Even More Species Hunting Adventures On Gran Canaria: Part 3.

Keen to try fishing somewhere new, the next day we headed to a spot I'd seen other anglers fishing from in a YouTube video. Isla de Anfi is an artificial island that sits between Puerto de Anfi del Mar and Playa Anfi del Mar. Obviously, fishing in the marina, or from the beach, is prohibited, and as it turns out, fishing on the small island is not permitted either. A local who was fishing when we got down there, came over and told us that the police sometimes patrol the area, and whilst we wouldn't get into serious trouble, they would politely ask us to leave if they found us fishing. We only fished for thirty minutes before he approached us, and as the fishing was very poor, this information made the decision to leave a pretty easy one. I added one new species to our tally before we headed back up the hill to where we had parked the car, meaning the visit hadn't been a complete waste of time.

Isla de Anfi. No fishing allowed. We only spotted a sign as we left. If you decide to try here yourself, I'd visit at first light for a couple of hours.

A solitary small comber made our visit worthwhile.

We then headed west to Playa de Amadores to fish from its eastern breakwater again, but both the car parks were full, so we decided to head back to Puerto de Mogan once again. Having fished there twice already, we knew what to expect. The fishing had been reasonably consistent, and the draw of catching a red banded seabream, or something else unusual, was too hard to resist!

We just couldn't stay away!

Like previous sessions at the venue, we caught a reasonable amount of fish and in amongst the usual suspects we also added a few more species to our tally.

I knew it was a seabream when I hooked this common two banded seabream, but it wasn't the red banded seabream I was hoping would snaffle my squid strip.

I caught the first butterfly winged comber of the trip.

This diamond lizardfish also munched a strip of squid.

As the sun began to get fairly low in the sky, and the beach behind us began to empty, we decided to head around to target mullet for an hour or so in the channel. Ed wanted to catch his first flathead mullet, but there were a lot more mullet present and this made catching them very difficult. Numerous thick lipped mullet were around, and all we caught were those and some small golden grey mullet.

Our first thick lipped mullet of the trip.

Their thick upper lip with its rows of papillae make the species easy to identify.

The following day, we got up early and headed back to Playa de Amadores to ensure we got a parking space. First order of the day was a bit of fun in the rockpools at the end of the eastern breakwater.

I caught a few Madeira goby. They're not shy!

After catching a few fish from the rockpools, we turned our attention to fishing in the sea. I spent a bit of time trying to target garfish using a metal jig. I added a few pieces of thread from my fish handling towel to its treble hook to improve my chances of landed one should I get take, but despite getting a few hits, I didn't connect with any of the culprits. Switching back to fishing on the bottom out in the deep water, I caught a few bogue, as did Ed.

Bogue are quite a pretty seabream species in my opinion, in a sort of subtle way.

In the evening, we headed back to the bright glasseye spot. In my heart, I knew it was almost certainly a waste of time, as the condition were pretty much the same as they had been for the duration of the trip, but we went anyway. Whilst waiting for the security guard to leave and the sun to set, we fished from the beach nearby. The bites were few and far between, but came eventually and we both caught a few fish. I caught a bastard grunt and Ed caught his first Atlantic lizard fish and a greater weever. I caught a small wide eyed flounder and Ed caught his first one too, shortly afterwards.

A small bastard grunt. Much more common after dark in my experience, but you do catch some during the day as well.

Always love catching these pretty little flatfish. Ed was over the moon catching his first one too.

In the end, the conditions inside the glasseye spot were still very poor, so we decided just to head up to Arinaga to fish the pier there for an hour or so. We were both feeling pretty tired at this point, so we didn't stay for that long.

I ticked off a greater weever, just before we decided to call it a day.

We had been fishing pretty hard from the moment we arrived, and being honest, it had caught up with us. In the evening, we decided just to relax. I treated myself to a steak and a few cold beers, and we watched some videos on YouTube about the island and also some fishing videos too. We had two days left to reach our target of forty species, and I wasn't sure if we would do it. Hopefully we'd be suitably refreshed the following day to refocus and get the remaining species we needed.

Tight lines, Scott.

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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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Species hunting adventures on Malta: Part 2.

On the morning of the third day of our trip, I woke up to find a text message from Gordon letting me know that he was feeling ill, had been up all night coughing, and as a result had endured a pretty sleepless night. He told me he was going to stay in his hotel to try to get some sleep and later on visit a pharmacy to get a Covid test. I decided to have a lie in, and in the afternoon fished locally around Balluta Bay, just in case Gordon felt better and wanted to wander down to join me. Sadly, he didn’t, so I ended up fishing solo until the sun set. It turned out to be quite a productive session, using small chunks of raw prawn as bait, that I bought from a supermarket and transferred into a wide mouthed flask to prolong their frozen state. Fishing both in close, and then at range out in the bay, I added a few more species to our tally and caught my first Mediterranean rainbow wrasse of the trip.

I caught a couple of small salema, dropping my bait straight down the wall of the platform I was fishing from.

I caught a couple of cardinalfish from down in amongst some rocks on the bottom. A nocturnal fish, they hide away in dark places during the day, but still be caught.

This small blue runner also fell for a piece of prawn and gave a great account of itself on my Rock Rover rod.

I was expecting the Mediterranean rainbow wrasse or the ornate wrasse to be the most common wrasse species we would catch, but that was not the case. East Atlantic peacock wrasse were the wrasse species we caught most often.

The following day, Gordon still wasn’t feeling great, so I headed out on my own again. I stayed local, walking down to Balluta Bay again, fishing with small pieces of raw prawn once more. I tried a new spot around the back of the waterpolo pool, but didn’t catch anything new. Painted comber, damselfish and seabream species making up my catch.

A particularly colourful painted comber.

A common two banded seabream. One of several small seabream I caught.

Gordon came down to join me early in the afternoon, but said he didn’t feel up to doing any fishing. He’d tested negative for Covid, which was obviously good news, said he was feeling a little bit better, and would hopefully be back species hunting with me the following day. He also said he didn’t want to give me whatever he did have, but I told him the chances were if I was going to catch it, I probably had already, given we’d been together for two days and had been sharing fishing tackle, bait and a small bait towel during that time! Rather than Gordon just standing around watching me fish, I suggested I pack up, and that we drive north so we could spend a few hours at the Malta National Aquarium. I’m a sucker for a good aquarium, and it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours out of the sun. The aquarium had many impressive displays, but my favourite was a relatively small tank with some mudskipper in it, one of my favourite groups of fish!

Mudskipper are awesome! I’ll be fishing for them when I visit Asia next month!

After driving back and dropping Gordon off at his hotel so he could try to catch up on lost sleep, I walked down to a fishing tackle shop to see if they sold live worms. Located near the small stone bridge over to Manoel Island, after confirming that they did stock small boxes of live worm, I went over the road to see what fish I could see hanging around in the shallow water around the bridge. Lots of mullet were present, so I bought a small loaf of bread and set up a two hook rig that I fished under a 1g Avon float. Throwing in some free offerings, they were soon eagerly attacking them and becoming confident. Casting my rig into the chaos, I hooked about half a dozen fish fairly quickly, successfully landing three of them. 

The first I successfully landed was a small thick lipped mullet.

This was followed by two golden grey mullet. Another two species added to our trip tally!

Thankfully, the following day, Gordon was feeling better, and was ready to start pulling his weight in our species hunt! We headed to get a couple of boxes of live worms, and then drove to Senglea, where we fished from a small platform next to the car park beneath Gardjola Gardens. It was a nice spot with panoramic views across the bay. 

Valletta across the water to our left.

Directly out in front of us was fairly deep water that I thought could perhaps produce some different species for us. Looking straight down though as we set up our rods, I spotted lots of juvenile saddled seabream, so we quickly dropped down our rigs down into them caught a few, adding another species to our tally in the process.

There were several small shoals of these juvenile saddled seabream directly below the platform we were fishing from.

A positive start to the session! Casting further out, all we caught initially were lots of painted comber and seabream species, until I finally caught a tiny brown comber. It was so small I didn't even feel it biting!

The brown comber is the smallest of the comber species in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic. Even so, this was a tiny specimen.

An absolutely massive cruise ship then arrived. As it moored opposite us on the southern shore of Valletta, its manoeuvring thrusters stirred up the sea floor. Slowly, the water in front of us went from a lovely clear blue to a slightly murky, pea green colour. The action further out slowed down as a result, so we tried closer in again. This saw us catching some wrasse, a few seabream and I also caught a tiny goldblotch grouper.

The third new addition to our tally of the session was yet another juvenile in the shape of this tiny goldblotch grouper. They all count where you're species hunting!

After that, the bites dried up completely, so we decided to head south to fish Birżebbuġa again. Revisiting the concrete slipway there to begin with, I quickly ticked off a parrotfish, the reason I wanted to fish there again.

Gordon had caught a few on day one, but I still wanted a parrotfish for this year's species tally.

Some local anglers soon turned up to float fish, so we left, letting them have the spot to themselves. Heading back along to the large rockpool by the waterpolo centre, I set about trying to tempt the fussy blenny we had seen during our previous session there. Sure enough, it was out enjoying the sunshine again, sitting on its favourite rock on the bottom. Dropping a tasty fresh piece of worm down in its vicinity, the previously stubborn fish showed immediate interest and moved over, eagerly taking the bait into its mouth. I quickly struck, but pulled the hook straight out of it again! The startled fish swam off across the bottom of the rockpool, disappearing under a large flat rock. Meanwhile, Gordon had spotted a small bass in the rockpool swimming around with a group of small mullet and focused his attention on catching that. Freelining a whole worm, it didn’t take him long at all to successfully do so, adding yet another species to our tally. Patiently waiting for the blenny to reappear, I repeatedly checked to see if it had whilst fishing in the open sea to the right of the rockpool. After catching a lot of painted comber, a few wrasse and seabream species we’d caught already, I caught the first ornate wrasse of the trip.

Another species closer to our target. I never thought I’d be so happy to catch an ornate wrasse!

After a while, the blenny finally came back out again. Lowering a section of worm down near it, the fish greedily snaffled it up again, and this time I managed to set the hook firmly in its top lip. Quickly swinging it up into my hand, I was hoping that it would be perhaps a species I'd never caught before, but it turned out to be a rusty blenny, a species I've caught many times over the years.

Only the freshest, juiciest worms will do! This fussy eater would end up being the only blenny of the entire trip.

To end the day's species hunting, we headed back around to fish over the sand at Pretty Bay. We spent thirty minutes fishing small metals out into the open sea, letting them sink before retrieving them fairly quickly,  using lots of small jerks to try and imitate a panicking bait fish. This saw a tiny barracuda have a go at my lure right at the end of one of my retrieves, and shortly afterwards I caught my second blue runner of the trip, when it smashed my metal as it got about halfway back in. Just before we left, we both caught some juvenile gilthead seabream from shallow water, drawing them out into gaps in a large seagrass bed on the inside of the small pier we were fishing from with small sections of worm.

Without a doubt, the smallest gilthead seabream I've ever caught. Like I said, size doesn't matter when species hunting. Big, small or tiny, they all count!

With two days left of our trip, we were well on our way to achieving our goal, having passed the twenty species mark. On the last two days of our trip, we planned to visit Valletta and take the ferry over to Gozo. We were looking forward to visiting both and hopefully catching the remaining species we needed to achieve our objective.

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the last part.

My patience is now wearing a little thin.

Topknot. My new nemesis. I've put in a serious amount of time over the last few months trying to catch one. Slightly annoyingly, they keep popping up on my Instagram feed too, caught by anglers on the south coast of England.  Earlier this week, I had yet another couple of sessions after dark, dropping live prawns down the walls and into cracks in and around St Abbs Harbour trying to catch a highly elusive, rock dwelling flatfish. On the first trip I was joined by my mate Ryan. It was nice to have some company, creeping around in the dark on your own can be a little lonely, especially when the fishing is slow, which it was during both trips! We both caught a few fish, although Ryan trounced me on the species front, catching four I didn't in the shape of a ballan wrasse, a flounder, a shore rockling and a leopard spotted goby. 

Scanning the bottom with our headtorches, we saw this darkly coloured flounder moving around over sand, but it swam over some weed, disappearing. Ryan cast his rig over the area a few times and the fish eventually took his ragworm section.

Ryan pulled this shore rockling out from the base of a wall inside the harbour. Normally associated with mixed to rough ground in the open sea, it must have been inside the harbour under the cover of darkness to scavenge.

Returning a couple of nights later on my own, I again failed to catch my intended target and after several hours trying, I decided to try to catch a leopard spotted goby. Ryan's the session before was the first one I'd seen caught from the venue, and I wanted to replicate the feat! Shining my headtorch straight down the harbour wall close to where Ryan had caught his, I couldn't believe my luck when I saw one sitting motionless on a concrete shelf. Dropping a small chunk of prawn down, the fish ignored it to begin with, but after a brief pause I gave my bait a twitch and watched the goby spring to life and my bait quickly vanished.

It was the same size as Ryan's fish. I compared our photos a few days later out of curiosity. It was in fact the exact same fish!

By the end of a pretty tough evening, I was feeling just ever so slightly frustrated at my repeated failures on the topknot front. Keen to go fishing as the weather was glorious, the other day I opted to spend a few hours targetting mullet at the outflow of Torness Power Station. In particular, I wanted to catch a golden grey mullet, as I hadn't caught one yet this year. Donning my polarized sunglasses to eliminate the surface glare, below the surface I couldn't see any mullet swimming about, but decided to have a go anyway. Tearing up some bread into small pieces and throwing it in to try and draw in some mullet, eventually I spotted a few small fish swimming up the current into a pocket of slack water and taking the free offerings. Fishing a very small piece of flake on a #16 hook and using a few split shot to get my bait down, I felt the odd nibble and eventually caught a couple of fish in quick succession.

The first fish I caught was this thick lipped mullet. Easily identifiable from the rows of papillae on the lower section of its thick upper lip.

The second mullet was the one I was hoping to catch, a golden grey mullet. With a much thinner upper lip and a bright, well defined golden spot on its gill plate it was very straightforward to identify.

About thirty minutes later, I hooked a third mullet. It was small and having already added a golden grey mullet to my 2024 species tally, I didn't even bother using my net to land it. Swinging it up to hand however, it looked a little odd. Curious, I popped it into a bucket of water, so I could carry out further examination and take some photos.

The fish in question. It had a thin upper lip, but only a very faint golden marking on its gill plate. It was not as slender as a golden grey mullet either, being much heavier in the body. Furthermore, it also had a black spot at the base of its pectoral fin and an orange/gold shade to parts of the iris, both are features of a thin lipped mullet!

The shape of its head didn't look right for a golden grey either. The snout was stubbier and flatter across the top. The maxillary bone at the corner of the mouth was also larger than that of a golden grey mullet. In the golden grey mullet, this structure is very small.

Had I caught my first Scottish thin lipped mullet? In the back of my mind, I seemed to recall a simple test that I had read about that could be used to positively identify UK mullet species. Doing a quick Google search on my phone, I found details of the method in question. Folding the pectoral fin forward, it will not reach the posterior edge of the eye or at most will just reach the posterior edge of the eye on a thin lipped mullet. On a golden grey mullet, the pectoral fin when folded forward will reach well past the posterior edge of the eye, sometimes as far as the centre of the eye.

The pectoral fin folded forward didn't reach the eye! Along with the other features, did this mean my fish was indeed a thin lipped mullet?! It would be a new Scottish species for me if it was!

Returning home, I consulted the numerous species identification books that I own. Some, including the excellent "The Fishes of The British Isles & N.W. Europe" by Alwyne Wheeler, which has detailed dichotomous keys that can be used to positively identify fish within a known group to species level, also specified the pectoral "fin test" as the means of distinguishing between the golden grey mullet and the thin lipped mullet. At this point, I sent my pictures to a few fellow species hunting anglers and also to the National Mullet Club, asking for their opinions on the identity of my fish. The consensus was that I have indeed caught a thin lipped mullet! 

Curious to carry out the pectoral fin test on a golden grey mullet, I returned the other day to try and catch one. The session turned out to be quite a frustrating one. The wind had changed direction and a swell was running directly up the outflow. It didn't look promising, but I had a go anyway, this time fishing a two hook presentation to increase my chances. Feeding small pieces of bread, I eventually spotted one or two fish, so I persevered. After about three hours, this paid off when I finally hooked a few fish, three taking my hook bait in a fairly short period. All three somehow managed to eject my hook though, after being on for a brief period. They felt like bigger fish, too big to be golden grey mullet I felt, so I wasn't too annoyed. Another couple of hours later, I’d had no more action, and I was about to admit defeat and head off when I hooked a fourth, smaller fish. This time the fish was well hooked, and I had it in the net fairly quickly. It was the golden grey mullet I was after.

Time to put the pectoral fin test to the test!

As predicted! The pectoral fin when folded forward reached the centre of the golden grey mullet's eye.

Personally, I'm now extremely confident that I have indeed caught a thin lipped mullet, a quite unexpected and very welcome bonus catch that I'm happy to add to my lifetime Scottish species tally, taking it to ninety eight. With only two species now required to reach my goal of one hundred, and as the colder months approach, I don't want to take my foot off the gas just yet, but conditions will play a huge part in the fishing I can do, and the species I can target. Regardless of how my fishing plans develop over the coming months, I really need a break from topknot hunting! I’ve taken the opportunity to get just that with an impromptu, very last minute, week long trip to Malta with my mate Gordon this Saturday, and there's zero chance of catching one there!

Tight lines, Scott.