More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 9.

On our final evening on Okinawa, after doing some of our packing, Ryan and I popped out for an hour or so, for one last session. We drove five minutes from our apartment, to the fenced off concrete piers down by the South Steps Dive Site in Chatan. Taking minimal tackle and a few raw prawns, our targets were nocturnal species, and that’s exactly what we caught.

First up was this redcoat, a species of squirrelfish found all the way from the western Pacific to the Mediterranean Sea. I caught my first in Singapore last year.

I also caught my first ever five-lined cardinalfish. 

This solitary pinecone soldierfish was also my first ever. 

I’d already caught a striped large-eye bream earlier in the trip. 

My last fish on Okinawa were two iridescent cardinalfish. My first ever also!

Ryan’s final fish on Okinawa was this samurai squirrelfish.

So, our Okinawa species hunting had come to an end. With the remainder of our packing still to do, we headed back to the apartment. Despite quite a lot of wet weather during our stay on Okinawa, we’d managed to do a reasonable amount of fishing, had caught lots of fish, and had racked up almost eighty species between the two us, which was a great achievement. Adding the species we caught in Tokyo and Enoshima, I wondered if reaching one hundred was possible. The following day we were flying to Osaka and Ryan’s girlfriend Xin Yun was joining us from Singapore for the last part of our trip. We had a busy schedule planned, with lots of sightseeing and day trips to other places during both our five days in Osaka, and when we returned to Tokyo for a couple of days before flying home, so fishing opportunities would be limited. Reaching one hundred species would be tough, but we were keen to try and catch a few more to try and achieve it!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 8.

On our last day on Okinawa, we got up reasonably early and began the drive up to Cape Hedo. To break up the journey a little bit, we took a slight detour after leaving the Okinawa Expressway, and headed to Untenbaru Port on Yagaji Island. As forecast, the sky was pretty dull again and shortly after arriving and setting up our tackle, a passing heavy shower had us taking cover in the hire-car. It didn't last too long thankfully, and we were soon fishing, but it was pretty poor to be honest, with not much biting.

Untenbaru Port on Yagaji Island. Probably the least productive spot we tried during our time on Okinawa.

Before we decided to head over the Kouri Bridge to fish in Kouri Island's port, I did manage to catch a couple of fish. One of them was an addition to our trip tally, so visiting the spot wasn't a complete waste of time

A small saw-jawed monocle bream was not a new species for me, but it was the first one of the trip.

Not my first of the trip, but it's always cool to catch a butterflyfish.

A short drive later, we were back fishing out of the boot of the hire car in Kouri Island's port. There was another angler already fishing there when we arrived. Float fishing small shrimps under a float and piling in ground bait around it, his endeavours went some way to explain why there seemed to be less fish around at the area we had fished so successfully a couple of days previously. I really struggled to catch much, with a brown damselfish being the only potential new species for me. Ryan hooked a large puffer, but lost it on the surface. A short while later, his efforts were rewarded with a few clownfish, which I was quite envious about.

What a difference a couple of days make, and a few kilograms of ground bait a few metres out to our right!

It was my turn to catch an undescribed species of damselfish. This one being different to the one Ryan had caught earlier in the trip.

Ryan caught a couple of Nemo's cousins! This one is a yellowtail clownfish.

Aware that we still had to drive up to the most northerly point on the main island, and also because the fishing wasn't great, we didn't stay on Kouri Island too long and were soon back on the road again. About an hour later, we arrived at Cape Hedo. It was a stunning spot, but unfortunately a strong onshore wind and a swell breaking over the rocks below the cliffs ruled out any fishing there.

Cape Hedo was not really fishable. Not with ultra light tackle anyway!

Luckily, we had passed a nice looking port about five minutes before we got to Cape Hedo, so we decided just to head back there. It was quite overcast when we arrived at Ginama Fish Harbour, and it looked like it could rain at any moment, but we parked the car and walked around the harbour's inner area to fish in its entrance and down the harbour's inner walls. The fishing was pretty good, and we added a few more species to our trip tally.

Nice and sheltered.

I caught a vagabond butterflyfish,..

... a few dusky farmerfish,..

...and a couple of tomato clownfish.

For some reason, Ryan was again somehow managing to find every possible snag on the bottom and spent a bit of time retying his rig. When he did manage to avoid the snags, he pulled up his second thicklip wrasse species of the trip.

Ryan's blackeye thicklip.

Ryan then decided to give some lures a go and tied on a luminous prawn. Casting it out into the centre of the harbour, he worked it back towards him, close to the bottom. Meanwhile, I stuck with fishing chunks of prawn down the harbour wall. With a fair amount of bait left to use up, I began cutting up a few prawns into small pieces and throwing them in to see if I could attract some more fish to the area. After a while I got a quite violent take and struck into something a little bit feisty. After a brief battle, a small grouper came to the surface.

My first ever honeycomb grouper. Ryan really wanted to catch a grouper, so it was his turn to be a little bit jealous!

No for too long though! Shortly afterwards, a couple of them took a liking to his brightly coloured prawn lure and smashed it! He was over the moon to get his first ever grouper.

We carried on fishing for a while longer, and somehow despite the sky looking like it was going to burst at any moment, it stayed dry. I caught two more species for the first time, and we spotted a juvenile threadfin trevally swimming past, which was very cool.

My first ever narrowstripe cardinalfish,...

...and streamlined spinefoot. My second rabbitfish species of the trip.

It was cool to see this juvenile threadfin trevally swimming by with its extremely long, filamentous dorsal and anal fin tips.

Before we left, we took a walk around the harbour's outer breakwater. We had a few casts out into the middle of the harbour, but it was very snaggy. As I was tying up another rig, Ryan called over to say that he'd spotted a weird fish on the bottom. Going over to where he was, I immediately recognised it as a lionfish! We both tried to catch it, but it just wasn't interested, eventually drifting off down into the rocks out of sight. It would have been great to spend more time trying to catch it, but with a two-hour drive back to Chatan to make, as well as packing our cases for our flight to Osaka the following day to do, we had to leave. Besides, I also wanted to try and squeeze in a short fishing session after dark when we got back to Chatan, if time allowed!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 7.

A short drive later, we arrived at Cape Zanpa. If anything, the weather seemed to be improving and the likelyhood of any rain for the next hour or so looked very minimal. Parking the hire car and walking up to the cape's lighthouse, we clambered over the jaggy volcanic rocks behind it, found a nice looking spot, carefully climbed down the rocks, and started fishing.

Cape Zanpa's volcanic rock cliffs drop off into very deep water.

Being the responsible adult, I volunteered to climb down first.

A slight swell was running, but despite climbing down on to a small rocky platform, we were still fairly high up above the surface, out of harm's way. Fishing larger hooks with chunks of raw prawn, we were both getting bites straight away. Smaller fish were quickly stripping our hooks bare, but eventually we hooked a few slightly bigger fish. Quite a few Indo-Pacific sergeant were caught to begin with, but then we started catching some very cool species.

Not really what we were hoping to catch from the deep water beneath us!

Ryan then caught this stocky hawkfish. I really wanted to catch one too, but sadly did not.

He then caught a stunning sunset wrasse. I was jealous of this capture too!

Then it was my turn to catch a couple of really cool fish in the shape of this scrawled filefish,..

...and this beautiful pastel ringwrasse!

It had actually turned out to be a nice day weather wise, with little sign of the forecast rain arriving any time soon. The variety of species was good and we really enjoying our fishing. After a while it went a little bit quiet, but before we ran out of bait, we caught three different species of triggerfish and another filefish species as well.

I caught this stunning orange-lined triggerfish,..

...a couple of half-moon triggerfish,..

...and this honeycomb filefish.

Ryan caught a couple of reef triggerfish.

Heading back to the hire car, we drove north, stopping at a konbini where we grabbed some snacks and a pack of frozen raw prawns. By the time we arrived at Maeganeku Fishing Port, the sky had changed completely to being totally overcast, and it looked like it would start pouring down at any moment. I spotted a large group of sapphire devil down the side of the wall, as well as some other very colourful tropical fish. Knowing that Ryan really wanted to catch a sapphire devil, I gave him a tanago hook to increase his chances, and he caught one pretty quickly.

I fished blind near the bottom, while Ryan sight fished for sapphire devil a few feet below the surface.

Mission accomplished! Made easier with a tanago hook!

Also fishing with tiny hooks, I was rewarded with my second yellowfin surgeonfish of the trip.

We'd only been at this spot for maybe fifteen minutes when the rain started. Very quickly, turning from fairly light to very heavy. Satisfied with getting about six hours of fishing done at the three different venues that day, we headed back to the apartment. The following day was our last on Okinawa and Ryan was keen to visit Cape Hedo all the way up at the top of the island. It looked like a promising spot, but we would be at the mercy of the weather again, and the forecast yet again contained lots of rain.

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 6.

In the morning, on our fourth day, we picked up some ragworm and raw prawns from a tackle shop in Chatan, and drove to the northern end of the Kadena Sea Wall. This was another spot I fished the last time I visited Okinawa, the large concrete steps there offering comfortable fishing over a shallow reef. According to the weather forecast, we had a three-hour window before it started raining, so we were keen to make the most of it.

Ryan and I resume our species hunt!

The cloud cover was a little more scattered, with some blue sky visible, which was a nice change. As you would expect, casting out onto cleaner patches located next to rocky structures, soon produced a couple of wrasse species, both of which had stunning markings.

My first ever threespot wrasse,..

…and a few Pacific dusky wrasse too, a species I’ve encountered before in Phuket.

Dropping my rig closer in, just past the edge of the bottom step, I was hoping to perhaps locate some goby or blenny species, but this change in tactics produced a few different species from other families instead.

A couple of dory snapper,..

…quite a lot of little scissortail sergeant,..

…and my first ever pink-belly wrasse.

Casting out near rougher areas threw up a few more wrasse and a couple of triggerfish species for me. Ryan meanwhile had decided to give bait fishing a break and spent some time fishing small paddletail lures over the area. After having the tails nipped off of them a few times, his lure was taken by a fully committed cigar wrasse.

Triggerfish are awesome. Blackbelly triggerfish...

...and whitebanded triggerfish both have beautiful markings.

I was quite jealous of Ryan’s cigar wrasse. A very elongated species of wrasse, he caught it on an HTO Pathfinder Sandeel lure.

Fishing away, I then spotted a really weird looking tropical fish hovering over a small rocky area. Flicking my bait in its vicinity, it showed no interest whatsoever, but my efforts did see me catch a few more pink-belly wrasse and also two more new species whilst trying in vain to tempt it.

My first ever striped monocle bream,...

...was followed by my first ever thumbprint emperor.

Before we knew it, the three-hour weather window had come and gone. With only a few clouds in the sky, we were confident we’d be able to carry on fishing, but we decided to head a little further up the west coast to try our luck from some cliffs, fishing into some much deeper water.

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 5.

On day three we decided to spend the morning in Naha wandering around some of its covered shopping streets. On the way there, we stopped off to check out a couple of potential bridge fishing spots that we could make use of if the rain didn’t let up, but neither looked particularly promising. After leaving the covered shopping arcade briefly to treat ourselves to a tasty Spam and omlette onigiri, the heavens unloaded, exposing all the leaks in the roof. After dodging them, the puddles they created and wandering in and out of various shops for an hour or so, the rain went off for a brief period. Luckily, just as we got back to roughly where we’d started, so we hastily returned to the open air car park where we’d left the hire car. From Naha, we headed southeast to spend a couple of hours at Okinawa World, a theme park featuring local nature, crafts, a snake sake brewery and a large underground cave.

With millions of stalactites and stalagmites, Gyokusendo is considered East Asia's most beautiful limestone cave. At an impressive 5km long, about 1km of that open to the public. It was reasonably dry inside too!

As well as a tropical fruit garden and various crafts like pottery and glassblowing on display, the park is also home to a Habushu brewery, where they make snake sake. A visit to such a park usually ends in the gift shop, but Okinawa World had a gift shop after each attraction, which we felt was a little bit much.

Habushu is believed to have medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. We didn't try any, but on reflection I wish I had.

Leaving the park, it was still overcast, but it wasn't raining. To the east there were a few areas of blue sky visible, so we drove in that direction, ending up at Tosoe Fishing Port, another venue where we could fish right next to the car. The fishing there was reasonably good for the short period before the clouds returned, and before long it was raining heavily once more. During this short session, it was my turn to repeatedly get snagged, lose rigs, and waste valuable fishing time retying them. As a consequence, Ryan caught a lot more fish at this spot than I did and several species that I did not too. 

I caught this redbellied yellowtail fusilier. 

Ryan caught this ochre-striped cardinalfish and was blown away by its incredibly deep blue eyes.

He also caught a solitary whitsaddle goatfish,..

…a solitary freshwater demoiselle,..

...and a brown damselfish. I'd later discover that this species, belonging to the Pomacentrus genus, is found around the eastern and southern coast of Okinawa and has not yet been studied and formally identified by marine biologists.

I really struggled at this venue, but after catching a few dottyback, I added a second species to our trip tally when I caught this half-barred cardinalfish.

While I focused on fishing at close range down the port’s walls, Ryan decided to have a few casts further out with slightly bigger baits. Towards the end of the session, this paid off when he caught a couple of common ponyfish. Shortly afterward he caught these, it started raining heavily, so we quickly packed up and headed off before we got too wet.

This small palm sized specimen was followed,..

…by this much bigger one!

Raining heavily the rest of the day, we visited a CoCoICHI for a tasty curry in the evening and checked the forecast for the remaining two days in Okinawa. Thankfully it had changed from non-stop heavy rain and there were a couple of dry spells that we could perhaps try to take advantage of. We’d caught about fifty species on Okinawa during our first three days, but we wanted to catch even more!

Tight lines, Scott.

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