Not more species hunting adventures on Crete?!: Part 2.

On the second day of our holiday we drove into Agios Nikolaos. After a stroll around Lake Voulismeni we visited the fishmonger, so I could pick up some prawns to use as bait. Whilst there, we spotted our first lionfish of the trip. I was hopeful we’d spot them in the sea before the end of the trip, so I could try and catch one!

These venomous invaders aren’t good news for biodiversity in the Eastern Mediterranean, and to make matters worse they are gradually heading west. They are delicious apparently, so at least if there is a commercial market for them their numbers might be reduced.

Heading down to the first fishing spot, I decided to try fishing with one of the small plugs I had bought the previous day. Not something I fish with that often, as I find I get bored if they don't produce any action fairly quickly. I told Lillian I’d only be having a few casts before switching to fishing closer in with small chunks of prawn.

We headed to the shade of a few trees in the lake’s back corner. This spot has produced a fairly wide variety of species over the years.

On its very first cast out into the deeper water further out, the little minnow got smashed as it got about half way back to me! After a few dodgy moments involving the mooring ropes of the boats in front of me, a nice amberjack was drawn over the net Lillian had ready and waiting! What a team!

This small fast sinking sardine coloured minnow, fished with a quick twitchy retrieve, proved to be very effective!

A small greater amberjack. Great fun on my new setup. What a fantastic fish and start to the day!

Due to its instant success, the lure got a little more time at the end of my line than I had originally planned, but the short fight the amberjack put up must have spooked any other fish that were in the area and nothing else went near it! Eventually I switched to targeting the fish I could see in the shallower areas around the edge and over a couple of hours added a few more species to my tally, including a few different types of seabream.

Saddled seabream,..

...common two banded seabream,..

...and white seabream.

I also caught a solitary ornate wrasse and a rusty blenny. Then I turned my attention to a very shallow rocky area to see if I could catch some of the goby that usually live there. I've caught them in the past and always thought they were Bucchich's goby. As it turns out, I discovered recently that I was wrong.

An angry little ornate wrasse bares his teeth at me.

This normally feisty rusty blenny wasn’t too bothered about being caught strangely enough!

It turns out what I had been catching over the last ten years were incognito goby. This species is very similar to Bucchich's goby, but was only recognised as distinct and described by marine biologists in 2016. Something that I only learned about recently. So, whilst it was kind of my first new species of the trip, it wasn’t really! Looking back over my previous catches I’m pretty certain that I have in fact never caught a Bucchichi’s goby. They’ve all in fact been incognito goby.

In the afternoon we walked around the lake again, and I fished from the large platform that juts out over it. I gave the little plug a few casts here along with some metal jigs. A couple of amberjack did follow the plug but turned away as my retrieval ended. I also fished on the bottom closer in, but it was very snaggy, not very productive, and I only caught a couple of rabbitfish.

The water out in front of the large grey platform is incredibly deep. Over 50m in fact!

After lunch and then taking shelter from a brief but heavy spell of rain, we went for a walk and ended up on the open coast next to a large statue. I fished here for a little while from the rocks behind it, but all I caught initially were yellow spotted puffer. Almost one per cast.

This large statue depicts the “The abduction of Europa.” from Greek mythology.

After a while I was fed up catching puffer, replacing chomped lures and tying on hooks, so I moved to fish over a shallower sandy area. I was hoping to catch a pearly razorfish but all it produced was a few Atlantic lizardfish and even more yellow spotted puffer!

A most welcome Atlantic lizardfish.

I love their big toothy gobs. Not sure their prey is as fond.

Before calling it a day and heading out for dinner in the evening, we headed back to Elounda and then visited the Spinalonga viewing point we had stopped at the day before. I thought the rocks below it looked a promising spot to fish, so we made our way down. It was a lot shallower than I'd thought it would be and after a while all I’d caught were more yellow spotted puffer. It then started raining pretty heavily, so we scrambled back up to the car and headed back to the apartment to dry off.

Rain was on the way, and I was pretty fed up of catching yellow spotted puffer!

In the evening it rained a lot, but eventually it stopped for a while. Armed with my headtorch we popped out to the piers near our apartment and spent an hour or so looking for moray eels. We didn’t see any but did see quite a lot of large crabs moving around on the seabed. I dropped at bait down and one of them greedily grabbed it. This allowed me to lift it out for a closer look before returning it to the water.

We spotted quite a few of these African blue swimming crab. You've probably guessed already, these are yet another migrant from the Red Sea!

After two days on Crete I’d caught twenty species. Not a bad start to the holiday’s fishing! Unfortunately, the rain we’d experienced was just the start of some terrible weather. My fishing plans would have to be flexible. The following day I wanted to try somewhere new. A mark with deep water right in front of it, but would the weather throw a spanner in the works?

Tight lines, Scott.

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