The following day, we decided to fish a few marks around the southern end of the Fuerteventura. Our first stop was the pier at Las Playitas. During my last visit to the island, I caught a golden grey mullet whilst fishing at this venue, so I made up some groundbait and started trying to catch one fishing bread flake under a float. They were present, but the sea was pretty flat, and they were being very cautious, holding their position further out, waiting for my groundbait to drift out towards them. I struggled for a couple of hours, only managing to hook two briefly before they got off, and in the end I failed to catch one.
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| To begin with, we had the pier all to ourselves, but that didn't last long. |
Gordon and I did both catch our first salema of the trip before the constant arrival of people on the pier and a procession of kayakers launching from the slipway and paddling right over where were fishing, made the decision to head off to the next venue a pretty easy one to make.
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| Salema love a bit of bread too. |
Next, we headed to the rocks on the outside of the eastern breakwater of Puerto Gran Tarajal harbour. Carefully making our way along to the end of them, we decided to have a few casts then move back along them towards the start, stopping at different spots to see what we could catch. We didn’t catch anything right at the end, but a move of about twenty yards saw us locate a large shoal of striped seabream.
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| We enjoyed some great sport, catching dozens of these striped seabream. |
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| Gordon into a striped seabream. |
As we continued to make our way along the boulders, we continued to catch more striped seabream. During my last visit to Fuerteventura, I caught a few common pandora when we fished from these rocks, and was hopeful we would catch some this time too. Eventually Gordon did catch one, and almost straight afterwards, I caught one of my own too.
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| Mission accomplished. Species number forty of the trip! |
With two full day’s of fishing left, we decided to up the ante, and try to reach forty five species. I drew up a shortlist of potential targets, most of which I had caught on the island myself during my last trip, or knew specific spots where other anglers had caught them. Despite this bit of strategic planning, the last venue on our itinerary for the day was the a shot in the dark. Remembering the western breakwater of Morro Jable harbour from my last trip to Fuerteventura, I speculated that there might be a reasonably good chance that it held a population of glasseye, so we headed there. However, after making the forty five minute drive down there, we found that the area we wanted to fish was completely closed off due to the construction of an exclusive marina. Disappointed, we parked in the main harbour area so we could formulate plan B. Glasseye were definitely off the table, but I thought we could try fishing on the white sandy beach of Playa las Gaviotas, located a short drive to the east of us, there we could target wide eyed flounder and lesser weever as light faded. This proved to be a great decision, not because we caught either of those species, but instead because we caught a few nice gilthead seabream from the realively shallow gully we chose to fish in! In a relatively short period, Gordon caught two and then I caught a slightly bigger specimen that gave a great account of itself on my ultralight tackle. Very happy with this unexpected action, we called it a day and drove back to Caleta de Fuste.
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| What a scrap over fairly shallow ground! Species number forty one! |
In the morning, we decided to stay local, fishing around Caleta de Fuste and from the rocks near the Museo de las Salinas del Carmen, 3km to the south of the town. Before any swimmers arrived, we began on Playa de la Guirra, twitching Gulp! Angleworm along the bottom. Wide eyed flounder were the target species, and I soon hooked one, but it managed to throw the hook as I wound it in. I called Gordon over, and he promptly caught four of them in fairly quick succession! Another species had been added to our tally, but I still wanted to catch one myself, so I switched to a small piece of raw prawn and cast that out. A bite came almost instantaneously, and a wide eyed flounder was quickly wound in.
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Wide eyed flounder are awesome flatfish! Species number forty two!
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Having ticked off another species, we headed to the pond at the back of the Elba Sara Resort again, to see if we could catch a golden grey mullet or a flathead mullet. I quickly caught one of the larger thick lipped mullet in the pond, however, the commotion it made spooked the other mullet in the pond, and they all swam up the pipes at the top end of it! The sailfin molly were still around, so I quickly caught a plain looking one before we left.
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A "standard" sailfin molly. The specimens I’d caught two days earlier, the more colourful fish, were melanistic I believe.
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Jumping back in the car, we headed south to fish from the rocks near the Museo de las Salinas del Carmen, a well known spot for early morning bonito and barracuda fishing. As we walked down from the car park to the sea, we were met by a Barbary ground squirrel. It obviously thought we might give it some food and followed us for a while, scampering over the rocks.
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| Our new furry friend! It hung around for the duration of the session. |
There was a bit of a swell running, and waves were breaking on the vertical rock faces in front of us, sending spray up onto the ledges we wanted to fish from. We managed to find one small dry area and had an hour or so casting baits out into the relatively deep water out in front of us. This produced a lot of Canary damselfish, ornate wrasse, planehead filefish and pufferfish. I caught one particularly large Macaronesian sharpnose puffer, and also managed to catch my first butterfly winged comber of the trip.
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| Beautiful, but very annoying! |
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| Gordon had already caught a butterfly winged comber earlier in the trip, so this wasn’t an addition to our trip tally. |
With nothing else interesting turning up, we decided to head back north again to Caleta de Fuste. There, we found a place on the rocks fairly close to where we had fished the day we arrived, just north of the edge of the town. I focused my efforts fishing with small chunks of raw prawn in close on ledges, the target being a hairy blenny. Gordon tried his luck fishing with Gulp! Angleworm further out in deeper water. The only species I caught, were the ones you would expect to catch at close range over rocky ground, lots of ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish mainly. Gordon was also catching those too, as well as plenty of planehead filefish and pufferfish. Midway into the session, he caught something rather unusual. As he was winding it in, the fish came to the surface and leap from the water, trying to throw the hook. Initially we thought he had hooked a garfish. However, as it got closer, and he was about to lift it up, I realised it was in fact a halfbeak.
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| Doing some research later, I discovered this was a Balao halfbeak. A very close relative of the ballyhoo. The Balao halfbeak has a much longer pectoral fin. Bent forward it reaches the anterior nostril. On a ballyhoo it doesn’t reach that far. |
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| Halfbeaks have the strangest mouths! Species number forty three! |
This was without doubt the most unexpected species caught so far and, yet again, I was slightly jealous of one of Gordon‘s captures, but I was happy we’d caught yet another addition to our trip's tally. We carried on fishing away for a few hours more, but neither of us caught anything else that we hadn’t caught already earlier in the trip, so as it got dark we called it a day. With one full day left we still needed another two species to hit our new target, so we decided to head north to fish some different spots.
Tight lines, Scott.
Click here for the final part.
