Keen to catch some different species, we decided to visit the small concrete pier located at the northern end of Playa de Fañabé, a long artificial beach in Costa Adeje made from golden sand imported from Africa. Armed with a few loaves of bread, a couple of cans of sardines and a mop bucket and a large metal spoon borrowed from our accommodation, the plan was to freeline and float fish bread to catch whatever species we could attract and get feeding. Making up a bucket of groundbait and spooning some into the sea soon drew the attention of some small mullet and derbio. Freelining tiny pieces of bread flake on #20 hooks, I soon caught a couple of mullet, a derbio and bogue.
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| The small mullet turned out to be golden grey. |
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A bit more cautious, a small group of derbio sat further out and were eating the groundbait much lower in the water column. Adding a small split shot helped get my bait down past the mullet intact.
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| A few small bogue were also in amongst the shoal of golden grey mullet. |
After a while, I turned my attention to catching one of several redlip blenny that Nick had spotted straight down the side of the pier, sitting on the submerged rocks. They are fussy eaters, possessing a specialised mouth that is adapted to scraping food from the surface of the rocks they live on. Usually, it takes a bit of patience to catch one, and even that doesn’t guarantee success. Much to my delight, one of them lashed out aggressively, hit my small prawn chunk almost straight away and was hooked.
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| This redlip blenny was acting aggressively, in my opinion, not feeding. Possibly this was purely territorial behaviour. |
By this point Ryan had given up trying to catch a golden grey mullet, having hooked one but failed to land it. He had switched to fishing pieces of prawn on the sand further out and was rewarded with a nice striped seabream that put a nice bend in his ultralight setup.
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| Seeing Ryan catch this nice striped seabream, I wanted to catch one too. |
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| Switching to similar tactics soon saw me catch a few, but none were as big as Ryan’s fish. |
Next, I spent some time fishing with soft plastics close in, slowly bouncing them through the boulders there in an attempt to tempt an island grouper. I didn’t manage to locate any sadly, so before the end of the session, I spent some time casting a split shot rig baited with prawn out into the open sea. The bottom there was rocky, so this unsurprisingly produced a few Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse and puffers. Eventually, my persistence paid off when I finally caught something else.
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This ended up being the only planehead filefish of the trip. Note the damaged tail. Probably the result of living with hundreds of pufferfish.
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The following day, we fished from a comfortable rock mark at the back of Los Abrigos Harbour. Nick and Ryan fished heavy gear to see if they could catch some stingrays or sharks. I fished out over the sandy bottom. This produced lots of wide eyed flounder, some Atlantic lizardfish, a couple of greater weever, lots of puffer and a couple of stunning pearly razorfish.
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| Despite the fact they don't grow very big, wide eyed flounder really give a good account of themselves from deep water. Not as colourful, but its floral markings are very pretty. |
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| Puffer were again a bit of a pain, but the less common of the two species, the Macaronesian sharpnose puffer, are undeniably beautiful. |
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The beautiful pastel shades of the pearly razorfish. Easily my favourite species of wrasse from this part of the world. Very tricky to handle as they are quite flexible and will try to bite as well!
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Towards the end of the session, I spent some time fishing with some light metal jigs and a sinking hard plug, but my efforts went unrewarded. After packing up, we headed off to get some bait from the supermarket so that we could have a second evening session out with the heavy gear. Unfortunately, after spending a fair bit of time driving around to multiple supermarkets, none of them had any fresh mackerel, sardines or scad in stock. Rather than go out with inferior bait from the frozen section, we decided to visit the breakwater of Playa de San Juan’s harbour with lighter tackle to see what smaller nocturnal species we could catch. It was quite a productive session, and we managed to add a few more species to our trip’s tally.
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| As you would expect, we caught quite a lot of cardinalfish. |
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| I caught this very large Madeira rockfish. When it came to the surface I thought it was a black scorpionfish because it was so big! |
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| I caught the only axillary seabream of the trip. |
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| We also caught a few bastard grunt, another species that's commonly caught after dark. |
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| Nick caught the best fish of the session. A small Moroccan white seabream. |
Before we left, Ryan was fishing with a small paddletail on a jighead down the inside of the harbour wall when a barracuda appeared from the shadows, grabbed it and charged off, taking him completely by surprise. Fishing with ultra light tackle, with only a 6lb fluorocarbon leader, the fish bit him off instantly. The three of us spent a while trying to catch using heavier tackle but had no luck. Every so often we heard a splash as a barracuda hit the small baitfish that they were hunting from just below the surface. Just before we left we also spotted a solitary and fairly large bright glasseye also taking a small baitfish right at the end of the breakwater. We switched to small straight lures on 2g jigheads to try and catch one of those, but again we had no luck, so we called it a night.
On our last full day on Tenerife, we headed to fish from the rocks to the left of Playa de la Arena. The fishing was pretty slow. Casting out onto a sandy area, I was hoping to add a lesser weever to our tally but the only sand dwelling species that I caught was a pearly razorfish. Closer in only produced a few Canary damselfish, too little reward to be balanced precariously on the uneven rocks we were perched on, so we made the decision to head to the breakwater at Playa de San Juan for the rest of the day.
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| Playa de la Arena is a popular black volcanic sand beach. |
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| Ryan found an elevated position to fish from. |
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A female pearly razorfish exhibiting silver scales on the sides of its stomach.
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We quickly decided that it wasn't worth persisting with the mark just to catch even more Canary damselfish!
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Arriving back at the end of the breakwater, thinking about it, I realised that it was the place where we’d probably caught the best variety of species during the trip. It was also a safe, comfortable venue making it easy to fish. I was hopeful that a few hours spent fishing there might throw up something we hadn’t caught during the trip, or perhaps even a new species for me. I saw an Atlantic trumpetfish there back in 2015 and African sergeant have also been caught there recently, so we knew that it could produce all sorts of species. We caught plenty of fish as we enjoyed fishing in the warmth of the afternoon sun one last time, but I didn’t catch any new species and none of the three of us caught anything that was a new addition to our trip tally.
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| I caught this deep red cardinalfish with black accents on its fin tips. |
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| We also caught lots of Guinean puffer. Over the duration of the trip, we must have caught well over a hundred of these between us! |
All too soon, our time on Tenerife was coming to an end, and as is sometimes the case, the best conditions of the trip were forecast to arrive as we were about to fly home! We went out for something to eat on the last night of the trip and packed our bags ready to fly home the following afternoon. None of us were particularly looking forward to arriving back in a freezing cold Edinburgh, where a nasty cold snap had plunged the temperatures to below zero. With a few hours to kill the next day before we had to be at the airport, we drove up to the north of the island, up into the hills to Mirador De Jardina where we enjoyed some amazing views.
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| The mountains of Gran Canaria poke up above the clouds in the distance. |
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| One last look at the magnificent Mount Teide. |
It had been great to get away with Nick and Ryan again, we'd all enjoyed the trip, and we had caught a lot of fish. The windy conditions had limited our choice of fishing venues a bit, and the heavy presence of four particular species had been very frustrating too.
Here’s a summary of the species I caught, with the three new ones highlighted by bold text…
- Atlantic Lizardfish
- Axillary Seabream
- Azores Chromis
- Bastard Grunt
- Bogue
- Canary Damselfish
- Cardinalfish
- Common Stingray
- Derbio
- Emerald Wrasse
- Golden Grey Mullet
- Greater Weever
- Guinean Puffer
- Keeltail Needlefish
- Macaronesian Sharpnose Puffer
- Madeira Goby
- Madeira Rockfish
- Ornate Wrasse
- Parrotfish
- Pearly Razorfish
- Planehead Filefish
- Redlip Blenny
- Rockpool Blenny
- Spiny Butterfly Ray
- Striped Seabream
- Wide Eyed Flounder
Nick also caught...
- Moroccan White Seabream
It was nice to visit Tenerife again, it’s a beautiful place, but being honest, I think it’s perhaps my least favourite of the Canary Islands. A little bit too overdeveloped and the parking was a bit of a pain at times. The amount of Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse and puffer we encountered whilst fishing on Tenerife was ridiculous. It felt like there were much more there than I've encountered on any of the other main islands. I'd also like to visit the inhabited islands I haven't been to yet, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. That being said, plans are already under discussion for a fishing trip to Fuerteventura at the tail end of the year, so that'll most likely be where I visit next.
Tight lines, Scott.
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