Not more species hunting adventures on Gran Canaria?!: Part 2.

On day three of our holiday, we visited a few spots up the east coast to the north of where we were staying. Our first stop was the pier at the northern end of Playa de Melanura, to see the statue of Neptune that is located on a submerged rock out in the sea. I also planned on doing some fishing there, but it was completely closed off for repairs unfortuntately. April must be small pier repair month on Gran Canaria.

The Roman god Neptune emerging from the sea.

Heading south, we eventually found a spot at the end of Playa de Salinetas where I could have a few casts. I was expecting to catch a few sand dwelling species, but much to my surprise nothing was biting at all further out. Stupidly winding my rig in to some rocks at the water’s edge immediately remedied that problem, but only in the most predictable way possible!

A treble shot of ornate wrasse! Time to head somewhere else!

Driving up the coast to El Bufdero, I wasn't too shocked to find that the swell was too big and fishing from the rocks there was pretty much out of the question. Going for a stroll along the coastal path we quickly discovered that the area was home to a large population of Cran Canaria giant lizard, which we spent some time observing as they lazed in the sun, and scrambled around the boulders, dissapearing down in between them when we got too close. At one point two large individuals had a stand off and a brief fight which was quite a sight!

With the sea breaking over the rocks, I'd just have to return when the swell died down.

There were lots of these Gran Canaria giant lizard around. They can grow to 80cm long, although we didn't see any that big.

Driving north, we visited the small fishing town of San Critóbal. I fished for an hour or so from the sea defence cubes at the end of the harbour's breakwater. There was a fair amount of weed in the water, but the fishing was quite productive and I caught a steady stream of fish from a sandy area.

There were lots of bastard grunt around.

I also caught a few small bogue,...

...and a solitary striped seabream.

Casting further out, I found a few rockier patches. This initially produced a few Canary damselfish and ornate wrasse, but in amongst them, I caught two other species in the shape of a couple of hairy blenny and a nice common two banded seabream.

I normally catch hairy blenny from down in the rocks. This was the first time I've caught them at range from the open sea.

This common two banded seabream had a deep golden colour to it and put up a good scrap.

Just before we left, a spear fisherman swam by with a few parrotfish attached to his belt.

In the afternoon we drove inland to visit Cuatro Puertas, a complex of caves at the top of a mountain in the south of the municipality of Telde. There was a road most of the way up and then an easy footpath led up a few different sets of caves around the peak of the mountain.

Cuatro Puertas means four doors in English. All of them lead to the same large cave inside.

Gran Canaria Airport and the coast off in the distance.

More caves can be found on the southern side of the mountain along a narrow path.

In the evening after dinner, we popped down to the harbour in Castello del Romeral. Yet again, there weren't many fish biting, but I did manage to add two more species to my tally. Firstly, I annoyed a large redlip blenny enough by aggressively twitching a small lure on a jighead right in front of its face to enduce an aggresive reactionary attack. Striking quickly, I managed to hook the fish in its fleshy top lip and quickly hoisted him out. Shortly afterwards, the light from my headtorch was reflected back towards me by the large eyes of a couple of bright glasseye. A very cool species, I spent a bit of time fishing around the three large submerged rocks where they were lurking to try and tempt one, but wasn't successful. I was however rewarded with couple of island grouper.

Algae eating fish like redlip blenny usually need to be annoyed if you're gong to get one to "bite".

A couple of these small island grouper smashed my small straight lures as I worked them close to some large boulders.

Before we left, we had the priveldge of watching a couple of large stingray swim into and then back out of the harbour a few times. Speaking to a local, we learned that at least eight different individuals have been regularly visiting the harbour for several years.

The stingray were huge and fairly easy to see despite the relatively poor water clarity.

Another half a dozen species added to my tally wasn't too bad a result given the conditions. The wind was due to drop off over the next few days, so I was looking forward to visiting some places that would become safe to fish. Hopefully the fishing would pick up as well!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Tenerife: Part 3.

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.

The small mullet turned out to be golden grey.

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.

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.

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.

Seeing Ryan catch this nice striped seabream, I wanted to catch one too.

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.

This ended up being the only planehead filefish of the trip. Note the damaged tail. Probably the result of living with hundreds of pufferfish.

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.

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.

Puffer were again a bit of a pain, but the less common of the two species, the Macaronesian sharpnose puffer, are undeniably beautiful.

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!

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.

As you would expect, we caught quite a lot of cardinalfish.

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!

I caught the only axillary seabream of the trip.

We also caught a few bastard grunt, another species that's commonly caught after dark.

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.

Playa de la Arena is a popular black volcanic sand beach.

Ryan found an elevated position to fish from.

A female pearly razorfish exhibiting silver scales on the sides of its stomach.

 We quickly decided that it wasn't worth persisting with the mark just to catch even more Canary damselfish!

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.

I caught this deep red cardinalfish with black accents on its fin tips.

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.

The mountains of Gran Canaria poke up above the clouds in the distance.

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…

1. Atlantic Lizardfish
2. Axillary Seabream
3. Azores Chromis
4. Bastard Grunt
5. Bogue
6. Canary Damselfish
7. Cardinalfish
8. Common Stingray
9. Derbio
10. Emerald Wrasse
11. Golden Grey Mullet
12. Greater Weever
13. Guinean Puffer
14. Keeltail Needlefish
15. Macaronesian Sharpnose Puffer
16. Madeira Goby
17. Madeira Rockfish
18. Ornate Wrasse
19. Parrotfish
20. Pearly Razorfish
21. Planehead Filefish
22. Redlip Blenny
23. Rockpool Blenny
24. Spiny Butterfly Ray
25. Striped Seabream
26. Wide Eyed Flounder

Nick also caught...

27. 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.

Even more species hunting adventures on Gran Canaria: Part 3.

Keen to try fishing somewhere new, the next day we headed to a spot I'd seen other anglers fishing from in a YouTube video. Isla de Anfi is an artificial island that sits between Puerto de Anfi del Mar and Playa Anfi del Mar. Obviously, fishing in the marina, or from the beach, is prohibited, and as it turns out, fishing on the small island is not permitted either. A local who was fishing when we got down there, came over and told us that the police sometimes patrol the area, and whilst we wouldn't get into serious trouble, they would politely ask us to leave if they found us fishing. We only fished for thirty minutes before he approached us, and as the fishing was very poor, this information made the decision to leave a pretty easy one. I added one new species to our tally before we headed back up the hill to where we had parked the car, meaning the visit hadn't been a complete waste of time.

Isla de Anfi. No fishing allowed. We only spotted a sign as we left. If you decide to try here yourself, I'd visit at first light for a couple of hours.

A solitary small comber made our visit worthwhile.

We then headed west to Playa de Amadores to fish from its eastern breakwater again, but both the car parks were full, so we decided to head back to Puerto de Mogan once again. Having fished there twice already, we knew what to expect. The fishing had been reasonably consistent, and the draw of catching a red banded seabream, or something else unusual, was too hard to resist!

We just couldn't stay away!

Like previous sessions at the venue, we caught a reasonable amount of fish and in amongst the usual suspects we also added a few more species to our tally.

I knew it was a seabream when I hooked this common two banded seabream, but it wasn't the red banded seabream I was hoping would snaffle my squid strip.

I caught the first butterfly winged comber of the trip.

This diamond lizardfish also munched a strip of squid.

As the sun began to get fairly low in the sky, and the beach behind us began to empty, we decided to head around to target mullet for an hour or so in the channel. Ed wanted to catch his first flathead mullet, but there were a lot more mullet present and this made catching them very difficult. Numerous thick lipped mullet were around, and all we caught were those and some small golden grey mullet.

Our first thick lipped mullet of the trip.

Their thick upper lip with its rows of papillae make the species easy to identify.

The following day, we got up early and headed back to Playa de Amadores to ensure we got a parking space. First order of the day was a bit of fun in the rockpools at the end of the eastern breakwater.

I caught a few Madeira goby. They're not shy!

After catching a few fish from the rockpools, we turned our attention to fishing in the sea. I spent a bit of time trying to target garfish using a metal jig. I added a few pieces of thread from my fish handling towel to its treble hook to improve my chances of landed one should I get take, but despite getting a few hits, I didn't connect with any of the culprits. Switching back to fishing on the bottom out in the deep water, I caught a few bogue, as did Ed.

Bogue are quite a pretty seabream species in my opinion, in a sort of subtle way.

In the evening, we headed back to the bright glasseye spot. In my heart, I knew it was almost certainly a waste of time, as the condition were pretty much the same as they had been for the duration of the trip, but we went anyway. Whilst waiting for the security guard to leave and the sun to set, we fished from the beach nearby. The bites were few and far between, but came eventually and we both caught a few fish. I caught a bastard grunt and Ed caught his first Atlantic lizard fish and a greater weever. I caught a small wide eyed flounder and Ed caught his first one too, shortly afterwards.

A small bastard grunt. Much more common after dark in my experience, but you do catch some during the day as well.

Always love catching these pretty little flatfish. Ed was over the moon catching his first one too.

In the end, the conditions inside the glasseye spot were still very poor, so we decided just to head up to Arinaga to fish the pier there for an hour or so. We were both feeling pretty tired at this point, so we didn't stay for that long.

I ticked off a greater weever, just before we decided to call it a day.

We had been fishing pretty hard from the moment we arrived, and being honest, it had caught up with us. In the evening, we decided just to relax. I treated myself to a steak and a few cold beers, and we watched some videos on YouTube about the island and also some fishing videos too. We had two days left to reach our target of forty species, and I wasn't sure if we would do it. Hopefully we'd be suitably refreshed the following day to refocus and get the remaining species we needed.

Tight lines, Scott.

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