More species hunting adventures on Tenerife: Part 2.

On day three of our holiday, we drove up the east coast of Tenerife towards its capital Santa Cruz and then headed up to the north coast. The swell forecast wasn’t great for those parts of the island, but we wanted to see for ourselves just how bad it was, and it was also an opportunity to check out some new spots that we could return to later in the week if the wind dropped off as was predicted. As it turned out, the first series of places we visited were completely unfishable due to breaking waves, and it wasn’t until we reached the picturesque village of Garachico, that we finally found a sheltered spot where we were able to fish. My first cast produced a nice emerald wrasse which was followed by lots of ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and puffers.

I’ve only caught a handful of emerald wrasse over the years. My first was at the very same place just over ten years ago!

The fishing wasn’t producing anything interesting, so we decided to drive up the incredibly steep and windy Camino Real las Arenas, through the mountains and then back down to Los Gigantes to spend the afternoon fishing into deep water from the rocks. Given its location and the direction of the wind we weren’t expecting much of a swell there, but when we arrived the sea was rolling in, crashing violently onto the rocks periodically. After walking along the coast for a while, we eventually managed to find a spot that we could fish that was fairly flat and elevated above the water. Nick and Ryan spent their time casting jigs and hard plastics around on heavy tackle, but had no joy. I tried to fish small baits on the bottom, but the current made that difficult, and all I caught were a few ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish.

The massive cliffs of Los Gigantes.

All things considered it had been a bit of a wasted day as far as the fishing had gone. In the apartment that evening, after going out for dinner, we formulated a plan for the next day and decided we'd try somewhere new in the morning  and then head out in the evening with our heavy gear to target stingrays.

The following day we headed down to a rock mark near the small coastal village of El Puertito. We had to walk a fair distance from the car down to the spot, but it looked quite promising when we arrived, and we quickly set up our gear.

Tenerife's nearby neighbour La Gomera off in the distance.

Again, Nick and Ryan spent a bit of time casting jigs and lures to see if any larger fish were around, but had no joy. I fished the bottom initially, and quickly discovered that Canary damselfish and ornate wrasse were present in plague proportions yet again.

They might be colourful, but I soon got fed up catching them.

Feeling slightly frustrated, Nick and I decided to do some float fishing. Again I went with a small bait under a small float to try and catch a needlefish, whilst Nick put out a large bait under a cigar float to try to tempt something big. After a short wait, my float jerked to the right a couple of times. Suspecting it may be what I was after, I let the bite develop to ensure the fish had taken the bait all the way inside its mouth before winding down. A small needlefish was then quickly wound in and hoisted up, but was it my first new species of the trip?

As far as I know, there are three species of needlefish present in the waters around the Canary Islands. The garfish, the Agujon needlefish and the keeltail needlefish.

Having done some research before the trip on the key identifying features of the three species I knew by examining the fish’s tail, which was obviously flattened out, that I’d caught my first keeltail needlefish.

After that, I float fished for a while longer, hoping that an Agujon needlefish would pass by and take my bait, but only the occasional ornate wrasse swimming up from the submerged reef as my float drifted over, was all I caught. Before we left, I switched to bottom fishing at distance to see what else was around, but disappointingly, all I caught was a steady succession of Canary damselfish.

In the evening, we headed down to Playa de Aguadulce, to have a go for stingrays after dark. Arriving just as the sun went down, we got set up at the top of the beach’s steep slope and lashed mackerel and sardine baits onto the dongle hanging from the circle hooks on our pulley rigs. Casting them out as far as we could and setting our rods into our tripods with the drag on our reels backed right off, we got as comfortable as we could on the beach’s large stones and patiently waited.

The waiting game begins.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how productive the session was going to be, but not long after it got dark, my rod started nodding away and then line started coming off my reel as a fish moved off with my bait. Picking up my rod and tightening up the drag, I felt the weight of something decent. A ten minute fight then ensued, with me following the fish along the beach as it moved off to my right. Scrambling over the loose stones was quite difficult, and I almost lost my footing a couple of times. Luckily, I ended up at an area where the gradient of the beach was a little less steep. This made it easier to land the fish and Ryan came along to give me a hand. Eventually a nice spiny butterfly ray appeared in the breaking waves and using them to my advantage, I successfully got the fish far enough up the shore that we could quickly lift it up away from the breaking waves. Ryan did get wet feet in the process though! Since the tail on the spiny butterfly ray is very small, the risk of its stinger coming into contact with you is neglegable unless you get really close to it. Regardless, I exercised caution and stayed in front of the fish whilst I carefully unhooked it. The debarbed circle hook was easy to remove having worked perfectly, ending up in the corner of the fish’s mouth. After a couple of quick photos, we carefully lifted it back down to the water’s edge and released it again.

I was over the moon to catch my first ever spiny butterfly ray. It was also my second new species of the trip.

After watching it disappear from sight, I took a few moments to catch my breath before carefully heading back along to where I’d started. Using a good amount of bait elastic, I prepared my second bait of the night. Lashing two sides of mackerel taken from the tail end of the fish together, flesh side facing outward around my dongle. Casting this back out to roughly the same spot, it didn’t take a great deal of time for my rod to show signs of interest again. Much smaller indications, but they were clearly out of sync with the breaking waves. After letting the bite develop, I lifted my rod to feel the weight of a much smaller fish. This time it was easily wound in, and thankfully I didn’t have to scramble about on the stones too much.

My first ever common stingray was a very small specimen. They can reach weights of several hundred pounds! Despite being so small, I took great care unhooking it due to its stinger. Holding its tail by the tip using a wet towel, again the circle hook was nicely placed and removal was very straightforward.

With such a good start to the evening, I was sure that Nick and Ryan would soon get in on the action too. Ryan and I were sharing a tripod, whilst Nick was located about twenty yards to our left. He seemed to have a few snags directly in front of him though and had lost a couple of rigs. Then, whilst winding in to put on a fresh bait, his lead had got stuck in the stones down in front of him where the waves were coming up the beach. Trying to release it, the lead suddenly came free and flew straight back towards him, striking him hard in the face. The first Ryan and knew about this was when he came along towards us with blood pouring out of his nose and over his face. I thought perhaps he had lost his footing, fallen and hit his face on the ground, but then he explained what had happened. Ryan and I were obviously concerned about his well-being, but he assured us he was fine, so we helped him clean up his face and kept a close eye on him for the rest of the session.

Despite taking a 7oz gripper straight to his face and being bloodied and sore, Nick managed to crack a bit of a smile!

A couple of hours went by with no further action, despite fairly regular bait changes, until Ryan’s rod started nodding away. Lifting it from the tripod he had a fish on. Unfortunately after a short fight it somehow managed to throw the hook just before we caught sight of it, which he was very upset about. Not long afterwards we ran out of bait and called an end to a quite eventful session.

The next day the wind had dropped off, so we decided to try a couple of spots up the east coast near the island’s capital Santa Cruz. Rather than taking the quickest route, directly via the TF-1 motorway, we took a leisurely drive up into the island’s interior and through the Teide National Park. Stopping at various spots to take in the incredible views and alien lava field landscapes as we headed north.

Driving through strange volcanic landscapes,…

…eventually you find yourself almost 3km above sea level, up above the clouds,…

…where you can take in stunning views of the majestic snow capped Mount Teide, Spain's tallest mountain.

Driving back down to sea level, we spent an hour or so fishing from the sea defence boulders near the Castillo de San Juan Bautista. Again it looked like a promising spot, but it didn't seem to matter where we cast, all we caught from the open sea were Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse and puffers. I spent half an hour dropping baits down into gaps in the boulders, hoping to pull out a hairy blenny but all I caught were even more ornate wrasse and a couple of Madeira rockfish.

The Castillo de San Juan Bautista is almost four hundred years old. The modern concrete builing in the background is the Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín. Build at the start of this century, I'm not sure that'll last as long.

By that point in the trip we were all quite fed up of catching ornate wrasse.

Heading back to the car and making a short drive slightly north of the capital, we parked up and made our way to the Muelle de Cory, one of two small stone piers that run parallel to each other with a slipway between them. It was quite windy, but there were a few locals float fishing and they were catching a few fish, mainly bogue. Heading to the end of the structure, we tried fishing down the side and casting around in various directions, but our efforts only produced endless puffers.

Guinean puffer were also beyond annoying by that stage. Bait stealing pests with razor sharp beak like teeth that damage line. They can also bite hooks clean off.

Again feeling a little frustrated, we decided to head along to a concrete platform situated near the edge of a public swimming area. As we made our way there, we reached a point where we had to scamble up some rocks to reach the platform. Just before we went up, I had a look down the side to see if I could spot any fish. In amongst the Canary damselfish and ornate wrasse I spotted a few Azores chromis, so I quickly tied on a small hook and caught a couple of them.

Another species added to our trip’s tally and a very welcome change to the repetitive catches we’d suffered all day.

There were a couple of women fishing on the platform, but we didn't see them catch anything. The three of us caught some fish, but there are no prizes for guessing what they were! Heading up the east coast to try out luck had proved to be very unproductive. All three of us were thoroughly bored of catching ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and puffers. It wouldn't be so bad if occassionally other species got to your bait first, but it didn't seem like there were any other species around!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Even more species hunting adventures on Gran Canaria: Part 1.

Only five weeks after visiting the Canary Islands, I flew back down there again for another fishing trip. Returning to Gran Canaria for a week, this time I was accompanied by my mate Ed, who also enjoys a spot of species hunting. He brought with him a handwritten list of thirty-five species that he’d never caught before that he was keen catch. His target for the trip was to catch ten new species, which I was very confident he'd achieve. As I've fished in the Canary Islands a lot over the years, I’ve caught many of the species found there already, but was still hopeful that I’d perhaps catch some new ones myself, so set myself a target of three, with a bright glasseye being my number one target new species for the trip. Perhaps that doesn’t sound very ambitious, but I felt it was important to be realistic. No point setting unachievable goals after all. As an additional challenge, we also decided to set an objective of catching forty species between the two of us over the duration of our trip. 

After arriving in the evening, and dropping off our luggage at our apartment in Arinaga, we headed down to the town’s pier for our first after dark session. This was the exact same spot I’d fished at the beginning of my trip last month with my mate Gordon, so a feeling of déjà vu quickly kicked in. Fishing small pieces of prawn down the side, we quickly caught four of the species I had caught the last time I fished there. We caught a few Canary damselfish close to the pier, as well as lots of Madeira rockfish from the rocky bottom. The two main targets for the session were bastard grunt and cardinalfish, as Ed had never caught either before. Before too long, he'd caught them both.

There were plenty of aggressive Madeira rockfish hard on the bottom.

We both caught plenty of cardinalfish.

The following morning, checking the weather forecast for the rest of our trip, strong winds from the north were predicted, so we decided to head south. Stopping in Maspalomas, we quickly visited a small pond and caught a few Mozambique tilapia, Ed's third new species of the trip. Walking around the venue before we left, I thought I spotted some very small convict cichlids, so we decided to return later in the trip to find out if I was correct.

We quickly got a few dozen of these Mozambique tilapia before leaving. Strictly speaking, I don't think fishing for the invasive species is allowed, although the signs around the venue aren't exactly clear.

Drivingfurther west to Puerto de Mogan, we headed to the rocks that make up its beach's breakwater and fished from them into the deep water out in front of it. Last month, my mate Gordon caught a red banded seabream there, so I was hoping to catch one of those myself. The action wasn't great, with some quiet spells, but we caught a few fish and in amongst them Ed caught his first ever derbio. I didn't get what I was after, but my morning efforts were rewarded with a lovely parrotfish.

I'm not a massive fan of brown damselfish generally. They can be a real pain to identify, but that can't be said about the Canary damselfish, with its intense violet accents.

It had been a while since I caught a female parrotfish. It would end up being the only one of the trip.

In the afternoon, we visited the eastern breakwater of Playa de Amadores. Again, the fishing wasn't anything spectacular, and the action was sporadic, but we ticked off a few more species before we moved on again.

There were plenty of rockpool blenny in the rockpools. Another new species for Ed.

Casting out into the deep water on the outside of the breakwater, I caught quite a few Azores chromis.

Our final stop for the day was the small harbour that has the resident bright glasseye population. Fishing isn't technically allowed, but when Gordon and I visited last month, the security on site saw us entering with our tackle and let us fish anyway. This time however, the guard on duty immediately approached and bluntly told us that fishing was not permitted. This was a bit of a blow. I really wanted to catch a bright glasseye. Their presence was sort of the inspiration for my return to the island! Heading to a small beach nearby, we had a few casts over the sandy bottom. I pulled out a few Atlantic lizardfish, a species Ed had never caught before, but he didn't manage to get one, sadly.

The Atlantic lizardfish prefers a sandy environment. It's cousin the diamond lizardfish is usually found over rocky ground.

In the evening, at exactly 18:00, the security guard left the site. We waited a while, to see if they would return, then entered once it began to get dark to see if we could see any bright glasseye. Due to the windy conditions, the water was slightly coloured up, and the surface had a lot of ripples on it. I shone my head torch around, trying to catch the reflection of the bright glasseye's huge eyes, but we didn't see any. Given the forecast for the rest of the trip was to get slightly worse, I was concerned we wouldn't get an opportunity to fish for them.

The next day, we decided to head all the way up to Sardina and Puerto de las Nieves located on the northwest coast of the island. With the wind coming from the northeast, I thought they might be slightly sheltered. Arriving in Sardina, a slow constant swell was rolling in, and making our way out onto the pier, a strong wind was howling through, so we headed to the small harbour further along the base of the cliffs. Fishing there provided us with a bit of shelter, but the action wasn't great, with ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish out in force. I did manage a nice parrotfish and a Moroccan white seabream.

In calmer conditions, the pier is a great spot that throws up lots of different species.

This male parrotfish almost broke me off when my line came into contact with the corner of one of the concrete cubes we were fishing from. I've started fishing with 11lb braid, previously I used 6lb, and this probably made a difference. My line was damaged, but it didn't fail.

This nice Moroccan white seabream also went straight for the refuge of the concrete blocks, but I managed to bully it away from them. 

Late in the afternoon, we headed further south to fish from the end of Puerto de las Nieves' ferry terminal. It was quite an effort to reach it, traversing rocks and concrete block for hundreds of yards. To be honest, other than getting a workout getting along there and enjoying the views of the cliffs to the south once we did, it was a very disappointing end to a pretty poor day's fishing. All we caught were ornate wrasse, Canary damselfish and Madera rockfish!

The impressive cliffs to the south of Puerto de las Nieves.

So, one evening session and two full days into our holiday, we had enjoyed some mixed results. Species wise we were into double figures and Ed had caught a few new ones, so that was promising. It was obvious that unless the weather forecast improved, our choice of venues would be restricted to those on the south coast, so that's exactly where we opted to fish the following day.

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Gran Canaria & Fuerteventura: Part 3.

Arriving on Fuerteventura for the second half of our trip late in the morning, we couldn't check into our accommodation until 16:00, so we visited a supermarket to pick up some lunch and bait so we could go fishing. To begin with we spent a few hours targeting mullet. I knew there were at least two species in the area, thick lipped and golden grey, with a third, the flathead mullet also potentially present. This third species would be a new one for me. After hastily pulling out the tackle we needed from my suitcase in a car park, we headed to some rocks in Caleta de Fuste between the town's marina and beach. After having some lunch, we set up our gear, made up some groundbait, and began fishing.

Our chosen spot for the afternoon's session.

We did spot a couple of mullet cruising around, and float fishing bread flake, whilst continually spooning in small amounts of groundbait, we were hopeful we could attract a few more into the area in front of us. Over a few hours, we caught quite a lot of fish, but amazingly none of them were mullet! We did add six species to our tally for the trip, so whilst the mullet fishing was a complete failure, it still turned out to be a fantastic start to our time on the island. As well as the five species below, Gordon also caught a single common two banded seabream. 

First out for both of us were a few Moroccan white seabream.

We also caught quite a few of these Bermuda sea chub. They put up a great little scrap.

We also caught some small striped seabream.

I caught a solitary saddled seabream.

Finally, we caught a couple of small derbio.

With an hour or so left before we could get into our accommodation, we headed to a small man made pool of water situated on the upper shoreline behind the Elba Sara Resort. This long, narrow pond seems to be connected to the water features in the resort's grounds via some pipes at its top end. It was full of mullet, with the odd Madeira goby sitting motionless on the bottom. Much more interestingly, there were good numbers of sailfin molly around the edges! I also watched a common eel appear from one pipe and swim into another, so we didn’t know what else was in there! When we first arrived, there were a few people feeding the fish, but they soon all left, we had the pond to ourselves for a while, and set about catching some of the inhabitants. A few mullet were quickly landed and all were carefully identified.

All the fish we caught were thick lipped mullet. There may have been some golden grey mullet present but we didn’t catch any. I did see one flathead mullet in the pond, identifiable by a yellow edge on the bottom of the anal and tail fins. This sighting would lead us to return to the pond again a couple of times later in the trip.

Turning my attention to catching the sailfin molly, I tied on a tanago hook and lowered in a tiny piece of bread. A small group of them were soon eagerly nibbling away, but hooking them proved tricky as more often than not, they simply knocked the bread off. Switching to a tiny piece of raw prawn was a good choice, it stayed on the hook point longer, and I had quickly caught a few of them on it.

Such a cool little fish and my fifth new species of the trip too! Who would have thought you could catch them from a pool on a beach in the Canary Islands!?

Their colouration varied greatly, due to melanism I think, but I'm confident they are all the same species.

I caught this much plainer example.

The first three were all females. I then caught this colourful male with its huge dorsal fin!

After heading to our apartment up on the hill, right at the back of Caleta de Fuste, to check in, we immediately headed back down to the coast again to fish from the rocks just on the northern edge of the town.

We headed out to the tip of this rocky peninsula, where we got down close to the water's edge.

A few hours here produced a lot of Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse, both species of pufferfish and planehead filefish. In amongst those however, we sporadically managed to pull out a few species that were additions to our trip tally, and on that front, it was quite productive.

Gordon caught a single annular seabream,...

...and a solitary black seabream.

In close, I caught a parrotfish,...

...and a few Azores chromis. No incredibly striking colours on these, but they are still quite an attractive damselfish in my opinion.

So, our first day on Fuerteventura had unexpectedly seen us add a dozen species to our tally, taking it to thirty eight! With three full days left to fish, surely we'd have no problem hitting our target of forty? I was very confident, and we joked about trying to catch fifty, but you never know, we could equally struggle to add any more. That said, there were a few species I thought we could target, and I was also hopeful that I'd catch some more new species as well. If we fished into deep water, maybe I'd get lucky and catch a red banded seabream? I was also still keen to catch a glasseye, but could I find a spot holding them? I had a potential venue in mind, but would it hold them? Having confirmed the presence of flathead mullet in the area, maybe we could catch one of those? It had been a great trip up to that point, easily my most productive ever in the Canary Islands, and regardless of what number of species we'd end up on, we were both looking forward to visiting other areas of the island and catching a lot more fish before our time fishing in the sun was over!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Lanzarote : Part 1.

When my mate Nick asked me where he could go for a cheap break on his own I recommended the Canary Islands or Madeira. He ended up booking up a week's holiday on Lanzarote. I say holiday but between him booking up and me asking if I could join him a few months had passed and by that point his itinerary was shaping up into what sounded to me like some kind of "Tinder rampage". Anyway, once he said I could be his wingman and I booked up all thoughts of exotic birds were put on the back burner and we began planning what exotic fish we'd like to catch instead. We flew out on the 4th of May and after dumping our bags at our apartment in Puerto del Carmen we hit the nearest rocks. Lessons learnt from our trip to Fuertaventura about the dangers of the sun we slapped on plenty of factor fifty and braved the midday heat.

Blue sky, blue sea, fish biting and a cooling Atlantic breeze. It was good to be back on Lanzarote.

There was nothing fancy about our style of fishing. Angleworm and fish fry on drop shot rigs were soon catching all the usual species found at close range, damselfish, ornate wrasse and puffers being the main species fighting over our highly attractive offerings.

Shoals of Canary damselfish hug the rocks at close range.

Puffers soon started destroying our lures and damaging our line. Truth be told they are a bit of a nuisance although when they do this party trick it's quite amusing.

Azores chromis were a slightly less common capture. The seem to be greatly outnumbered by their darker cousins. Another pretty little fish.

This saddled seabream was probably the biggest fish of our first session and was good fun on my light game setup.

Being quite tired from the early start, travel and fishing in the sun we had a reasonably sensible evening and in the morning we got up early and headed to a rock mark in Playa Blanca for first light. We started fishing with light lure gear in an attempt to catch bonito, bluefish or barracuda but after thrashing the water with a few different lures until the sun was up all we had managed to catch between us was a solitary greater weever that took my Savage Gear psycho sprat jig. Nick persisted fishing larger lures for a while but I switched to light game gear which soon had me catching a few smaller fish.

This Couch's seabream was amongst the fish I caught.

In the afternoon we headed to the back of Playa Blanca's ferry port to fish from the rocks on its outer breakwater. This produced a few ornate wrasse, damselfish, puffers and a few common pandora along with some axillary seabream and bogue. It was noticeable that the last species became much more active when ever the ferry passed by. No doubt the bottom being churned up by its propellers was producing some food for them and encouraging them to feed.

A small bogue.

On day three we headed along the coast to fish from the rocks into the mouth of Puerto Calero's large marina. Whilst I fishing angleworm on a drop shot rig Nick tried fishing a large bait under a float but this didn't interest anything so he tried ledgering a bait instead. This eventually produced a nice gilthead seabream. In the afternoon I decided to get smelly hands too and fished slivers of squid. We fished well into the afternoon and added a few more species to our tally including some nice seabream.

Striped seabream.

I caught a nice gilthead too.

Later on a small shoal of juvenile bass arrived that kept coming into close range. Freelining small chunks of squid proved an effective way to catch them. In amongst the bass were some other fish that I thought were salema but when I caught two of them I realised they were in fact a new species but I had no idea what they were. My knowledge of the fish species of the Canaries is now pretty good so this in itself was quite exciting!

I'd later discover that my first new species of the trip were Bermuda sea chub.

Heading back to the apartment for something to eat and without the wind cooling us it soon became apparent that Nick had missed a part of his ankle when applying his factor fifty and had burnt it qite badly. In the evening we headed up to Arrecife to check out a few spots and ended up walking all the way out to the end of a breakwater that extended quite far out to sea. Parking the car had proved difficult and the car park we eventually found closed at 22:00 so we didn't fish for long. Amongst all of the ornate wrasse and puffers Nick caught a nice white seabream. Once it got dark we caught a few saddled seabream as well before calling a night.

We were really racking up the seabream species.

The sun sets over the island.

As we walked back to the car Nick explained that his son Harry had asked him to try and catch a rare region specific Pokemon for him and as we drove out of Arrecife he spotted the one he'd been tasked with catching. We were driving along a one way street when he spotted it on the map though so we couldn't stop the car to get closer so we agreed to return to the spot where he'd seen it another day. Back at the apartment we overdid the cerveza and honey rum a little and had a lie in the next day. The start of the holiday had been great and we had caught a lot of fish. The best was still to come though.

Tight lines, Scott.

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