mullet.

They are great fun to catch, and I was hoping some derbio bigger than the palm of my hand would show up, but sadly none did.

It took me a while to catch this boxlip mullet. Like all mullet species, they seem to be experts at nibbling bread from your hook without getting hooked themselves somehow. One for my tally was all I needed!

I then turned my attention to fishing pieces of prawn close to the bottom around the edges of a large submerged rock on the seabed. After a few rabbitfish and puffer were caught, I caught a few Atlantic lizardfish and some small goldblotch grouper. Then a few scorpionfish came out from beneath the big rock and sat motionless to see what all the fuss was about. Dropping a bait near them saw them pausing briefly before lurching forward and gobbling it up. I caught two different species of the aggressive little predators.

As well as a couple of Madeira rockfish,..

…I also caught several black scorpionfish too.

Then Lillian pointed out a small red fish tentatively poking its head out from beneath the rock a little bit before it turned and darted back under it again. Catching a glimpse of it I knew straight away what it was, and a bait was dropped as close I could get it to the curious fish. After having a couple of swipes at the prawn, the fish was hooked and quickly swung up to hand.

Eventually this bright red cardinalfish got brave enough to dart out and swallow my bait. Normally a species you catch after dark, they hide in dark places during the day.

Just after I had returned the cardinalfish, the rain started. Slowly at first, but knowing it could quickly start pouring down, I quickly packed up, and we began heading back through the resort to find the lift. We got a bit lost though, and by the time we figured out where we needed to go, it was raining torrentially, and we got a bit of a soaking. After seeking shelter, it didn’t look like it was going to let up, so we decided just to bite the bullet and dash back to the lift and then to the car. Drying off back at the apartment, the rain persisted, so we chilled out for a while and went out for dinner in the evening. By that point the rain had stopped and looking at the forecast for the rest of the holiday it was staying dry for the remainder of our trip.

The following day we checked out of our accommodation and drove west to the small coastal village of Georgioupolis. It’s a lovely place, and it’s also a great spot for a bit of species hunting, throwing up many different types of fish. Giant goby are present in large numbers and were the first fish I targeted, sight fishing for them in shallow areas up next to the bridge over the town’s river.

There are lots of these super aggressive giant goby around.

Casting out into the deeper water to see what else was around, I immediately caught a few yellow spotted puffer. I think that’s the first time I’ve caught them there, so they’re obviously also tolerant of brackish environments too. The Red Sea is a harsher environment than the Mediterranean Sea in that respect.

Cute? They are a total pest!

After a while, we crossed over the bridge and wandered down towards the mouth of the river. Fishing from the rocky boulders there, I spent a bit of time fishing with various lures in an attempt to catch a bass, bluefish or barracuda. This didn't produce much. I hooked a small bluefish, but it thrashed around in the current and threw my lure. Lillian then spotted a parrotfish, moving around on the rocks directly below us, so I tried to tempt it using a chunk of prawn. It really wasn’t interested at all, so I decided to see if I could find some small crabs I could use as bait. Parrotfish love crabs. After turning over some rocks at the edge of a nearby shallow area I did manage to find a few. Using these as bait proved to be a great decision. As soon as the first half crab was dropped in, the parrotfish quickly ripped it off of the hook. Before too long a few more parrotfish appeared, obviously drawn in by the scent of fresh crab. Eventually, I managed to hook one, but as it charged down the rocks and I put a bit of pressure on it, the fish threw the hook. The commotion spooked all the other fish too, so before we left I decided to ledger my last small piece of crab out on the sandy bottom away from the rocks at the river’s edge. This turned out to be a good choice and my rod tip was soon pulled round by a red mullet that had found my bait on the bottom with its long feelers.

This is a plain red mullet, cousin of the striped red mullet. It’s not as colourful and its fins lack any markings. It's plain!

We had another long drive to do, to get to Agia Galini, so I packed up after that, and we headed back towards the car. On the way I spotted a small fish that I was sure was a peacock blenny. Lillian gave me the green light to try and catch it, so a tanago hook baited with a tiny piece of prawn was dropped down next the crack at the bottom of the harbour wall that it had disappeared into. It was reluctant to come out, and every time it slowly poked its head out a small goby would steal the bait. Some much bigger rusty blenny and giant goby were also occasionally crashing around on the bottom and this spooked the fish a few times too. In the end I spent a fair amount of time trying to catch the little shy fish. Lillian’s usually incredibly patient with my fishing antics, but even she was getting annoyed! Eventually, it did come out, grabbing the tiny bait and I waited a second before lifting to make sure it was hooked. Thankfully it was, and was quickly swung up to hand before being popped into my tank for a quick photo.

The smallest peacock blenny I've ever caught.

Fishing over for the day, we made the drive from the north coast all the way through the island's mountainous interior to the south coast, passing through the breathtaking Kourtaliotiko Gorge on the way. Arriving just after dark, we checked in to our room and popped out into the town for a stroll. After exploring for a while we had a generous plateful of tasty gyros and washed it down with several large and ice cold beers before calling it a night.

The following day it may have been dry, but the wind was battering the shoreline where we were, so we headed to the coastal town of Matala to see the caves carved into the cliffs there.

These caves were carved thousands of years ago. No one's sure by who or for what purpose. Much more recently, they were inhabited by hippies. Now they are fenced off in a protected area, but you can still go inside and clamber around on the sandstone rocks for the sum of four euros.

After wandering around the town and having some lunch, we jumped back in the car and drove to Plakias. The passenger sitting next to Lillian on the flight to Crete had told her that he had been visiting the town every year for the last thirty five years, so we wanted to see what the fuss was all about! It looked nice enough from the end of its harbour, although it was very windy!. Rather predictably a large population of yellow spotted puffer were resident, but in amongst them, I also caught a few Atlantic lizardfish and my first parrotfish of the trip.

No crabs were harmed in the capture and release of this fish!

After being battered by the wind at the end of the pier for a couple of hours, we visited a marina nearby, but that turned out to be another pufferfest, so we decided to head back to Agia Galini. Arriving just as the sun was setting, I was given permission to have a few casts at the back of the harbour over a shallow area with some large partially submerged boulders. It only took a few casts to get a take, and it definitely wasn't anything inflatable that had munched my piece of Angleworm. After a short but dirty fight, a nice goldblotch grouper was hoisted up, photographed and put back to carry on its own species hunting.

One last cast before dinner...

...was well worth it.

So, my species hunting was going very well indeed. Despite some horrible weather at times, I'd managed to catch thirty species in five days which was a great result, even if the majority of fish I had been catching had all belonged to only one species! Anyway, we only had two days left of our trip and adding more species was going to be tricky. The wind was forecast to drop off though, and I had short list of species that I hadn't caught during the trip that I thought could be targeted. I was also hopeful that I'd get lucky and catch something new!

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the final part.