Arriving on Okinawa in the evening and driving to our accomodation, it was dark when we arrived and we were pretty hungry, so we went out for something to eat. After a large bowl of tasty Okinawa soba, we went for a walk along the back of Araha Beach before heading back to our apartment. Checking the forecast for the next few days, it had improved slightly, but with rain still forecast we decided to fish the following day at a venue where we could be close to the hire car, so we could take cover quickly should the conditions deteriorate.
The next morning, we headed to the supermarket to pick up some snacks and a bag of frozen raw prawns to use as bait. We didn’t venture too far, driving south to Ginowan Fishing Port. Fishing over the railings next to its concrete slipway, straight down the side using small hooks, it didn’t take me long to start catching some cool fish. The first few I caught were ones I’d caught before during previous Asian trips.
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| First up was a Kupang cardinalfish, a species I also caught the first time I visited Okinawa. |
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| Then I caught a few anchor tuskfish. |
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| Next was this honey-head damselfish. |
Ryan didn’t get off to quite as good a start as I did, losing a couple of rigs to rough patches meaning he had to tie up new ones as a result, cutting into his fishing time. When he did open his account, catching his first ever tropical fish, it was a small threadfin butterflyfish, so he was over the moon.
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| A very cool first species to catch on Okinawa. |
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| With tiny mouths, using very small hooks is essential to catch many of the tropical species. We were using #20's! |
Casting out a bit, we both started catching a few different species, including some small triggerfish. I had no idea which species they were, and would later discover they were in fact juvenile titan triggerfish.
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| Not exactly titanic as juveniles, but when fully grown they are one of the fiercest, most aggressive triggerfish species in the ocean. |
Fishing away, casting to different areas, produced a great variety of species. About half of them were new species and some, like the titan triggerfish, were identified later on in the trip.
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| My first ever lemon damselfish. |
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| A few colourful manybar goatfish were caught. |
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| We both caught a few fire-tail dottyback. |
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| We also caught our first brown damsel species of the trip. This one is a blunt snout gregory. |
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| Hooks were being bitten off occasionally, and we eventually caught some of the culprits. This one is Valentin’s sharpnose puffer. |
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| Another brown damselfish. This one had a distinctive black stripe on its cheek. I’d later discover it’s a black and gold chromis. |
Our first session was going pretty well. Non-stop action and a good amount of species from a relatively small area. Ryan was getting snagged a lot more than I was for some reason, which he was getting a bit frustrated about. We debated a change of venue, but as we were catching plenty of fish and there was no sign of any rain either, we opted to stay put for a little while longer to see what else we could catch.
Tight lines, Scott.