Species hunting adventures on Rhodes: Part 3.

With lionfish in mind, one of my target new species for the trip, we headed to Ladiko Bay, a spot where many swimmers have seen them whilst snorkelling. After parking the car and making our way over the rocks, I spotted a few fish in a large rockpool and set about catching them using tanago hooks baited with tiny pieces of prawn. This quickly produced three species.

First out was an incognito goby. The easiest of the three to catch.

Next out was a small peacock blenny, a little bit trickier as they’re not quite as aggressive and can get spooked.

Lastly, the smallest golden grey mullet I’ve ever caught. I’m not sure how I caught it to be honest. Tanago hooks are pretty awesome!

Making our way to the rocks, I spent some time fishing at close range hoping to tempt a lionfish from the ledge below. To my surprise, absolutely nothing was biting, so I tried further out. This produced a few yellow spotted puffer and a solitary Mediterranean rainbow wrasse.

Yet another spot that looked like it had loads of potential, but was almost entirely devoid of fish!

This Mediterranean rainbow wrasse was scant reward for my efforts!

Once again, Lillian gave me the “You’re wasting your time you idiot!” glance, so we headed off to visit somewhere that I’d at least be guaranteed to see a lionfish. A short drive later we arrived in Rhodes Town and our first stop was its aquarium.

A strange looking building. The actual fish are displayed down in the basement.

Seeing lionfish was great, they’re beautiful fish, but I really wanted to catch one!

Can you see the wide eyed flounder?

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Rhodes Town, exploring the moat of the old walled city, having some lunch and then walking around the harbours.

Whilst wandering through a wooded area near the Old Town’s moat, I spotted this large wall brown butterfly.

The old walled city of the Old Town of Rhodes.

There are a few old windmills down by the harbour.

In the evening, we visited Stegna again to see if we could spot a moray eel, but there was no sign of any. The fishing was pretty disappointing, with puffers being right in the mood and biting off my hooks repeatedly.

Little annoying buggers! Ocassionaly they would pull their party trick.

I was feeling even more frustrated that my efforts seemed to have gone unrewarded for a couple of days. Lillian was also disappointed too, having only had to deploy my net once! Calling it a night, we headed back to Archangelos and treated ourselves to some smash burgers before heading back to our accomodation.

Archangelos has several excellent food options. Some less traditional, but still delicious! I had to have my photo taken with the Stifis Bros menu. 

The next day, we had a late start and decided to walk down into town to visit the bakey again and then up the hill to the old fortress. Whilst inside the its ruins we had a break and as we were eating our Spanakopita, a traditional Greek savory pie made with layers of crispy phyllo pastry filled with spinach, feta cheese, and fresh herbs, I noticed a moth landing in the dried out vegetation nearby and took a photo.

This is a crimson speckled moth. It's not a butterfly!

Walking back to our accomodation, a large insect flew across from our left and landed on Lillian’s leg. In a very calm and controlled fashion, and without shrieking at all, she quietly asked me to remove it, so I used her hat to do just that. It was a small praying mantis! We’ve encountered a few over the years during our travels, but this time I wanted to try to handle it. Offering up my hand, much to my surprise, and Lillian’s horror, it climbed straight onto me!

Brave or stupid? I don’t know, but the praying mantis was actually quite chilled out!

I popped it on to a nearby tree branch and off it went.

In the afternoon we drove to Kolymbia, where I spent some time fishing around the town’s harbour. The fishing was once again tough, with bites few and far between, but by that point I had sort of just accepted the fact that I simply wasn’t going to catch a lot of fish, and I’d have to keep working hard for those that I did. Any frustration from the previous few days had gone, and somehow I just felt more relaxed. I did manage to catch a nice parrotfish and a big Red Sea goatfish as well as a few ornate wrasse and some yellow spotted puffer. Before heading off to get out of the sun and to have some lunch, we passed a small shrine dedicated to Agios Nikolaos, the patron saint of sailors, fisherman and travellers. I decided to say a quick prayer!

This plump parrotfish grabbed my prawn chunk and did its best to get down into the rocks.

The Red Sea goatfish also gave me a decent scrap on my trusty Rock Rover.

Another hard session in the baking sun!

I’m not in any way a religious person, but perhaps Agios Nikolaos could deliver some better fishing!

It’s hard to beat a delicious Greek Salad. We ate lots of them throughout our holiday.

Afterwards, we drove north to fish on Paralia Afantou. We managed to find a spot next to an old military installation that provided us with a bit of respite from the sun. It was a beautiful spot and there were plenty of fish biting from my first cast. Just past the drop off, there were plenty of small striped seabream and I soon caught a few of them.

What a simple yet stunning view!

It seemed as if my prayer for more fish had been answered, but perhaps I should have asked for bigger fish too? After a while I decided to spend some time casting a metal jig and then a small hard lure around. I had a couple of follows from small lizardfish, but they didn’t commit. I was just about to give up when something stronger hit my lure further out and charged off, taking line. I had no idea what it was, but after a decent fight my first ever little tunny was netted by Lillian.

Also known as the false albacore, the little tunny is a small species of tuna.

This little lure has been in my collection for a few years now. A fast sinker, it weighs 8g and as a result casts brilliantly for its size. I think I might treat myself to a few more!

I was over the moon to catch my forth new species of the trip, and hopeful there might be more around, so I carried on fishing for a little while longer. Nothing else hit my lure however, so we jumped into the car again and drove south to fish dusk from some rocks near Paralia Vlicha.

Making our way onto the flat rocky platform, I still had my plug tied on, so I gave that a few casts. Nothing was biting, but as I retrieved it at various speeds and gave it different actions to try and entice a take, Lillian and I were both surveying the submerged ledge directly in front of us. We were hoping to spot a lionfish, but instead it was a moray eel that appeared from underneath a rock. I had used up all my bait earlier in the day, so I decided to offer the fish an isome crab rigged on a cheburashka weight. This worked a treat, and after taking it into its mouth, the eel reversed back under the rock. When I struck though, I pulled the hook out of its mouth. How frustrating! For a while, I tried to tempt it out again, but there was no sign of it. Light was beginning to fade, so I switched back to fishing with my sardine patterned lure. As it gradually got dark I told Lillian that it was “cuda o’clock” and a few casts later I was proved right when I caught one!

These yellowtail barracuda are a smaller species that has arrived from the Red Sea.

I fished on for a while longer, but with a return to the same spot planned for dawn the following day, we headed off to get some food to have back at the hotel and had an early night.

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.

Click here for the next part…

Not more species hunting adventures on Crete?!: Part 4.

On the penultimate day of our trip I decided we should head all the way back up to the north coast again! Every time we've been on Crete we've visited the Aquaworld Aquarium & Reptile Rescue Centre. We both enjoy our visits there and I didn't really want to break that little tradition! I didn’t tell Lillian we were going there so it was a nice surprise when she figured out where we were driving to. The fish on display are awesome but if I'm honest it's the reptiles I enjoy seeing the most. I think Lillian prefers them too.

My old nemisis Bill was in one of the tanks! The crafty swine and this dusky grouper seemed to be the best of friends.

Out the back of the venue there were plenty of reptiles on display and the opportunity to handle some of them was not missed by myself or Lillian. We both got our hands on this small albino boa constrictor, or perhaps it had got its scales on us?

The quite adorable, very friendly and imaginatively named Albi.

After our visit, we grabbed a large slice of feta and spinach pie each from a nearby bakery then headed down to Hersonissos Harbour where I had a few hours to fish.

It was pretty slow to begin with, and I didn't have any bait with me, so I went with the next best thing, good old tried and tested Angleworm on a drop shot rig! I tried fishing from the seaward facing rocks out onto a sandy area on the outside of the harbour initially. I was hoping to catch a pearly razorfish, but the sea was a little bit coloured up and there was a lot of suspended dead seagrass in the water too from the last few days of stormy conditions, and I didn't catch anything at all. I then turned my attention to fishing straight down the inside of the harbour walls, having a seat while I waited for something to bite.

Patience required.

Eventually, I did start getting a few little rattles that I thought felt like wrasse. After missing a few bites I switched to half a piece of Angleworm on a smaller hook and caught a few of the culprits. The first few fish were indeed small wrasse, East Atlantic peacock wrasse, but moving along the wall towards the corner I caught a bigger one and a couple of other species too, that were unexpected, in the shape of a small barracuda and my first new species of the trip, a mottled grouper!

The largest of my first East Atlantic peacock wrasse of the trip.

I'm pretty sure this is a small European barracuda. It had some distinct barring all along its flanks that doesn't show up well in this photo. Not a species you'd expect to take a very small piece of Gulp fished in an almost static position!

This mottled grouper also took half an Angleworm! I was over the moon to catch this as it was my first new species of the trip! Visible in this photo, the small black saddle over the top of the tail root is a key identifying feature in juveniles of this species.

Feeling a little bit lucky at this point, I had another go trying to catch a pearly razorfish. The dead seagrass was a real pain though, and I didn't catch one, but I did manage to catch a nice Mediterranean rainbow wrasse closer in over rockier ground before Lillian finished her book and declared it was about time for us to go for dinner!

A colourful male Mediterranean rainbow wrasse.

Sometimes, I just can’t get out of species hunting mode and my eagle eyes spotted some reasonably sized thick lipped mullet as we walked back around the harbour to the car. Permission was grovellingly sought and grudgingly given to set up my rod again, and I quickly tied up a two hook freelining rig. Whilst I did that, Lillian grabbed a loaf of bread from the boot of the car and started throwing a few pieces in to get the fish feeding. Once the mullet were all competing for the free offerings I baited up my two hooks with bread flake, dipped them into the water to add a bit more weight, and flicked them out into the jostling fish. Working as a team, in no time at all I had hooked half a dozen thick lipped mullet and Lillian had netted them all for me! We were having a lot of fun, but the icing on the cake was a small sand smelt that grabbed a tiny piece of bread that was left on my hook as I wound it in to bait up my rig again. I didn't realise at the time, but it was my second new species of the trip!

Teamwork does make the dream work!

When I caught this I wrongly identified it as big scale sand smelt, a species I have caught before. Doing further research when I got home I realised I'd made an error. It is in fact a wide-banded hardyhead silverside, one of the very first recorded Lessepsian migrants having been discovered in the Mediterranean for the first time in 1902!

So, happy to have added five more species to my tally we headed off to have our last evening meal of the holiday in a lovely restaurant called Fabrica located in nearby Koutouloufari. We discovered it, and its eccentric/slightly mad owner Yiannis, the last time we visited Crete. The beef stifado there was superb, so we had it again as part of another very enjoyable meal. I then had to drink all the post meal raki, as Lillian was driving us back through the mountains south to Agia Galini.

The last day of our holiday had arrived. The wind had dropped off to a very gentle breeze and after checking out of our room we headed down to the harbour of Agia Galini armed with some bread. I wanted to try and catch a salema, having hooked and lost a few relatively big ones during a day trip there the last time we visited Crete. The harbour walls had received a lick of paint since then and some nice artwork had been installed too.

Nice new fishy tile art. I have no idea what the species are!

Lillian took on groundbaiting duty again and her efforts soon attracted a lot of fish. Damselfish, rabbitfish and puffer to begin with but eventually some salema showed up too. They are quite easily spooked so I tried to be as sneaky I could, staying out of their line of sight. They were hugging the harbour wall, swimming up it quickly, grabbing pieces of bread from the surface with a splash, then swimming back down the wall again.

Trying to be stealthy. Not easy when you’re a big chap.

For some reason, they seemed pretty adept at managing to successfully avoid taking the piece of bread that had my hook in it. When they did go for it they were also high skilled at stealing the bread and not getting hooked! Feeling rather frustrated, I added a couple of split shot to my line and tried to catch them subsurface. This saw me catching a few marbled rabbitfish that put up a good scrap and every time I hooked one for a moment I though I had caught my target species. After a while I took the split shot off again, switched back to fishing my bread on the surface and eventually hooked a nice salema. It tore off at a fair pace down the wall a couple of times and thrashed about a bit so I felt reasonably confident that I had a good hookset, but just as Lillian came over with the net, it thrashed on the surface and threw the hook. By this point I was quite frustrated and almost about to admit defeat, but shortly afterwards my efforts were finally rewarded when I tied on a smaller hook and a much smaller salema took my much smaller breadflake. It was very quickly swung up to hand.

Several hours of effort went into catching this small salema! If I had any hair it would have been pulled out for sure!

Mission accomplished, we jumped in the car and drove all the way to Kalyves on the north coast. I wanted to try and catch an Atlantic stargazer from the harbour there. I thought that would be a very cool species to end the trip on, if I could catch one!

Kalyves Harbour at the eastern end of the town's sandy beach.

The fishing inside the harbour was very tough. I slowly fished a small metal jig fitted with an assist hook along the sandy bottom, hoping I would land it in the vicinity of a buried fish, that was waiting to pounce. This didn’t produce any takes, so I tried bouncing a small Reins Rockvibe paddletail lure along the bottom rigged weedless on a cheburashka weight.

The weedless hook probably killed the action of this fantastic lure a little bit, but the sandy bottom of the harbour was also littered with ropes.

This did get hit by something, but I failed to get a hook up. Whatever had grabbed the tail of the lure had clamped on and when I struck it had pulled the lure all the way around the hook before letting it go. I reset the lure and had a few more casts over the same area but didn’t get any more bites sadly.

Slightly disappointed not to catch my desired species, after a while I switched my attention to fishing small plugs around the mouth of the harbour hoping to catch a bluefish or some other juvenile pelagic predator. This produced a couple of lazy follows from a small barracuda, but nothing else showed any interest, so I had one last throw of the dice with my old friend, a piece of Angleworm on a drop shot rig. Casting this out over the sandy beach next to the harbour, I had a few little taps almost every cast as soon as it hit the bottom. I had an idea what might be responsible, and after a few more casts managed to hook a small fish. Winding it in my suspicions were confirmed.

Not handled at all. The last thing you want at the end of a holiday is to be stung by a lesser weever. Not the weever species I really wanted to catch either, but it was the final fish of the holiday, and one last addition to my trip’s tally.

We still had a bit of time left before we had to drive east to Heraklion Airport, so we shared some delicious mousaka, chicken souvlaki and one last Greel salad in a restaurant by the beach. It had been another very enjoyable holiday on Crete. The weather had been a mixed bag, but I’d still managed to catch thirty seven species, adding thirty two to my 2023 tally, including the two new ones which are highlighted in bold below...

1. Annular Seabream
2. Atlantic Lizardfish
3. Black Goby*
4. Black Scorpionfish
5. Bogue
6. Boxlip Mullet
7. Cardinalfish
8. Common Comber
9. Common Two Banded Seabream
10. Damselfish
11. Derbio
12. East Atlantic Peacock Wrasse
13. European Barracuda
14. Giant Goby*
15. Goldblotch Grouper
16. Greater Amberjack
17. Incognito Goby
18. Lesser Weever*
19. Madeira Rockfish
20. Marbled Rabbitfish
21. Mediterranean Rainbow Wrasse
22. Mottled Grouper
23. Ornate Wrasse
24. Painted Comber
25. Parrotfish
26. Peacock Blenny
27. Red Mullet
28. Reticulated Filefish
29. Rock Goby*
30. Rusty Blenny
31. Saddled Seabream
32. Salema
33. Thick Lipped Mullet*
34. White Seabream
35. Wide Eyed Flounder
36. Wide-banded Hardyhead Silverside
37. Yellow Spotted Puffer

* = already caught in the UK this year.

The amount of yellow spotted puffer I caught was probably the only disappointing aspect of the fishing. They’re a real problem as is Lessepsian migration in general. Also, I didn’t really make any kind of concerted effort to deliberately target lionfish, silver cheeked toadfish or moray eel. Three species I definitely intended to have a go for before we went. I even took a heavier setup and end tackle to use for those species but it never got used! On reflection, the weather was a factor in my fishing decisions and also once I’m in species hunting mode I find I focus on racking them up as quickly as I can!

Special mention yet again to Lillian who, as usual, was unbelievably tolerant of my obsessive behaviour. I often worry that she gets a bit bored when I’m fishing away! At one point during the holiday when I asked her if she was fed up with my fishing antics she told me that my passion was quite infectious and she enjoyed being a part of it!

Having been to Crete five times now, I’m not sure when Lillian and I will return, although I’m sure we will. In the meantime I might visit with some mates for a dedicated fishing trip! Lillian and I are thinking about visiting Corfu or Malta next year. Two islands that we've never been to. Hopefully there will be less yellow spotted puffer regardless of which destination we choose!

Tight lines, Scott.