Species hunting adventures in Phuket: Part 5.

After stopping to get some lunch on the way, we arrived at the small pond, and I set about thrashing the water with some small plugs and paddletail lures mounted on small jigheads. After a while I did see a fish following my lure, and it had a wild slash at it just in front of me before speeding off, flashing its silver flank as it did so. I'm fairly sure it was a small tarpon, but obviously there's no way to be totally certain. Anyway, I carried on trying, covering most of the pond and trying a few different retrieve speeds and styles, all to no avail.

I didn't see any no fishing signs.

Having spent over an hour trying to catch my first tarpon, and having caught nothing at all, I decided to turn my attention to the multitude of fish that I could see between the edge of the pond and the floating pontoon I was standing on. Turning around and rigging up a split shot rig, I got comfortable and quickly caught three of the larger species that I could see, taking me over the one hundred species mark for the trip!

First to greedily gobble a piece of prawn was this Cantor's gudgeon.

Followed very quickly by this humpbacked cardinalfish.

From a submerged rock, I then tempted my first robust mangrove goby.

Seeing lots of tiny goby sitting on the rocky bottom, I switched over to a tanago hook and baited it up with a tiny piece of prawn. Lowering this down, after missing a couple of bites, I caught one of the diminutive fish, and swinging it up to hand, unhooked it and popped it into my micro species tank for a close up photo.

This tiny tank is an awesome addition to my species hunting kit. Inside it is my first ever black-spotted stubnose goby!

Fairly confident I'd caught all the mini and micro species behind me, that I could see anyway, and also hadn't caught already during the trip, I made a final effort to catch a tarpon. Despite my efforts, I was unsuccessful, sadly. By this point, it was fairly late in the afternoon, and there was one last spot that I wanted to fish, so off we went. About thirty minutes later, we arrived at Sarasin Bridge, parked the car and walked out onto it.

Sarasin Bridge connects Phuket to Phang Nga in southern Thailand. It's now for pedestrians only, having being replaced by a new road bridge that runs adjacent to it in 2011.

Not long after we arrived, the light was slowly beginning to fade and there wasn't too much current flowing underneath the bridge. Dropping a chunk of prawn to the bottom, I caught a fish straight away, but after that things were surprisingly slow. Eventually, once it was pretty dark, I caught a second fish.

This chocolate hind was an addition to the trip's total, but I've caught them before, again whilst in Singapore last year.

Another species added to the tally, this whitecheek monocle bream was also my first.

By the time darkness came, the current flowing under the bridge had picked up considerably, making fishing more difficult with the tackle I had with me. I did want to continue fishing closer to the start of the bridge to see if I could catch any nocturnal species, but it had been a long day, and we were both quite hungry, so I packed up, and we made the one-hour drive back south to Rawai, stopping for some very tasty smash burgers on the way. 

It would have been nice to end our time in Thailand with a traditional Thai meal, but this triple smash burger with bacon and cheese was so good!

Sadly, our in Thailand had come to an end, and despite not being able to fish on Rawai Landing Pier, I think I did reasonably well on the species hunting front. In the morning, we were flying back to Singapore, where we'd be staying for two nights before flying home again. We had a bit of sightseeing planned, but I was hopeful that I would be able to squeeze in two last fishing sessions before the adventure was over.

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Phuket: Part 4.

On our last day on Phuket, we decided to make use of the hire car and headed up the island’s east coast to Yamu Pier. It was another dull, cloudy day, but the long pier had a roofed area at the end of it. Good thing it did, because just after we walked out there, and I started fishing, it started raining heavily. 

Yamu Pier, fishable in a variety of weather conditions. 

Keeping my hooks and baits small, it didn’t take me long to start catching a few fish, and most of them were additions to my trip tally or even better new ones. The diversity was great, and before too long I was approaching the milestone of one hundred species.

My first ever duskytail grouper,..

...was followed by a Chinese demoiselle. A species I caught in Singapore last year.

I was over the moon to catch a couple of these spectacled shrimpgoby. 

They do look like they are wearing spectacles!

Next up, I caught a couple of ponyfish species, both new to me. First was this toothpony,..

...followed shortly afterwards by this decorated ponyfish.

At first glance I thought this was a dory snapper, but it was in fact my first ever striped snapper.

After catching my first ever common silver biddy,..

... I freelined a chunk of prawn, which this houndfish greedily ate. Another first time catch!

By this point, the rain had stopped, and the clouds had lifted, so we decided to walk halfway back up the pier and try fishing there. This area didn't produce anywhere near as many bites, but I eventually caught a couple of fish. Nothing new though.

The first fish I caught was this conguturi halfbeak.

Shortly afterwards, I caught a whipfin silver biddy. Nothing tried to eat this one as I wound it in.

Requiring two more species to hit one hundred, I tried in vain to catch a Boddart's goggle-eyed goby from the muddy area near the beginning of the pier just before we left, but they were happily eating algae and despite my sustained efforts, I couldn't trigger a violent assault on my bait. It would have been cool to catch one of these colourful mudskipper, but it wasn't to be. Admitting defeat and heading back to the car, we hit the road again, heading further north to a pond that I'd been told had some juvenile Indo-Pacific tarpon in it. Now that would be a cool fish to catch, particularly on my Rock Rover!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Phuket: Part 3.

The rocks at the right hand side of Nai Harn Beach had been very productive, so we returned there on our penultimate day in Thailand.

A very popular spot with locals and visiting species hunters alike!

During the previous session there, after annoying streaky rockskipper for a coupe of hours, I had focused on catching wrasse from close in on the rocks. This time, I freelined small pieces of prawn, casting them out and letting them fall down through the water column. This produced several different species of damselfish, the majority were new species to me. 

I’m not a huge fan of brown damselfish if I'm honest. They can be very tricky to positively identify. With some help from a friend, I discovered this was an obscure damselfish. My only plain brown damselfish of the session.

This is a threespot dascyllus. Also known as the domino damsel.

The Indo-Pacific sergeant, I have caught lots of these before.

I also caught this Weber’s chromis, followed on my very next cast,..

...by this green puller.

This mottled spinefoot crashed the damselfish party.

On one of the rare occasions my bait did make it to the bottom, I caught this beautiful checkerboard wrasse.

Breaking for a very tasty lunch in the restaurant up above the rocks, afterwards we headed a little closer to Nai Harn Beach, where I climbed out onto some rocks to try and fish over the sand out in front of them. Strangely, this didn't produce any bites, and I only caught a few wrasse closer in over the rocky bottom.

Not a very productive spot, sadly.

Slightly disappointed, we decided to head back to the rocks I'd been fishing from all morning. Fishing with a slightly bigger hook and a larger piece of prawn, using a couple of split shot on my line so I could cast it further out and also to get it down through the water column quicker, was my chosen approach. This soon started producing a variety of fish, several new species and not many repeats either, which was great!

A nice dory snapper,...

...my first two-lined monocle bream,..

...blackspot sergeant,..

...one spot snapper,..

... and banded sergeant!

I also caught a solitary redbelly yellowtail fusilier. A species I'd caught before but still an addition to my trip's tally, taking it to ninety!

So, it ended up being quite a productive day. I'd caught some cool fish and added another dozen to my total. Before the trip, I hadn't really set any targets, species wise. With two and a half days left, could I reach one hundred? I was quietly confident it was achievable, but doing so would depend on how many species I could add the following day, our last on Phuket. Visiting some different venues was in order to increase my chances. Besides, I think after three days of fishing at the same spot, Lillian fancied a change of scenery!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Phuket: Part 2.

On our second day in Phuket, we decided to head back to Nai Harn Beach. Leaving our apartment, Lillian drew my attention to a butterfly. At first glance I thought she had mistaken a leaf on the stairs for one, but after a double take I realised she was right, it was in fact a butterfly camouflaged to resemble a leaf! 

Great effort but the legs gave the game away!

Returning to the seaward side of the sluice gate at the southern end of Nai Harn Beach to have another go at catching a juvenile silver moony, they once again proved to be very cautious and I didn't get any of them to bite. After catching about a dozen or so crested grunter, I spotted some tiny mudskipper sitting on some floating debris and turned my attention to catching some of them. 

Target acquired! Tanago hook time!

I caught a few, most of them were juvenile barred mudskipper, but the smallest I caught turned out to be minute mudskipper. A nice fish to test out my micro species viewing tank!

After spending a bit more time unsuccessfully trying to catch a juvenile silver moony, we drove around to the rocks on the right-hand side of Nai Harn Beach again. My plan for the session was to fish in the actual sea, but first I wanted to target the very fussy, algae eating blenny in the rockpools again. The tide was further out than the previous day, and it was also not as windy either. This meant that a large number of my target species were more concentrated, making it easier to sight fish for them. In a similar fashion to the algae eating mudskipper species on Pulau Ubin, dropping a small chunk of prawn down in front of them often resulted in them simply swimming off, at best they would just ignore it. There were dozens of them in the rockpool, so I just kept trying to tempt them, one fish after another. Eventually, a larger specimen showed some interest, more of an aggressive response than feeding behaviour I think, but quickly striking I managed to hook the fish. Lifting it up, showing it to Lillian, my gleeful expression didn’t last long. The blenny thrashed itself free, fell from my hand, landed back in the rockpool and swam off laughing. I hadn’t even taken a photo! Setting about catching a second, it was a struggle to get another one to have a go at my prawn chunk. I’d soon spent over an hour trying without any joy. Suddenly, I noticed a small group of surgeonfish in another rockpool, and set about catching one. After a few aggressive damselfish and wrasse had been caught and released into a different rockpool, one of them got an opportunity to take my bait, and I’d caught my first new species of the day. 

This is a yellowfin surgeonfish. My first ever surgeonfish in fact. Surgeonfish have very sharp needle like spines either side of their caudal peduncle. 

Turning my attention back to catching a blenny, I found another larger specimen that seemed to be annoyed by the appearance of my prawn chunk in front of his face. After striking a couple of times and missing, I succeeded in getting it to attack again and this time set the hook. This time the fish was popped straight into my photo tank!

Instead of fifteen minutes, I ended up spending slightly over two hours before I caught and photographed my second ever streaky rockskipper! 

Relieved to have secured photographic evidence of catching this incredibly fussy blenny, I began fishing at very close range from the rocks into the sea. Straight away, I caught several moon wrasse, a species I caught for the first time last year in Singapore. These were the predominant wrasse species in the area. In amongst dozens of them I caught a few other species of wrasse, all of them for the first time. 

From the same genus as the ornate wrasse found in the Mediterranean, I soon realised the moon wrasse could be just as much of a nuisance!

In amongst all the moon wrasse, I also caught a Jansen's wrasse,..

…both initial phase Pacific dusky wrasse…

…and the much more colourful terminal phase,…

…and a solitary Timor wrasse.

Happy with how the morning session was going, Lillian called me over to show me an amazing caterpillar that she had noticed crawling over a large boulder close to the one she has been sitting on. 

Perhaps the coolest caterpillar I've ever seen!

In the afternoon, we went for a trip up the west coast of Phuket. It was a nice drive on winding roads, climbing up and down rugged cliffs and passing through some up the island's smaller villages and also larger towns, including those that attract nightlife seeking tourists. Stopping in Karon Beach briefly for some lunch, we continued our drive north, stopping at a tidal creek so I could have a quick session. There were shoals of tiny fish in the margins, so I set about catching them to begin with. 

The tiny fish attacked the tiny pieces of prawn with much gusto, but it was a real struggle to hook them. Eventually, after a few dropping off as I lifted them out, I managed to catch two of them.

The turned out to be my first ever Javan ricefish. Owner smallest tanago hooks were just small enough. I understand there is an even smaller tanago hook called Migen that are great for the tiniest of targets with the most miniscule of mouths! I’ll definitely have to get some of those!

Switching to my ultralight rod, I fished a larger piece of prawn on the bottom out in the deeper water in the middle of the creek. It took a while to get a bite, and when I hooked a fish it got caught on the bottom. At least it felt like that. It was firmly lodged, and I was about to pull for a break, when suddenly the fish was free again. Winding what turned out to be my first whipfin silver biddy, upon unhooking it I noticed it has some fresh wounds on its posterior. Something had tried to eat it!

Not a great day for this whipfin silver biddy. I’ve caught fish with scarring from far worse wounds, so popping it back perhaps it still had a fighting chance.

Continuing our drive north, we eventually arrived at Banana Beach and parked the hire car. From there we took a stroll up a jungle path, following a stream uphill to Kluai Waterfall.

A beautiful spot tucked away in the jungle. 

Below the waterfall was a nice pool and I quickly set about trying to catch a fish from it. After a short wait, I got a strange tug on my line and wound in a small crayfish with ridiculously long claws. The sky had been quite overcast, threatening to open all day and when a few spots of rain began to land on the pond, I guessed what was about to come. Quickly packing up my tackle, I told Lillian we had better head back down the hill. Sure enough, it was soon raining torrentially, and by the time we made it back to the car, we were both soaked to the skin. Driving back to Rawai with the car’s heater on full blast to try and dry off, another day’s fishing was over. In the evening, we went for a walk into town and enjoyed a nice meal. With only two days left in Phuket, I was keen to add a few more species to my tally before we headed back to Singapore.

Tight lines, Scott.

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