More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 6.

In the morning, on our fourth day, we picked up some ragworm and raw prawns from a tackle shop in Chatan, and drove to the northern end of the Kadena Sea Wall. This was another spot I fished the last time I visited Okinawa, the large concrete steps there offering comfortable fishing over a shallow reef. According to the weather forecast, we had a three-hour window before it started raining, so we were keen to make the most of it.

Ryan and I resume our species hunt!

The cloud cover was a little more scattered, with some blue sky visible, which was a nice change. As you would expect, casting out onto cleaner patches located next to rocky structures, soon produced a couple of wrasse species, both of which had stunning markings.

My first ever threespot wrasse,..

…and a few Pacific dusky wrasse too, a species I’ve encountered before in Phuket.

Dropping my rig closer in, just past the edge of the bottom step, I was hoping to perhaps locate some goby or blenny species, but this change in tactics produced a few different species from other families instead.

A couple of dory snapper,..

…quite a lot of little scissortail sergeant,..

…and my first ever pink-belly wrasse.

Casting out near rougher areas threw up a few more wrasse and a couple of triggerfish species for me. Ryan meanwhile had decided to give bait fishing a break and spent some time fishing small paddletail lures over the area. After having the tails nipped off of them a few times, his lure was taken by a fully committed cigar wrasse.

Triggerfish are awesome. Blackbelly triggerfish...

...and whitebanded triggerfish both have beautiful markings.

I was quite jealous of Ryan’s cigar wrasse. A very elongated species of wrasse, he caught it on an HTO Pathfinder Sandeel lure.

Fishing away, I then spotted a really weird looking tropical fish hovering over a small rocky area. Flicking my bait in its vicinity, it showed no interest whatsoever, but my efforts did see me catch a few more pink-belly wrasse and also two more new species whilst trying in vain to tempt it.

My first ever striped monocle bream,...

...was followed by my first ever thumbprint emperor.

Before we knew it, the three-hour weather window had come and gone. With only a few clouds in the sky, we were confident we’d be able to carry on fishing, but we decided to head a little further up the west coast to try our luck from some cliffs fishing into some much deeper water.

Tight lines, Scott.