Species hunting adventures on Rhodes: Part 4.

In the morning, our alarm when off at 5:00, and we were back on the rocks before first light. Not being a morning person it was a bit of a struggle and the fishing was so poor, that I wish we hadn’t bothered. Switching to soft plastics fished on a jighead, saw them get bitten in half by the super aggressive yellow spotted puffer and when I tried isome on a drop shot rig, they were the only species I caught. Lillian taking a few photos of me as I fished before sunrise would turn out to be the only highlight of the session.

I really like a fishing silhouette shot.

Feeling a little bit frustrated yet again, we took a break from fishing and visited the island’s Bee Museum and the cliff top viewpoint up at Filerimos Monastery. Afterwards we headed down the west coast to go for a walk in some woods to hunt for butterflies.

On the way to the Bee Museum we passed a herd of goats. 

Honey being pressed at the Bee Museum. Lillian bought a few jars to bring home. Bee vomit is good for you!

There were lots of peacocks up at Filerimos Monastery. The views up at the big stone cross would have been much better as the sun set, but weren’t that impressive during the day in my opinion.

On the way down the west coast, we stopped at a supermarket and grabbed some food for lunch and a sliced crust free loaf for bait. Revisiting Kamiros Skala, I spent and hour freelining bread in the hope that I’d catch some saddled seabream, salema or thick lipped mullet, but all I managed were a few marbled rabbitfish and a wide banded hardyhead silverside.

The locals refer to rabbitfish as "Germanós" which translates into “Germans”. This is because they started appearing during World War II when Greece was occupied by Axis forces.

The widebanded hardyhead silverside, is yet another invader from the Red Sea that is present in large numbers. Their name is quite a mouthful. They’re pretty tasty too when dusted in flour and fried.

I have a few casts with my trusty little plug. Some reasonably big lizardfish had a swipe at it, but didn't connect.

Driving up in to the hills again, we stopped at a roadside viewpoint to admire our surroundings and some other Greek islands off in the distance.

Our butterfly hunt was successful, and we spotted several Freyer's grayling.

The wooded area we’d walked around was half way down a small road that led down to a tiny coastal village, so we headed down there. At the southern end, beneath a steep cliff, was a small concrete platform, so I fished from that and some nearby rocks. It was here that I suffered my first blank of the trip. Rather deflated, we had a fishing free evening again.

A stunning view at least.

Our last full day on Rhodes had arrived. The night before, we decided that we would drive down to the southern end of the island, so I’d picked out a couple of spots to visit where I could fish. When we got up in the morning the sky was overcast, and checking the forecast, some rain was predicted. I was hoping that the change in conditions might somehow improve the fishing! On our way out of Archangelos, we popped into the fish market and I got a few prawns and a small bag of sand smelt for bait.

Our first stop was Plimmiri Marina. I’m not sure why it’s called a marina, it’s more of a small harbour!

When we arrived a local was already fishing at the end of the harbour. He had two bait rods out and was float fishing bread and cheese paste on a third. He’d caught a spotted weever, so I tucked myself into a gap between where he was and a fishing boat and began casting in small chunks of prawn in the hope that I would catch a spotted weever myself. I got bites from the first cast, but couldn't hook the culprits. Then I had a really strong take and was almost immediately bitten off. Tying on another hook, I cast out to the same spot. Another good bite resulted in something very heavy being briefly hooked, but this time my hook pulled. Seeing what was happening the local confirmed what I already suspected, there were silver cheeked toadfish in the area!

These massive pufferfish are a huge problem in the Eastern Mediterranean. They have very strong jaws and razor sharp teeth. They also contain deadly toxins, so cannot be eaten. They damage fisherman’s nets and are destroying local fish stocks due to their voracious appetite. In short, they are highly invasive and have a very negative impact wherever they spread. Despite all of this, I really wanted to catch one!

Adding a wire trace to my rig with a strong chinu hook on business end, I cast in a big chunk of prawn out to roughly the same spot once again. I didn’t have to wait very long for another silver cheeked toadfish to take the bait, and this time it wasn't going to bite me off! It felt pretty big, putting a good bend in my Rock Rover. I wouldn’t describe the battle that ensued as epic, but the sheer size of the fish made it a bit of a struggle to get it in. Taking my time, letting the fish take some line when necessary, it eventually appeared on the surface in front of us and Lillian was ready with my net yet again.

Calling the silver cheeked toadfish an odd looking species is probably being very kind.

A set of powerful jaws and razor sharp beak like teeth are not to be messed with!

They’re also very strong and slimy, which made this trophy shot pretty difficult.

Happy to have caught my fifth new species of the trip, but not wanting to be bitten off repeatedly, I switched my focus to fishing down the side at the end of the harbour. We had some bread left over from the previous day, so Lillian fed that in and before too long a lot of fish had gathered. I spotted three species that would be additions to my trip’s tally and before too long had managed to catch two of them. At that point it started lightly raining, but being so warm it was actually quite refreshing and it didn’t last very long.

This tiny saddled seabream was fairly straight forward to catch as there were loads of them and they eagerly attacked a small piece of bread on a tiny hook.

This thick lipped mullet took a little longer, but once we got them feeding confidently on the free offerings, this one wasn’t messing around and took the flake on my hook in one go.

The third species was bluespotted cornetfish, and I tried various approaches to try and catch one of them, but they just weren’t interested in anything I presented. Shortly afterwards, the local caught a small dusky grouper from the huge concrete blocks at the base of the end of the breakwater, so I tried to do the same. Dropping a bait down into the dark gaps between them, I spotted something striped moving around. At first I thought it was a zebra seabream, but as it slowly swam up into the light I could make out more of its features and quickly realised what it was. A lionfish! One of my top target species for the trip! I quickly changed to a split shot rig and baited my hook with a small sand smelt. The fish had disappeared out of sight, so I spent some time twitching my bait around down in the gap where I’d spotted it, and other likely hiding places nearby. After a while with no reward, I spent a bit more time fishing further out on the clean sandy bottom. This produced quite a lot of wide eyed flounder and a small Atlantic lizardfish.

The biggest wide eyed flounder of the bunch. The large gap between its eyes makes this one a male.

Even small Atlantic lizardfish have eyes bigger than their stomach.

We had a break for some lunch at a nearby seafood restaurant where we shared a whole grilled squid and yet another Greek salad. Heading further south we soon arrived at the Prasonisi viewpoint.

Prasonisi Island sits just off the southernmost tip of Rhodes. It's possible to walk over a submerged sand bar to get to it.

Watching people wading over to the island was pretty cool, but we headed to a nearby rock mark where I fished again. It was fairly shallow, and the sun was out again, so it wasn’t a great surprise when I didn’t catch anything. My second blank session of the trip.

Before heading back to the car, I took a moment to tally up all the species I’d caught and realised I needed one more to hit thirty, a nice round number. Driving back up to Stegna, I had one last session in its northern harbour. When we arrived, I dumped in most of my bait in an attempt to lure out a moray eel. Waiting for one to appear, I fished small pieces of prawn down the harbour walls to try and catch something like rusty blenny, a Madeira rockfish or a black scorpionfish. This approach produced a few fish but nothing that I hadn’t caught already earlier in the trip.

At one point my two hook rig produced a double shot of a slender goby,..

…and a pharaoh cardinalfish.

As light faded, I also caught another rhomboid sweeper, one a little bit bigger than my first.

Not venturing too far from the area I’d baited up, a moray eel did eventually put in an appearance and dropping down a big chunk of prawn, the fish took it into its mouth and backed up into the hole it has poked its head out of. Waiting a few seconds before striking, for once I didn’t pull the hook. It felt like a good, solid hook set, and I kept pressure on waiting for the fish to tire. After a minute or so I could feel it begin to do so, the strength and intensity of its wriggling decreasing. Suddenly, my line went slack. I’d been bitten off. I was gutted and as we were going out for dinner, didn’t really have time to try again. 

On our last day, we had a few hours in the morning where I could have had one final session, but when we woke up to thunderstorms and heavy rain, I was doubtful that an opportunity to fish would become available, unless the weather drastically improved. Packing everything up, we drove up to Rhodes Town hoping that when we got there, the rain might have stopped. Sadly it hadn’t. Driving down the coast towards the airport, the clouds did break a little and it did stop raining briefly, so we stopped by the sea one last time, but I didn’t want to pull my fishing tackle out of the suitcase as we didn’t have much time to spare.

The clouds begin to break up and the blue sky starts to appear again. That's Turkey off in the distance. I’ve never been to Turkey for a fishing trip.

The fishing during the trip had been pretty tough going to say the least, but with some great highlights. I’d caught twenty nine different species, including five new ones. Three of the new species, striped piggy, Atlantic tripletail and little tunny were quite unexpected too which was nice. It was great to catch my first rhomboid sweeper and silver cheeked toadfish too. 

I think there were three species that I observed that I didn’t manage to catch. Bluespotted cornetfish, a species I have caught before on Cyprus, and two that would have been first time captures. I had several chances to catch my first Mediterranean moray eel and made a bit of a mess of them all. Lessons have been learned, and next time, I’ll be packing some much heavier line. Having seen Lionfish on my last few trips to Greek islands, they continue to be elusive. I think they have feeding periods around dawn and dusk, so in the future I’ll be focusing on targeting them around those periods. Perhaps a spot of snorkelling to locate them or perhaps even snorkel fishing to catch one underwater would be advantageous. Anyway, overall it was an enjoyable holiday and as always Lillian was incredibly supportive of my angling addiction! She was also pretty handy with my net, helping me land some of my catches. 

Here's a summary of the species I caught, with new ones in bold...

1. Atlantic Lizardfish
2. Atlantic Tripletail
3. Common Two Banded Seabream
4. Damselfish
5. Giant Goby
6. Golden Grey Mullet
7. Incognito Goby
8. Little Tunny/False Albacore
9. Marbled Rabbitfish
10. Mediterranean Rainbow Wrasse
11. Ornate Wrasse
12. Parrotfish
13. Peacock Blenny
14. Pharaoh Cardinalfish
15. Red Sea Goatfish
16. Redcoat Squirrelfish
17. Rhomboid Sweeper
18. Rock Goby
19. Saddled Seabream
20. Silver Cheeked Toadfish
21. Slender Goby
22. Striped Piggy
23. Striped Seabream
24. Thick Lipped Mullet
25. White Seabream
26. Widebanded Hardyhead Silverside
27. Wide Eyed Flounder
28. Yellow Spotted Puffer
29. Yellowtail Barracuda

It was also nice to see some new species of butterfly during the trip...

1. Aegean Meadow Brown
2. Freyer’s Grayling
3. Large Wall Brown

Lillian and I both enjoyed our first trip to Rhodes together. A fairly small island, I think I’d return, but perhaps after visiting some other Greek islands first. The fact that the best fishing happened when the weather was what most would consider to be poor has got me thiking that a trip to that part of world might be better outwith the hottest summer months, so perhaps a visit out of season might be worth exploring? 

Tight lines, Scott.

Species hunting adventures on Rhodes: Part 2.

The following morning, we headed to a local bakery for some tasty pastries and some iced coffee. Driving south, we visited Charaki, where upon arrival we scrambled over a rocky peninsula so that I could fish the deep water out in front of it. Finding a comfortable spot, a large shoal of baitfish was taking shelter in a gully to our right, so I set about catching one. To begin with I baited a tanago hook with a minuscule piece of isome, but they didn’t show much interest in that, so I decided to try something different!

Perhaps a tiny piece of dough from inside one of our pasties would do the trick?

The result was an immediate increase in bites, and with a bit of patience, I caught a tiny widebanded hardyhead silverside! This fish was dispatched and kept to use as bait.

Turning my attention to fishing in the deeper water, I caught a few yellow spotted puffer, but sadly nothing else. I persevered for longer than I should have and tried isome close to the bottom as well as small sinking hard baits and metal jigs. As the temperature began to creep up, Lillian gave me a look that told me I was wasting my time and that we should leave.

I gave it a good go!

To escape from the midday heat, we drove north and inland to visit the Valley of Butterflies. It was nice to hike up the valley, mostly in the shade, and there were thousands of insects flying around.

The star of the show are these Jersey tiger moths. Yes, that’s right, moths! Not butterflies!

One Jersey tiger.

Dozens of Jersey tigers.

Hundreds of Jersey tigers!

We also spotted a few of these whiptail lizards with their metallic green tails. 

This Aegean meadow brown was the only bona fide butterfly we seen on our 5km hike!

In the evening, after popping to a supermarket where I picked up some raw prawns, we headed back to Stegna to fish in its two harbours again. At the first, I ledgered small pieces of prawn on its sandy bottom and added two more species to my trip tally.

The Red Sea goatfish is another species that I first encountered on Cyprus a few years ago.

I think the common two banded seabream is becoming less common in the western Mediterranean Sea as more invaders from the Red Sea increase their numbers. This would end up being the only one I caught during the trip.

Turning my attention to fishing from the boulders at the back of the harbour, I caught a few ornate wrasse and some yellow spotted puffer. I also lost a couple of rigs to the rocky sea floor and some hooks to the puffer!

Shallow, snaggy and full of two nuisance species. Time to return to the inside of the harbour!

Ornate wrasse are another pest, though they seem to be on the decline also.

Fishing down the inside of the harbour again, searching in cracks and holes to see if I could locate some goby, blenny or scorpionfish, I caught a small giant goby and whilst unhooking it, we both spotted a Mediterranean moray eel slowly snaking its way through the rocks. Tossing the giant goby back, I quickly tied up a much stronger rig and lowered a big chunk of prawn down. The moray picked it up three times, but each time I struck, I pulled the hook straight out of its mouth. Now suspecting that something wasn’t quite right, the moray disappeared into the rocks and didn’t come out again. By this point it was getting dark so we headed along to the other harbour to look for the Atlantic tripletail.

Much to my delight, it was skulking around in pretty much the exact same spot. Lillian kept an eye on it while I baited up my chinu hook with the small baitfish I had caught earlier in the day. Having kept it in water in my wide mouth flask, it was in very good condition. Passing my hook in through its mouth and out through the top of its head, so that plenty of hook was showing, I gently lowered it into the water a short distance away from the fish and slowly pulled it into the fish’s view. As soon as the tripletail spotted the bait, it slowly moved towards it. I was expecting an explosive take, but to my surprise, it gently took it into its mouth. Pausing for a second, I struck, but somehow pulled the hook from the fishes mouth! Incredibly however, my bait had come with it so I tried again. I wasn’t sure how the fish would react, but much to my delight it slowly swam over and gently took the bait again. This time I waited a little longer, and this time my hook set was good. After a short fight Lillian was ready with my net and my third new species of the trip was inside it!

I believe the Atlantic tripletail is a very rare fish in Greek waters. Another angler caught one recently and it made the Athens Times! I was over the moon to catch one myself and it’s right up there with some of the coolest fish I’ve caught in the Mediterranean Sea or anywhere else for that matter.

Still on a high, I fished on for a short while, but there wasn’t much else biting. A black scorpionfish completely ignored my bait before charging off out of sight, but a rock goby was much more obliging and greedily gobbled it as soon as it got a whiff of freshly peeled shellfish!

It always feels a bit strange catching species that we have in the UK in such a different environment!

In the morning the following day, we drove down the coast to visit St Paul’s Bay so that I could spend an hour or so fishing from the rocks there. Sadly, the fishing was dreadful, and when a group of divers arrived and proceeded to explore the area right in front of me, I gave up and we headed to nearby Lindos to explore the town and hike up to its acropolis.

St Paul’s Bay. I fished from the rocks on the right hand side. It wasn't worth clambering out to them!

The picturesque town of Lindos and its acropolis.

The town's bell tower.

Many of the town's streets are very tourist orientated, but we wandered away from them to find some quiet back streets.

It was a very hot day, but we did hike up to the acropolis.

In the afternoon, we drove all the way across the island to the west coast. Ending up in the small port town of Kamiros Skala, where I spent and hour or so fishing. Yet again the fishing was very poor, but I added two more species to my tally before we left.

Another deep and dissapointing spot.

Casting out onto a sandy area, I caught a few wide eyed flounder.

Dropping to smaller hooks and dropping a bait tight down the side, I caught this solitary damselfish.

As we drove back to Archangelos, I told Lillian I was feeling a bit frustrated about how poor the fishing had been all day, so in the evening I had a night off from species hunting and Lillian and I walked down into town where we enjoyed an incredible meal and a few cold beers. Tomorrow would be another day and hopefully the fishing would be better!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures on Rhodes: Part 1.

Last week, Lillian and I were supposed to fly to the Greek island of Rhodes, but our flight ended up being a casualty of the chaos caused by an issue with the UK’s Air Traffic Control System. A full day at Edinburgh Airport, checking in luggage, going through security, waiting in departures, being boarded, sitting on the plane for two hours, being removed from the plane again, waiting around in departures again, finally finding out our flight had been cancelled and waiting to collect our suitcase before heading home, wasn’t much fun to say the least. Somehow, using my phone on the tram back into town, I managed to get us on another Ryanair flight two days later. Our original holiday was nine nights, so we still had a week long trip to look forward to.

Arriving last Thursday afternoon, we picked up our luggage, collected our hire car and drove to our accommodation, located in the small inland town of Archangelos. It was great to be away again! Keen to do a spot of fishing, we drove down to the nearby coastal village of Stegna where I spent an hour or so scratching around with small hooks using small pieces of isome. I was soon catching a few fish.

The northern beach in Stegna, a popular little tourist spot.

Further south there was a second harbour that we'd visit later in the evening.

This tiny white seabream was the first fish of the trip.

It was soon followed by a fish that I didn’t recognise. A new species! How exciting! This is the strangely named striped piggy. Perhaps it’s called that because it’s a type of grunt.

Before too long, the resident yellow spotted puffer began destroying my scented worm imitation. They’re a real pain to be honest. Turning my attention to fishing down the harbour’s walls I caught a couple of ornate wrasse and a slender goby.

These really are a total nuisance!

I popped the slender goby into my photo tank to aid identification.

Working our way around to the mouth of the harbour, I spotted some tiny fish hiding under a boat. Taking a closer look when they came out to nibble at my isome, I realised that they were sweeper, a group of fish I had never seen in real life before. They were tiny, so I switched to a split shot rig with a tanago hook and baited it up with a tiny piece of isome. Jigging this up and down generated the most interest, and eventually I caught one of them and popped it into my photo tank.

Targeting tiny fish can be very challenging!

Sweeper are a strange looking group of fish and this was my first ever. I'm fairly confident this is a rhomboid sweeper, but if you think otherwise please get in touch!

Having caught two new species within an hour or so, it was a fantastic start to the trip. I had a few species in mind before flying out that I had never caught before, but these two had not really been in my thoughts, so were most welcome captures!

Stegna has two small harbours, and I was keen to see what the second was like, but by that point we were both quite hungry, so we went for some gyros and Greek salad in a nearby taverna first.

Arriving at the second harbour, along at the southern end of the village, we had a look around before I started fishing. It was very shallow, and there were lots of boats, all moored very closely together. Ropes everywhere would also make for tricky fishing but we found a gap and in it Lillian spotted a very odd fish just below the surface that she thought was dead. It looked like a leaf!

That's not a leaf and it’s not dead either!

Floating on its side, it was slowly moving around, and I vaguely remembered seeing a video about the species, but couldn’t remember its name. I’d later do some digging and discover what we had spotted was a juvenile Atlantic tripletail. They exhibit some clever behaviour, pretend to be a dead leaf in order to avoid predation themselves whilst using this tactic to stealthily hunt prey of their own.

Quickly rigging up a piece of isome, I slowly lowered it down in the vicinity of the fish and gave it a few twitches, but it showed no interest at all. My efforts only served to annoy the fish, and eventually it swam off down under the boats. Still on its side, it looked like a flatfish as it made its escape.

Slightly disappointed, I continued fishing and we made our way to the harbour’s narrow entrance. It was much deeper there and I added a couple more species to my tally.

First to munch a piece of isome was this pharaoh cardinalfish. Only my second ever, I caught my first on Cyprus.

Next was a redcoat squirrelfish. My first in the Mediterranean Sea, having caught them in Singapore and Okinawa.

It was getting late, and we were both pretty tired, but we had another look for the tripletail before we headed back up the hill to Archangelos. Sadly we didn’t see it, but I was hopeful it might not go to far and I may get another, better opportunity to catch it, if I returned with a small fish to use as bait! It had been a very interesting start to the trip and I was looking forward to finding out what other odd species might turn up!

Tight lines, Scott.

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