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 4.

On our penultimate day on Gran Canaria, we headed back to Puerto de Mogan in the morning, so that Ed could have another go at catching a flathead mullet. I focused my efforts on a few goby that I spotted on the sandy bottom of the channel. They eagerly munched small pieces of dried ragworm and all turned out to be black goby.

Along with a small mackerel I had caught the previos day, but didn't bother to photograph, these were easily the least interesting species of the trip, but both were additions to our tally, so were most welcome.

Sadly, neither of us caught any flathead mullet. There were just too many thick lipped mullet and golden grey mullet around. We did enjoy an hour or so of good sport before they became very wary and pretty much stopped feeding.

We caught some decent sized golden grey mullet.

Jumping back in the car, we drove east to nearby Taurito. There we fished from the rocks at the western end of Playa del Diablito. Clambering around the boulders, there was already a local angler float fishing when we got to the spot, and he caught a nice parrotfish whilst we got set up just along from him.

Older locals usually employ float tactics for seabream and parrotfish.

Ed fished on the bottom with bait to begin with, whilst I fished a metal and then a small plug up near the surface in an attempt to catch a garfish. The ground we were fishing over was not very deep and was littered with large boulders. Ed lost a few rigs as a result, but did manage to catch a few ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish. I had a few bumps on my lures, but after a while decided to switch from a faster horizontal retrieve, to jigging a metal closer to the bottom. This eventually paid off when a nice island grouper came out from it's ambush point and grabbed my jig.

Not massive but good sport on my ultralight setup.

I then switched to a paddletail lure rigged on a 3g cheburashka weight. Bouncing this through the boulders, I was hoping to tempt a dusky grouper, but instead it was an agressive ornate wrasse that decided to attack the small fish imitation!

Sometimes, fish strike to defend their territory.

Ed had switched over to fishing with a metal jig, so I decided to try fishing with bait on the bottom. After losing a few rigs and nothing showing an interest in Ed's efforts however, we decided to head around the rocks towards the beach to try and find a cleaner area to fish over.

Out past a flat rock ledge in front of these boulders was a clean sandy area.

I was hoping to catch a seabream here, perhaps a pandora or a Couch's. After a while, I had an aggressive take and the fish tore off. Lifting into it, my rod was nodding away, and I was confident that I had hooked some kind of seabream because it definitely felt like one. Applying some pressure as it came towards the ledge in front of us to get it up over it though, the fish came off. It had bent out my fine wire hook. Removing this and snelling on a much stronger chinu pattern, I rebaited with a chunk of prawn and recast out to the same area. Shortly afterwards, another fish took my bait and charged off. This time it felt different and swam from side to side, making long runs. When a small shark came to the surface, we were both quite surprised, but Ed quickly got the net ready and the fish was soon drawn over it.

My first shark from the shore on my trusty Rock Rover.

With it's very dark grey/brown colouration, I'm reasonably confident this is my first ever common smoothhound, making it my third new species of the trip. Mission accomplished! They are by far the most common species of houndshark found around Gran Canaria, so the likelihood of this being a spotless starry smoothhound is very low.

We fished on for a while, but didn't catch anything else for a while, so we decided to head to our next spot. The tide was out when we reached the Faro de Maspalomas, and seeing a few exposed shallow rockpools, we set about seeing what mini species were in them.

The exposed rocky shorline near Faro de Maspalomas.

Who lives in a house like this?

To begin with, quite predictably, the only two species we encountered were rockpool blenny and Madeira goby. They can be found in most intertidal pools in large numbers. After a while however, I spotted a different blenny slowly moving around in between the rocks. Dropping my tanago hook baited with a tiny piece of dried ragworm into the gap between three touching rocks, I felt a bite, struck, and hooked the culprit. Swinging it up into my hand and examining it, I was sure I had caught a Molly Miller. Popping it into some water once I had taken an initial photo confirmed it was indeed one. It didn't take Ed long to catch one as well, yet another new species for him.

The Molly Miller blenny. If you know where it's name comes from, let me know!

It's punk like row of short hair-like appendages is a key identifying feature that is only visible when the fish is submerged.

By this point it was early evening, and we decided to have one last attempt at locating and catching bright glasseye. The wind direction remained the same, but the speed had dropped a bit. I was unsure if the conditions would be suitable, but much to our delight, when we arrived at the venue and had a look around, it looked almost perfect. The water was clear and there was virtually no disturbance on the surface. Climbing down the rocks as light began to fade, it took a little while before I spotted one of our targets, emerging slowly from the rocks. A large red adult specimen, sluggishly moving around, it showed no interest in any bait I lowered in front of it. After being frustrated by the fish's complete disinterest for a while, I left it to search for others. As it got darker, more, much smaller specimens, began to appear! They were silver with red markings. Seeing a few of them, I had a good feeling that we'd eventually catch one, even if we had to fish for hours! Eventually they'd switch into feeding mode, or we'd figure out what presentation they'd be unable to resist. Returning to where I'd seen the larger fish, I switched to a straight lure on a 0.9g jighead and dropped it down the back of a submerged rock.  

A Thirty 34 Four 1.8" Octpus lure on an EcoGear Aji Chon jighead. I fish predominatly with bait these days, but I love this killer combo.

Twitching it a couple of times, I felt a sudden thump and lifting into it, all hell broke loose. I'd hooked the large red adult fish. I managed to bully it up over the rock, but it headed off towards some ropes. Whilst trying to stop it, I called over to Ed to bring the net, but then disaster struck! The fish thrashed violently and managed to throw the hook! I was gutted. Had I blown my chance? 

We carried on, patiently fishing away. Locating the fish using our headtorches and casting our lures towards them. As it got darker, the fish got more and more active. Once it was really dark, they suddenly started moving around with much more purpose. Casting my presentation near a group of four juveniles, they began slashing at it, and eventually I'd hooked my second bright glasseye of the night. Much smaller than the first, it was very quickly wound in and swung up into my waiting hand. 

My first bright glasseye! What an awesome little fish!

By this point, Ed had moved around the venue, so I popped the fish into a bucket of water. When he came back around to where I was, I told him I'd caught one, and showed him the fish. Having seen it, he was even more determined to catch one himself. I gave him a jighead and lure and showed him where I'd caught mine. It took him a little while, but he also caught one, which was later followed by a second, and then later on, just before we left he also lost a third much larger specimen that took a white paddletail lure. It had been a great way to end a very good day's fishing. We'd reached thirty nine species between us with the capture of the bright glasseye, and only needed one more to reach our trip target.

We had to be back at the airport to fly home by 16:30 the following day, so we formulated a plan for our last day of fishing that evening when we got back to the apartment. Doing most of our packing that night, we got up early the following morning, loaded everything into the hire car, and drove to Puerto de Mogan again for one last short session to see if Ed could catch his first flathead mullet. Sadly, he didn’t catch one, but a walk to the end of the rocks at the end of the channel, and a coordinated effort between the two of us, did produce Ed's first redlip blenny. Happy enough that he had caught yet another new species, we returned to the car and drove north, up through the mountains, until we reached Sardina.

The mountainous interior of Gran Canaria with the colourfulrock formations of Fuente de los Azulejos off in the distance.

Arriving in Sardina the conditions around the pier looked much better than our first visit, so we grabbed our gear and headed down. Armed with a few loaves of bread and a couple of tins of sardines in oil, I made up a bucket of groundbait and we began spooning it in.

Much better conditions than our first visit!

I had hoped this would draw in some saddled seabream, white trevally or Madeiran sardinella, so we could catch one on freelined bread flake. Any one of these three species would have taken us to forty species for the trip, our target for the week. Very few fish appeared however, so we had to change tactics. Switching to fishing on the bottom with tiny pieces of prawns, our attempt to catch a monkey blenny had predictable results, with lots of ornate wrasse and Canary damselfish instead making up the bulk of the catches. I did pull out a nice parrotfish that was a welcome capture, but not the fortieth species we were after.

I caught quite a few parrotfish throughout the trip.

Tired of catching the usual suspects from the rocks close in, I had a couple of casts out onto a sandy area further out from the pier. This proved to be a great decision when I hooked a fish and wound it in to discover it was a cleaver wrasse. Mission accomplished! Seeing the bizzare fish, Ed really wanted one too, and casting out to the same spot he quickly caught a couple of the colourful fish himself.

It had been a while since I last caught a cleaver wrasse, so it was nice to catch one again.

Also known as the pearly razorfish, the markings on them are beautiful!

Soon it was time to pack up and drive to the airport, but before we left Ed caught his first Guinean puffer of the trip. I've no idea how he managed to avoid catching them up until that point! I'd caught dozens of the pests! Just before we left, he also caught a nice striped seabream from the same sandy area the cleaver wrasse had been coming from. It was a nice fish to end the trip on.

The last fish of the trip was Ed's striped seabream. We'd both caught much smaller specimens from the channel in Puerto de Mogan earlier in the week.

So, another species hunting trip to the Canary Islands had come to an end. The fishing had been a bit of a mixed bag, but despite the conditions limiting our choice of venues, we had achieved all of our pre trip goals. I'd caught four new species and Ed had caught eighteen species for the first time too. We'd managed to catch exactly forty species between the two of us, with Ed catching two that I did not. He’d caught twenty eight species in total. Here's a summary of what I caught with the new species in bold...

1. Atlantic Lizardfish
2. Azores Chromis
3. Bastard Grunt
4. Black Goby
5. Blacktail Comber
6. Bluefish
7. Bogue
8. Bright Glasseye
9. Butterfly Winged Comber
10. Canary Damsel
11. Cardinalfish
12. Cleaver Wrasse/Pearly Razorfish
13. Comber
14. Common Smoothhound
15. Common Two Banded Seabream
16. Convict Cichlid
17. Diamond Lizardfish
18. Flathead Mullet
19. Golden Grey Mullet
20. Greater Weever
21. Guinean Puffer
22. Hairy Blenny
23. Island grouper
24. Ornate Wrasse
25. Macaronesian Sharpnose Puffer
26. Mackerel
27. Madeira Goby
28. Madeira Rockfish
29. Molly Miller
30. Moroccan White Seabream
31. Mozambique Tilapia
32. Parrotfish
33. Planehead Filefish
34. Red Lip Blenny
35. Rockpool Blenny
36. Striped Seabream
37. Thick Lipped Mullet
38. Wide Eyed Flounder

Ed also caught...

39. Derbio
40. Bermuda Sea Chub

It was nice to fish with Ed and get to know him a bit better. We've been in touch with each other for years, but this was only the second time we've fished together. I'm sure it won't be our last foriegn species hunting adventure I've enjoyed two fishing trips in the last two months, but it won't be long until I'll be heading off abroad again. Later this month, I'm off to somewhere new, the Italian Island of Sardinia. Lillian is coming with me, and we're going with my mate Lee. I'm not sure what we'll be fishing for, and the fishing will be limited, but I'm really looking forward to wetting a line in the sun yet again!

Tight lines, Scott.