More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 5.

On day three we decided to spend the morning in Naha wandering around some of its covered shopping streets. On the way there, we stopped off to check out a couple of potential bridge fishing spots that we could make use of if the rain didn’t let up, but neither looked particularly promising. After leaving the covered shopping arcade briefly to treat ourselves to a tasty Spam and omlette onigiri, the heavens unloaded, exposing all the leaks in the roof. After dodging them, the puddles they created and wandering in and out of various shops for an hour or so, the rain went off for a brief period. Luckily, just as we got back to roughly where we’d started, so we hastily returned to the open air car park where we’d left the hire car. From Naha, we headed southeast to spend a couple of hours at Okinawa World, a theme park featuring local nature, crafts, a snake sake brewery and a large underground cave.

With millions of stalactites and stalagmites, Gyokusendo is considered East Asia's most beautiful limestone cave. At an impressive 5km long, about 1km of that open to the public. It was reasonably dry inside too!

As well as a tropical fruit garden and various crafts like pottery and glassblowing on display, the park is also home to a Habushu brewery, where they make snake sake. A visit to such a park usually ends in the gift shop, but Okinawa World had a gift shop after each attraction, which we felt was a little bit much.

Habushu is believed to have medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. We didn't try any, but on reflection I wish I had.

Leaving the park, it was still overcast, but it wasn't raining. To the east there were a few areas of blue sky visible, so we drove in that direction, ending up at Tosoe Fishing Port, another venue where we could fish right next to the car. The fishing there was reasonably good for the short period before the clouds returned, and before long it was raining heavily once more. During this short session, it was my turn to repeatedly get snagged, lose rigs, and waste valuable fishing time retying them. As a consequence, Ryan caught a lot more fish at this spot than I did and several species that I did not too. 

I caught this redbellied yellowtail fusilier. 

Ryan caught this ochre-striped cardinalfish and was blown away by its incredibly deep blue eyes.

He also caught a solitary whitsaddle goatfish,..

…a solitary freshwater demoiselle,..

...and a brown damselfish. I'd later discover that this species, belonging to the Pomacentrus genus, is found around the eastern and southern coast of Okinawa and has not yet been studied and formally identified by marine biologists.

I really struggled at this venue, but after catching a few dottyback, I added a second species to our trip tally when I caught this half-barred cardinalfish.

While I focused on fishing at close range down the port’s walls, Ryan decided to have a few casts further out with slightly bigger baits. Towards the end of the session, this paid off when he caught a couple of common ponyfish. Shortly afterward he caught these, it started raining heavily, so we quickly packed up and headed off before we got too wet.

This small palm sized specimen was followed,..

…by this much bigger one!

Raining heavily the rest of the day, we visited a CoCoICHI for a tasty curry in the evening and checked the forecast for the remaining two days in Okinawa. Thankfully it had changed from non-stop heavy rain and there were a couple of dry spells that we could perhaps try to take advantage of. We’d caught about fifty species on Okinawa during our first three days, but we wanted to catch even more!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 4.

On our second full day on Okinawa, the forecast rain arrived. Driving north to Nago, with the windscreen wiper on full at times, we were hopeful that it might ease up enough that we could do some fishing. Arriving at the river we wanted to fish, it showed little sign of letting up though Getting out of the car, we grabbed umbrellas from the boot and had a quick look around. The rain finally eased up slightly and Ryan and I decided to get minimal tackle out of the car and just to get a bit wet. 

These colourful fish shaped kite artworks were all along the roadside by the river. 

Baiting our hooks with small shrimps that we’d picked up from a tackle shop in the morning, it didn’t take us long to catch a few Nile tilapia. Fishing from a bridge over the river, casting our baits downstream into a deep run in the middle flanked either side by flowing weeds, they were getting hit straight after entering the water. 

A slightly soggy Ryan with his first ever tilapia. 

Walking upstream a bit, we soon spotted some other fish in the river that definitely weren’t tilapia, so we stood in the rain and spent an hour or so trying to catch them. Getting through the tilapia proved to be very difficult. There were large shoals of them, and they were much more aggressive than the other fish, which hugged the bottom and moved much more slowly. Still, catching lots of tilapia was fun for a while.

Fishing in the rain. Just fishing in the rain.

The biggest Nile tilapia I caught. 

By the time we decided to leave, we were both pretty wet, but at least we weren’t cold as well. Our next destination, after stopping to have some lunch, was Heart Rock on the northern shore of Kouri Island. 

Heart Rock probably looks more picturesque when the conditions are nice! After professing my undying love for her to Lillian, we headed off to try to find somewhere sheltered where we could do some more fishing. What could be more romantic?

Driving back around to the south side of the island, we thought about fishing underneath one of the ends of Kouri Bridge, but the water there looked incredibly shallow, so instead we decided to fish in Kouri Island’s small port, where we could fish right next to the car. It rained most of the time, only letting up for short periods, and the fishing was very good, so we fished through the rain when I came on and before too long Ryan and I were pretty much soaked to the skin. To begin with, I cast out onto a sandy area. This produced a couple of sand dwelling species. 

First I caught this cylindrical sandperch.

Then this, my first ever, variegated lizardfish.

Turning my attention to fishing down the wall in front of us, we caught a few fish and added a few more species to our tally in the process. 

We both caught a blackstripe cardinalfish. 

Ryan caught this shorthead sabretooth blenny,..

…and a very pretty barred thicklip. 

As we fished away and dropped waste pieces of shrimp into the water right in front of us, more colourful fish began to arrive. They were quite small and were adept at stealing the bait from our #20 hooks, so we went even smaller, baiting them with tiny pieces of shrimp! This did the trick, and we caught a few more species as a result. 

These venomous barhead spinefoot were the most aggressive of the small, colourful fish that had gathered. We both caught a few of them, carefully unhooking them to avoid any painful accidents.

I spend a fair amount of time targeting a couple of pennant coralfish. Pulling my baited hook away from other species I'd already caught, I eventually caught one of them. One of the coolest fish I’ve ever caught. 

Towards the end of the session, the sky opened up and the rain started battering down. Lillian and Ryan sheltered in the hire car, but I doggedly carried on fishing. My effort was rewarded with another new species. 

Soaked right through already, I wasn't getting any wetter!

My reward for fishing in the heavy rain was this vermiculate angelfish. Not so rewarding was getting stabbed by the large spine on it's cheek which I didn’t notice until it was too late. Ouch!

The rain was still falling torrentially when I eventually decided I'd had enough. Throwing my tackle in the boot we turned the heating on full blast and made the drive back south to Chatan. We’d managed to do about four hours of fishing, getting properly soaked in the process, but had added another ten species to our tally. Lots of heavy rain was forecast for the coming days and after heading out to a yakiniku restaurant in the evening, I spent some time searching on Google Maps for some bridges we could fish under!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 3.

The first time Lillian and I visited Okinawa, I stupidly took the incorrect international driving permit with me (I now know there are three different ones), and we could not hire a car as a result. This limited our mobility and because of this I fished one particular spot close to our accommodation several times, two concrete piers near the South Steps Dive Site in Chatan. During those sessions, I’d caught a few different species there, and as we could park our hire car nearby, that’s where we headed to continue our first day’s fishing.

As you can see, it was a bit windy and looked like it could rain at any moment!

The railings around the two piers were quite badly rusted and in a generally poor condition when I fished on them two years ago, with some sections having been removed completely and replaced with scaffolding poles. When we arrived this time, the piers were both fenced off completely at the top, but there were people fishing on one of them, so we decided to climb around the side of the fencing to fish on the other one. Once we got down to the bottom, I realised that the condition of the railings had become even worse, becoming unsafe and this was no doubt why the two piers had been fenced off. Fishing behind one of the sturdier looking sections, both of us started catching a few fish, most of them were species that we hadn’t caught at the first spot, which was great.

Some of them I’d caught before, like this monogrammed monocle bream,..

…and this yellowtail devil. 

I also caught a few new species. The first was this bowtie damselfish, which was a beautiful deep blue colour.

I caught my first striped large-eye bream,..

…and then Ryan and I caught a few of these very colourful sixbar wrasse.

We both also caught our first ever Oriental butterflyfish.

Towards the end of the session, we caught quite a lot of Indo-Pacific sergeant and a couple of other sergeant species. The two I caught, weren’t new species for me and Ryan caught a third that I did not, that would have been a new species had I caught one. Since publishing this post, I've discovered a fourth species was in amongst those I caught, which was a new species!

We caught quite a few Indo-Pacific sergeant.

Male Indo-Pacific sergeant turn blue when they are breeding.
04/12/25. Update: So do male Okinawa sergeant, which this is an example of.

We both caught a few blackspot sergeant.

Ryan caught the only yellowtail sergeant of the trip, just before we called it a day.

So, our first day of species hunting on Okinawa had been a great success. Between the two of us, we’d managed to catch over thirty different species. In the evening, we visited a fishing tackle shop and then went out for some sushi. The next day, heavy rain was forecast, so we decided to head north for a drive to Nago. There, we wanted to fish for freshwater species in a small river, and maybe visit Kouri Island too if the rain wasn’t too heavy. 

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 2.

As the two of us fished away in Ginowan Fishing Port, a few other anglers arrived and starting fishing just along from us. One of them was fishing with live baitfish, so there may have been some bigger fish around, but Ryan and I were content targeting smaller fish and trying to rack up as many species as we could. The next species I caught was a Campbell’s goby.

I’d caught Campbell's goby previously on the South Korean island of Jeju.

This was followed by my first ever unicornfish which was pretty awesome. I’d discover later it was a bignose unicornfish.

They develop their "big nose" when they become an adult.

The species just kept coming. It was quite remarkable really. Almost every other fish we caught was an addition to our tally. For Ryan, every species he caught was a new one and for me, about half of them were new.

I then caught a sapphire devil which Ryan was a little bit jealous of. I was sure he would catch one.

Next up was another new species for me, a Batu rainbow wrasse.

Followed by a Yellowfin surgeonfish. I caught one of these in Phuket last year.

We then caught a few of these staghorn damselfish.

Shortly afterwards, I caught my first threadfin butterflyfish of the trip.

Two more new species then took my small pieces of prawn. The first was this yellowtail emperor.

It was followed by my first ever brown dottyback.

I also caught a whitespotted devil, which confusingly has blue spots.

By this point, we’d been fishing for about three hours, and things eventually started to slow down a bit. Perhaps the commotion caused by dozens of fish being hooked and wound in by the two of us had spooked the rest from the area, or maybe it was due to a change in the tide. Either way, or whatever the reason, we were also aware that it could also start raining at any moment and that any dry weather window was precious, so we decided to move to another venue not too far away to try our luck there. Hopefully it would be just as productive!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 1.

Arriving on Okinawa in the evening and driving to our accomodation, it was dark when we arrived and we were pretty hungry, so we went out for something to eat. After a large bowl of tasty Okinawa soba, we went for a walk along the back of Araha Beach before heading back to our apartment. Checking the forecast for the next few days, it had improved slightly, but with rain still forecast we decided to fish the following day at a venue where we could be close to the hire car, so we could take cover quickly should the conditions deteriorate.

The next morning, we headed to the supermarket to pick up some snacks and a bag of frozen raw prawns to use as bait. We didn’t venture too far, driving south to Ginowan Fishing Port. Fishing over the railings next to its concrete slipway, straight down the side using small hooks, it didn’t take me long to start catching some cool fish. The first few I caught were ones I’d caught before during previous Asian trips.

First up was a Kupang cardinalfish, a species I also caught the first time I visited Okinawa.

Then I caught a few anchor tuskfish.

Next was this honey-head damselfish.

Ryan didn’t get off to quite as good a start as I did, losing a couple of rigs to rough patches meaning he had to tie up new ones as a result, cutting into his fishing time. When he did open his account, catching his first ever tropical fish, it was a small threadfin butterflyfish, so he was over the moon.

A very cool first species to catch on Okinawa.

With tiny mouths, using very small hooks is essential to catch many of the tropical species. We were using #20's!

Casting out a bit, we both started catching a few different species, including some small triggerfish. I had no idea which species they were, and would later discover they were in fact juvenile titan triggerfish.

Not exactly titanic as juveniles, but when fully grown they are one of the fiercest, most aggressive triggerfish species in the ocean.

Fishing away, casting to different areas, produced a great variety of species. About half of them were new species and some, like the titan triggerfish, were identified later on in the trip.

My first ever lemon damselfish.

A few colourful manybar goatfish were caught.

We both caught a few fire-tail dottyback.

We also caught our first brown damsel species of the trip. This one is a blunt snout gregory.

Hooks were being bitten off occasionally, and we eventually caught some of the culprits. This one is Valentin’s sharpnose puffer.

Another brown damselfish. This one had a distinctive black stripe on its cheek. I’d later discover it was a black and gold chromis.

Our first session was going pretty well. Non-stop action and a good amount of species from a relatively small area. Ryan was getting snagged a lot more than I was for some reason, which he was getting a bit frustrated about. We debated a change of venue, but as we were catching plenty of fish and there was no sign of any rain either, we opted to stay put for a little while longer to see what else we could catch.

Tight lines, Scott.

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