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.

Click here for the next part.

Species hunting adventures in Florida: Part 4.

The following day we headed back to Silver Palm Park to fish in the channel there. It was Sunday, and it was very busy due to there being a slipway there. Lots of boats were being launched and passing by in both directions, and this made fishing further out into the channel difficult.

The boat traffic was non-stop and the park's slipway was in use constantly too. If you plan on visiting this spot, it's advisable to do so during the week, when it's probably a lot quieter!

One of the reasons for visiting the park again was that it produces a very wide variety of species. I was told that one possible catch, the blackear wrasse, was more difficult to locate elsewhere but could reliably be amongst catches at this spot. After catching a few other species, I managed to catch one of them from further out in the channel, taking advantage of short breaks in the boat traffic. Later in the session, I also added a second puffer species to my tally for the trip as well. Lillian did a spot of fishing too and caught a few sergeant major and a yellowtail snapper.

As well as a few checkered puffer, I also caught my first bandtail puffer.

Out in the channel away from the hordes of sergeant major, I caught lots of grunt, including Sailor's grunt,...

...and white grunt. The white grunt’s striking blue facial markings were stunning.

I also caught a few porkfish. They also belong to the grunt family.

At a casual glance, this could be mistaken for just another slippery dick, but it was in fact my first ever blackear wrasse. It has a small dark spot just behind its eye (the ear) and also a black spot at the rear end of its dorsal fin.

The following afternoon, we returned to the Sawgrass Trailhead At Atlantic Boulevard, where I spent a couple of hours fishing. It was an enjoyable session, but I didn't catch anything new. I spent a fair amount of time trying to help some kids catch fish and answering a lot of their questions. They didn't have much luck sadly, and I ended up giving them most of my worms, to try to improve their chances! I did see a couple of peacock bass skulking around, but when they spotted me they swam off in the opposite direction. I tied on a small plug and had a few casts with that to see if I could tempt any others that might be in the vicinity, but sadly my efforts went unrewarded.

From there we headed east to Boca Raton Inlet, a spot that’s well known for producing an amazing array of species. I had arranged to meet up with Arthur, a YouTuber who lives in south Florida, whom I've been talking to about species hunting and travel for a year or so, after he contacted me looking for info on fishing on Lanzarote. He travels all over the world, and was the inspiration for my trip to Singapore last year.

Arthur with a peacock bass.

Check out Arthur's YouTube channel.

Boca Raton Inlet. A species hot spot.

We arrived about an hour before Arthur did, so I quickly got set up and started fishing from some rocks. It was a bite every cast, and I was catching lots of grunt and sergeant major when he arrived. We then moved a little further from up the channel to fish from a concrete seawall. It was rocky straight down the wall, but a lot deeper water was only a few metres out. I tried fishing closer in to begin with, and this produced slippery dick and more damselfish. Sergeant major damselfish and lots of brown damselfish. Brown damselfish can be extremely difficult to identify at times, but I believe I caught two different species.

The easy one first. This is a male sergeant major. Normally these are black and yellow, but they take on this bluish colour while guarding eggs.

Brown damselfish number one. No blue leading edge on the anal fin makes this a dusky damsel. I think.

This one, I believe, is a beaugregory damselfish. Again, if you think it's not, please let me know!

Casting out a bit into the deeper water, I caught a few more grunt and then caught a few Bermuda sea chub, a species I’ve caught before on in the Canary Islands. They were a reasonable size and gave a good account of themselves in the current, trying to get down into the rocks closer in.

I'd caught a solitary Bermuda sea chub on Lanzarote a few years ago.

As we chatted away, Arthur, who had scaled down to a tanago hook and a small piece of splitshot, caught a clown wrasse from a shallow rocky area to my right. I was just about to go and try for one myself when something bigger picked up my bait and charged off. It felt pretty strong and made a couple of surging runs, so I didn’t bully it too much for fear of being broken off. When the fish came into view, I recognised the species immediately and was very excited. It was a species I knew that was caught at Boca Raton Inlet occasionally, and was also one I really hoped I’d catch during the trip. Lillian did a fantastic job with my extending net and after a nervous moment near the rocks the weird looking fish was landed.

This bizarre looking creature is a scrawled filefish. It fought well despite being such an odd shape. No doubt due to its thin profile and very large tail fin.

The markings were stunning, and it also had a wicked set of jagged little teeth that I wasn't expecting. Without a doubt, a second contender for fish of the trip.

Shortly afterwards, we moved to a second spot closer to the opening of the inlet. The current had picked up considerably, and holding the bottom was becoming increasingly tough. All we caught were grunt, and before too long Arthur had to leave, wishing me good luck for the rest of our holiday. It was great to fish with him for a couple of hours, and I really appreciated him taking some time out of his very busy schedule to drive up and meet us. I'd really like to meet up with him again in the future, perhaps in some far-flung part of the world! He's also been told he'd be most welcome to visit me in Edinburgh if he fancied targeting species in Scotland. I fished on for a little while longer, trying to tempt a clown wrasse out of the shallow rocky area, but the current had got so strong that small waves were breaking over it, making it tough to keep my rig still, and after catching a few damselfish and slippery dick we called it a day. This session drew a close to our first week in Florida. The following day we were moving to new accommodation further south, from which I was looking forward to visiting the Florida Keys and also canals of the Tamiami Trail. 

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the next part.

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.

Click here for the next part.