More Species Hunting Adventues 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 damselfish. 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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Not more species hunting adventures on Crete?!: Part 3.

For the majority of the third night and well into the following morning it rained heavily. When it finally stopped, we decided to head out, despite the fact that it was pretty windy and even more rain was forecast. I had a deep water fishing spot that I wanted to check out, so we drove to that. Upon arrival though, the terrain looked ever so slightly more difficult than I had imagined it would be. As I told Lillian, it’s something that can be hard to gauge when you're looking at new fishing spots on Google Maps!

The spot I wanted to get to. The rocks on the far side of this peninsula at the left hand side of Istron Bay.

Given it could be difficult to access, and more rain was probably on the way, we opted instead to take the elevator of the Istron Bay Hotel down to the lower levels of the resort and then make our way down through those to the beach. Once on that we headed along to the small harbour at its eastern end.

The Istron Bay Hotel from the end of the small harbour where I would fish and Lillian would read a book. The whole time both of us keeping one eye on the heavens, looking for signs they were about to open!

It didn’t look particularly promising to start with, being very shallow and without too many obvious features, but the little harbour actually turned out to hold a variety of species. To begin with I tossed in some bread and freelined small pieces of it in amongst the fish that arrived to feed. Doing this I managed to catch some small derbio and, after much frustration, a solitary boxlip mullet.

They are great fun to catch, and I was hoping some derbio bigger than the palm of my hand would show up, but sadly none did.

It took me a while to catch this boxlip mullet. Like all mullet species, they seem to be experts at nibbling bread from your hook without getting hooked themselves somehow. One for my tally was all I needed!

I then turned my attention to fishing pieces of prawn close to the bottom around the edges of a large submerged rock on the seabed. After a few rabbitfish and puffer were caught, I caught a few Atlantic lizardfish and some small goldblotch grouper. Then a few scorpionfish came out from beneath the big rock and sat motionless to see what all the fuss was about. Dropping a bait near them saw them pausing briefly before lurching forward and gobbling it up. I caught two different species of the aggressive little predators.

As well as a couple of Madeira rockfish,..

…I also caught several black scorpionfish too.

Then Lillian pointed out a small red fish tentatively poking its head out from beneath the rock a little bit before it turned and darted back under it again. Catching a glimpse of it I knew straight away what it was, and a bait was dropped as close I could get it to the curious fish. After having a couple of swipes at the prawn, the fish was hooked and quickly swung up to hand.

Eventually this bright red cardinalfish got brave enough to dart out and swallow my bait. Normally a species you catch after dark, they hide in dark places during the day.

Just after I had returned the cardinalfish, the rain started. Slowly at first, but knowing it could quickly start pouring down, I quickly packed up, and we began heading back through the resort to find the lift. We got a bit lost though, and by the time we figured out where we needed to go, it was raining torrentially, and we got a bit of a soaking. After seeking shelter, it didn’t look like it was going to let up, so we decided just to bite the bullet and dash back to the lift and then to the car. Drying off back at the apartment, the rain persisted, so we chilled out for a while and went out for dinner in the evening. By that point the rain had stopped and looking at the forecast for the rest of the holiday it was staying dry for the remainder of our trip.

The following day we checked out of our accommodation and drove west to the small coastal village of Georgioupolis. It’s a lovely place, and it’s also a great spot for a bit of species hunting, throwing up many different types of fish. Giant goby are present in large numbers and were the first fish I targeted, sight fishing for them in shallow areas up next to the bridge over the town’s river.

There are lots of these super aggressive giant goby around.

Casting out into the deeper water to see what else was around, I immediately caught a few yellow spotted puffer. I think that’s the first time I’ve caught them there, so they’re obviously also tolerant of brackish environments too. The Red Sea is a harsher environment than the Mediterranean Sea in that respect.

Cute? They are a total pest!

After a while, we crossed over the bridge and wandered down towards the mouth of the river. Fishing from the rocky boulders there, I spent a bit of time fishing with various lures in an attempt to catch a bass, bluefish or barracuda. This didn't produce much. I hooked a small bluefish, but it thrashed around in the current and threw my lure. Lillian then spotted a parrotfish, moving around on the rocks directly below us, so I tried to tempt it using a chunk of prawn. It really wasn’t interested at all, so I decided to see if I could find some small crabs I could use as bait. Parrotfish love crabs. After turning over some rocks at the edge of a nearby shallow area I did manage to find a few. Using these as bait proved to be a great decision. As soon as the first half crab was dropped in, the parrotfish quickly ripped it off of the hook. Before too long a few more parrotfish appeared, obviously drawn in by the scent of fresh crab. Eventually, I managed to hook one, but as it charged down the rocks and I put a bit of pressure on it, the fish threw the hook. The commotion spooked all the other fish too, so before we left I decided to ledger my last small piece of crab out on the sandy bottom away from the rocks at the river’s edge. This turned out to be a good choice and my rod tip was soon pulled round by a red mullet that had found my bait on the bottom with its long feelers.

This is a plain red mullet, cousin of the striped red mullet. It’s not as colourful and its fins lack any markings. It's plain!

We had another long drive to do, to get to Agia Galini, so I packed up after that, and we headed back towards the car. On the way I spotted a small fish that I was sure was a peacock blenny. Lillian gave me the green light to try and catch it, so a tanago hook baited with a tiny piece of prawn was dropped down next the crack at the bottom of the harbour wall that it had disappeared into. It was reluctant to come out, and every time it slowly poked its head out a small goby would steal the bait. Some much bigger rusty blenny and giant goby were also occasionally crashing around on the bottom and this spooked the fish a few times too. In the end I spent a fair amount of time trying to catch the little shy fish. Lillian’s usually incredibly patient with my fishing antics, but even she was getting annoyed! Eventually, it did come out, grabbing the tiny bait and I waited a second before lifting to make sure it was hooked. Thankfully it was, and was quickly swung up to hand before being popped into my tank for a quick photo.

The smallest peacock blenny I've ever caught.

Fishing over for the day, we made the drive from the north coast all the way through the island's mountainous interior to the south coast, passing through the breathtaking Kourtaliotiko Gorge on the way. Arriving just after dark, we checked in to our room and popped out into the town for a stroll. After exploring for a while we had a generous plateful of tasty gyros and washed it down with several large and ice cold beers before calling it a night.

The following day it may have been dry, but the wind was battering the shoreline where we were, so we headed to the coastal town of Matala to see the caves carved into the cliffs there.

These caves were carved thousands of years ago. No one's sure by who or for what purpose. Much more recently, they were inhabited by hippies. Now they are fenced off in a protected area, but you can still go inside and clamber around on the sandstone rocks for the sum of four euros.

After wandering around the town and having some lunch, we jumped back in the car and drove to Plakias. The passenger sitting next to Lillian on the flight to Crete had told her that he had been visiting the town every year for the last thirty five years, so we wanted to see what the fuss was all about! It looked nice enough from the end of its harbour, although it was very windy!. Rather predictably a large population of yellow spotted puffer were resident, but in amongst them, I also caught a few Atlantic lizardfish and my first parrotfish of the trip.

No crabs were harmed in the capture and release of this fish!

After being battered by the wind at the end of the pier for a couple of hours, we visited a marina nearby, but that turned out to be another pufferfest, so we decided to head back to Agia Galini. Arriving just as the sun was setting, I was given permission to have a few casts at the back of the harbour over a shallow area with some large partially submerged boulders. It only took a few casts to get a take, and it definitely wasn't anything inflatable that had munched my piece of Angleworm. After a short but dirty fight, a nice goldblotch grouper was hoisted up, photographed and put back to carry on its own species hunting.

One last cast before dinner...

...was well worth it.

So, my species hunting was going very well indeed. Despite some horrible weather at times, I'd managed to catch thirty species in five days which was a great result, even if the majority of fish I had been catching had all belonged to only one species! Anyway, we only had two days left of our trip and adding more species was going to be tricky. The wind was forecast to drop off though, and I had short list of species that I hadn't caught during the trip that I thought could be targeted. I was also hopeful that I'd get lucky and catch something new!

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the final part.

Species hunting adventures on São Miguel: Part 1.

At the end of March, Lillian and I flew from Edinburgh, via Lisbon, to Sao Miguel in the Azores for a ten day long trip. We'd be joined after three days by my mates Lee and Ross, who were flying direct from London Stansted. After a fairly long journey but excited to be somewhere new, Lillian and I explored the capital of Ponta Delgada on foot for the first couple of days, and then picked up a hire car the day before the boys arrived. The weather in the Azores at that time of year is similar to the UK in that it can change very quickly. One minute the sun is shining, the next it's cloudy or raining.

Hardly a cloud in the sky. Black volcanic rock and buildings painted white are a feature of Ponta Delgada architecture and the theme is also used on lots of pavements too.

After wandering around some of Ponta Delgada's quaint narrow streets on the morning of our first full day, we strolled down to the open coast to a small harbour, so I could do some fishing. Someone was already fishing when we got there, usually a good sign.

The local angler's tactics involved bread paste on treble hooks, fished under a float using a rod made of a piece of cane. I love that sort of thing. A reminder that expensive tackle might be nice but is not always neccessary to catch some fish.

After watching the gentleman catch a few seabream, I got quickly set up along from him and was soon pulling out lots of small fish myself on pieces of raw prawn. Ornate wrasse were the first species of the trip. No surprise there really and lots of them. A few other fish did manage to beat them to my bait eventually.

A nice blacktail comber...

...a damselfish that managed to get a relatively big hook in its mouth...

...and a few Guinean puffers. I'm not a massive fan of puffers. I might have mentioned that before.

This was the spot I'd just fished. By the time we left the clouds had rolled in.

We then took a slow stroll back into town, following the coastline. Walking past the main marina inside the town's huge harbour, I had a look to see what fish were in it. As well as shoals of mullet, lots of ornate wrasse and various types of seabream, I soon spotted some black faced blennies sitting still on submerged boulders close to the edge, occassionally shifting their position slightly. They are a tiny fish but the males have a bright yellow body, so they were easy to pick out against the dark volcanic rock. Whilst I was excited, as it was my first time I'd ever come across the species in the sea, I also knew that fishing there was strictly off limits. In fact, whilst I was pointing the black faced blennies out to Lillian, a couple of locals passing by, seeing that I had fishing tackle with me, warned me that the Marina had a security detail. They told me that they were very strict and should they see me fishing, they would be straight over, and I could end up with a hefty fine. Whilst I really wanted to catch a black faced blenny, I also didn't want to risk getting into trouble, so, feeling frustrated, we headed off again.

Full of fish but strictly off limits. The clouds had almost all gone again.

Walking further along the harbour's promenade, away from the marina, we found a small slipway behind a seafood restaurant and I did some fishing there. The chefs were out regularly tossing fish scraps into the water, meaning the area was full of fish. Freelined raw prawn chunks were soon doing the business.

Sun out again. Fish on again!

I caught plenty of these rather plump thick lipped mullet...

...and some small derbio that went off like little rockets and were great fun ...

...and a female emerald wrasse.

Feeling we had perhaps been exposed to a little bit too much sun, we decided to get into the shade and headed to one of Ponta Delgada's botanical gardens. As well as enjoying the cool cover the many different species of trees offered and admiring lots of nice plants, there were also some beautiful, very colourful birds strutting about.

A lovely looking cockerel.

The top of my head felt like it was almost as red as the cockerel's we had seen in the gardens so after getting some aftersun and a bottle of pineapple liqueur from the supermarket we headed back to the apartment to relax, and after a lengthy cold shower each, we enjoyed copious amounts of both. 

The next day we picked up our hire car and headed out of the capital to explore. We drove round its western end, making some short stops at roadside viewpoints to enjoy the scenery before carrying on to visit a few potential fishing spots. Mosteiros was our first destination where we checked out a small pier and then its natural swimming pools. 

São Miguel Miguel is lush with lots of grassy fields. Cows were also a fairly common sight. It could easily be mistaken for somewhere in the UK.

There are several deep rockpools at Mosteiros that people can go swimming in.

Rockpool blennies swim about in them too, rather unsurprisingly!

Leaving Mosteiros, we drove east along the northern coast to Ponta da Costa, a tiny slipway at the bottom of some huge cliffs. The winding path down was pretty steep and to be honest the fishing wasn't great when we eventually made it down to the bottom. I didn't realise it at the time, but I later discovered that I'd caught my first new species of the trip whilst down there.

The slight swell rolling in made fishing difficult.

As well as lots of ornate wrasse, I also caught a few very darkly coloured rainbow wrasse. I'd later discover they were blacktail rainbow wrasse, and also that looking back through my old catch report photos, I'd caught them on Madeira previously and mistaken them for...

...Mediterranean rainbow wrasse. The shape might be almost identical as they're from the same group of wrasses, the Coris genus, but the different colouration of the adult males of the two species is pretty obvious really.

Before we headed back up to the car I also caught a few bogue on small metals fishing out into deeper water.

The climb back up the cliffside paths to the car was pretty tiring so we headed back to São Miguel, visited the supermarket and chilled in the apartment that evening, enjoying a nice meal with some beers and a few passion fruit liqueurs. 

The following day the weather was pretty miserable being both quite windy and wet. We drove east along the south coast to check out the small harbour at Porto de Pescas da Caloura. A fair swell was running out in the open sea and the inside of the harbour didn't produce anything at all.

This spot is supposed to be a good mark to target moray eels after dark so if nothing else it was good to check it out in daylight.

We then drove further east before cutting inland and driving north into the island's interior to visit the Caldeiras das Furnas nature preserve. It has several steaming geothermal pools and geysers. The smell of sulphur is pretty pungent to say the least. Whilst there we also spent an hour or so in the Microbial Observatory of the Azores, learning about some of the types of life that exist in the extreme environments, like the ones found there.

Lillian's not usually a fan of smelly gasses when I produce them, and my gases normally don't smell half as bad as the stench these constantly produce.

To get the smell of rotten eggs out of our clothes we headed up to the north coast to the small harbour of Porto Formoso, a venue I would return to for a boat trip with Lee and Ross later in the trip. With the sea nice and flat due to the wind now being offshore, I fished for a while from the rocks at the outside of the harbour's mouth, but it was very tough going. It also rained pretty heavily for a brief spell while we were there and we both got a bit of a soaking.

It looked quite promising, but I really struggled to catch fish here.

A small common two banded seabream prevented a blank. If memory serves it was the only fish of the entire day!

Heading back up to the car we finished the day by following the coast all the way around the eastern end of the island, stopping off again at various viewpoints to take in the scenery.

The next day the wind had dropped off again and we headed east along the island's southern coast again to visit Ermida de Nossa Senhora da Paz, a small church perched on the hillside at the top of over one hundred steps.

I was happy with this photo but Lillian insisted we climb all the way up.

At the top I spotted a big harbour down below we could explore.

After driving down and visiting a small tackle shop in Vila Franca do Campo we headed to its harbour. Again a friendly local, upon spotting my fishing rod, was quick to approach us and tell me where I could and could not fish. I heeded his advice and headed well away from all the fancy, and no doubt very expensive, moored yachts. As we wandered along, I spotted the yellow bodies of some black faced blennies, sitting on the submerged rocks close to the edge. Out came a packet of tanago hooks, I quickly rigged up an ultra light running ledger and lowered the rig down onto one of the boulders where the black faced blennies were. After a few missed bites, I managed to hook a small fish that I initially thought was a female black faced blenny, but in my hand I recognised it to be a Montagu's blenny.

Only my second ever Montagu's blenny.

A little more persistence eventually paid off when I watched one of my targets take the tiny piece of raw prawn on my equally tiny hook into its mouth and I gently struck, successfully hooking it. My second new species of the trip was quickly swung up to hand. Having been after one of these for years, making several trips to Swanage Pier in Dorset to try and catch one, I was ecstatic to finally get one.

A male black faced blenny. Chilling out on a rock their head is jet black and their body is bright yellow. When caught their coloration dulls and is a little bit mottled. The female on the other hand is a fairly drab looking fish, being a mottled brown colour.

I carried on fishing, trying a few different spots around the harbour and caught quite a lot of fish. Mainly ornate wrasse, blacktail rainbow wrasse in the mix, as well as a solitary ballan wrasse and a nice striped red mullet. That's definitely the furthest west I've ever caught a ballan wrasse! I also managed to add a couple more species to my trip tally and my third new species of the trip in the shape of a blue wrasse, a cousin of the corkwing wrasse that is endemic to the Azores.

In amongst all the wrasse I caught this nice striped red mullet fishing over a clean sandy area.

I also caught this single small male parrotfish. Parrotfish males are the drab sex of the species.

Here's a ruby red female parrotfish I caught on Tenerife a few years ago.

While we're on the subject of sexual dimorphism in wrasse, I think this is a male blue wrasse but could be in the middle of a transition...

...and this ornate wrasse is in the middle of a sex change too I think. It has some colouration features of both. Most wrasse species can change sex from female to male when the need arises.

Anyway I've digressed. It's fascinting but that's enough fish gender politics! So, we were enjoying our time on São Miguel. Despite the fishing being a little hit and miss, I'd made a pretty good start to my species hunting. I was over the moon to catch the black faced blenny and also the two new wrasse species, even if technically I'd unknowingly caught one of them before. With six days left in the Azores we were both looking forward to Lee and Ross arriving as we hadn't seen them for a while due to the pandemic, so it would be great to catch up again and fish together again too.

Tight lines, Scott.

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