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.

I'll be back!

Well, I said earlier in the year I'd be back down to the outflow of Torness Power Station, and earlier this month I did return with my mate Ryan. Having caught some golden grey mullet during one of my previous visits, I still had a few other species to tick off for this year's species hunting challenge that can be caught there. Corkwing wrasse was not one of them, but I caught four from the sea defence boulders next to the outflow, which was quite unusual.  I also spotted a leopard spotted goby, but it was being pretty skittish, and I could not tempt it. The corkwing wrasse were followed by a few common blenny.

An unexpected bonus. This the largest and most colourful.

To be expected. Ryan and I caught lots of them whilst we waited on the tide to come in.

Once the tide came in a bit, we turned our attention to targeting mullet using bread on float and freelining tactics. I was hoping to catch a thick lipped mullet and Ryan and I both hooked one each, only for both of them to throw the hook right at the net. Next to take my bread flake was a golden grey mullet, and then we both caught a bass each. Ryan's bass, which was his first, took his bread from under a float, whilst mine took a whole ragworm freelined.

Ryan was over the moon to catch his first ever bass!

I was just happy to add another species to my 2023 tally.

We carried on fishing and both of us hooked and lost a few more mullet in what turned out to be a frustrating day's fishing. Seven hooked and only one landed, I think. For me, landing half of the mullet I hook is about average, so our luck had deserted us somewhat. To further frustrate us we saw so many mullet swimming in the outflow, perhaps the most I've ever seen there, so really we should probably have hooked more than seven. Anyway, we eventually ran out of bread, so we headed home, popping briefly into Dunbar harbour on the way. It was very quiet there, I caught the only fish, a small cod.

I would have preferred to catch a flounder, but there will be plenty of opportunity to catch one of those later in the year.

The following day, I returned again on my own. The Easterly wind that has been blowing the day before, had doubled in strength and I thought the accompanying increased swell might make things tricky, but the sun was out and I went anyway. I was glad I did as it turned into a productive day. With little expectation, I enjoyed a relaxing session, flicking bread flake out into the current all day and waiting for bites. They were harder to spot with the increased surface movement, but there were a few fish around again and after hooking and losing two golden grey mullet, I landed the third.

Not the mullet I was after, and they were stripping all the bread off my hook.

After a while, I hooked a thick lipped mullet, but it threw the hook after thrashing about in the current for thirty seconds or so. A short while later, I hooked another bigger fish that was too big to be a golden grey mullet, but when it started swimming directly towards me, I knew it wasn't a thick lipped mullet either.

This bread munching bass didn't want to show off its spiky dorsal fin.

Here it is.

A couple of hours passed, and I was down to my last slice of bread, when my rod tip was aggressively pulled round. This time I knew it was a thick lipped mullet. After a few minutes, I managed to play it out and drew it along the surface into my waiting net. It was a decent size and was great fun on my trusty HTO Rock Rover.

Probably the biggest thick lipped mullet I've caught at the outflow.

Probably the thickest top lip I've ever seen on a thick lipped mullet!

Mission accomplished! My bread ran out shortly afterward, so I packed up and left, popping into Dunbar Harbour on the way home again to see if I could tempt a flounder using the last of my ragworm. The water was crystal clear and very flat too and despite slowly twitching my bait along the bottom at a few different spots, I didn't catch anything. I had a stroll around before I left and did find one interesting fish. 

Small fish are bycatch in the local prawn boat's nets, and rather than waste them, they leave them so that fisherman using lobster pots can use them inside their traps for bait. In amongst a fish box of pin whiting, small dab and flounder, a long thin flat fish caught my eye, so I picked it out to have a closer look at it. It was a long rough dab, also known as the American plaice.

Dunbar is a very busy working harbour.

This is a partially decomposed juvenile long rough dab. I wonder how far offshore the prawn boats go? Maybe I could get out to their fishing grounds?

So an enjoyable and productive couple of sessions with a few more species ticked off in this year's species hunt. In the past I probably wouldn't even have bothered going down to Torness Power Station when easterly winds were blowing right up its outflow, but I might have to rethink that in future as there were plenty of fish around. I don't think the fishing elsewhere on the East Coast is quite there yet, the water temperatures need to rise a few more degrees first. I did also see what I suspect were shoals of sand smelt too whilst Ryan and I were there, so I'll be back down to Torness Power Station yet again soon no doubt!

Tight lines, Scott.

Going with the flow.

I had a couple of sessions last month down at the artificially warm waters that have been through the reactor cores of Torness Nuclear Power Station before being pumped back out to sea. The sessions couldn't have contrasted more. My main target species were thick lipped and golden grey mullet, but I also tried to catch a bass and a common blenny too whilst there. My first trip was very productive, I landed six golden grey mullet on freelined bread flake and lost a few more that managed to throw the hook.

Another species ticked off. Three down, only one hundred and ninety seven to go!

The second trip didn't produce any fish at all. Which was strange as I thought the conditions were actually much better than when I was there for my first session. The lack of blennies was also a real surprise. Normally there are lots of them around, but I couldn't catch a single one. It's not my favourite place to fish, and I've probably stated this several times already in previous posts, but needs must, so I'll be back to try and tick off a few more of the species mentioned above later in the year.

Tight lines, Scott.

Even more species hunting adventures on Lanzarote: Part 2.

As the second half of our holiday began we were all feeling a little bit rough, so we got up later in the morning and headed to Costa Teguise, where we would spend most of the day fishing comfortably from its pier. Fishing squid strips and chunks of raw prawn close to the bottom on our ultralight tackle produced a few fish.

Ryan had a look at the area on the outside of the breakwater, but as it was relatively shallow and rocky, we opted to fish on the inside instead where it was deeper and cleaner on the bottom.

As well as puffer and ornate wrasse, a few nice white seabream were caught.

We also caught a few hairy blenny.

I caught this black scorpionfish. Scorpionfish are one of my favourite groups of fish. Punks of the ocean.

After a few hours, we had a break, grabbing a bite to eat and a couple of loaves of bread from the supermarket, so we could see if there were any mullet around. A few slices were ripped into small chunks and thrown in, and freelining bread flake soon produced some interest from salema. I hooked a few, but they all successfully shook the hook before I finally got a better hook set and landed one. I also lost a nice saddled seabream that thrashed on the surface and got free. We did have a net with us, but it was in the boot of the car. I'll never learn!

Salema love freelined bread. I find they’re also pretty hard to hook well.

As the sun went down some thick lipped mullet did turn up, but they were very skittish, only swiping at the free offerings before swimming back down away from the surface again. None of us managed to get any of them to take our hooked pieces. After dark, I also caught what I thought at first might be a small red scorpionfish which would have been a new species for me. A bit of research back at the apartment confirmed that it wasn't however, it had simply been a very red Madeira rockfish.

Scorpionfish identification can be tricky. This is the reddest Madeira rockfish I've ever seen.

The next day we decided to return to the pier in Costa Teguise. It was comfortable fishing and out of the wind, which had picked up again. After visiting the town’s aquarium for an hour or so, we popped to the supermarket and armed ourselves with half a dozen loaves of bread. Using a collapsible groundbaiting bucket and a ladle I’d packed in my suitcase for the purpose, I made up a large supply of mashed up soggy bread to try and attract some mullet again. None showed up unfortunately, but my efforts weren’t totally wasted as I did catch a few salema and also landed a saddled seabream.

Saddled seabream are also partial to a bit of bread flake.

After the bread ran out we switched to fishing strips of squid and small chunks of prawn again. Nick fished further out and further up in the water and caught a few bogue that we kept to use as bait later in the evening. I focused my efforts on fishing straight down the side of the harbour walls. This saw me catching a few more hairy blenny, ornate wrasse, a black scorpionfish and some Madeira rockfish. The scorpionfish gave me a chance to check out sone of their less than obvious distinguishing features.

We caught our first painted comber of the trip. Their blue markings were all oddly a little washed out.

I also caught a few black scorpionfish and played with the appendages above this ones eyes for the camera. They're a key distinguishing feature.

A Madeira rockfish. Note the branched first few upper rays on the pectoral fin and the barbule on the lower jaw. Small red scorpionfish do not have these two features.

In the evening, after dinner in the apartment and watching some of a World Cup game, we headed north to Playa de la Garita for another stingray session over high water. Armed with the fresh bogue Nick had caught earlier in the day we were fairly optimistic, but after three hours and several bait changes, none of our rods had registered any interest, so we called it a night and headed back to Puerto del Carmen.

The next day we decided to head north to check out a couple of new spots. On the way, we drove up through the island's expansive lava fields and stopped to have a walk around the remnants of the volcano where the eruptions that formed them started, Caldera de Los Cuervos.

It took an hour or so to walk out to the crater and explore inside it.

It's a pretty alien landscape. This is a photo of the crater's rim taken from the inside. At one point, it would have been full of molten lava!

Jumping back in the car and continuing north, the first place we fished was a large man made basin to the south west of La Isleta. We weren't sure if fishing was permitted but didn't see any signs, so we gave it a go for an hour or so. Casting out into deeper water, all we caught was a solitary Couch's seabream. We did see some surface activity though, and as we still had some bread in the boot of the car we threw in a few small pieces to see if we could attract some fish closer to us. Large shoals of small thick lipped mullet soon appeared, and tiny flakes of bread on tiny hooks eventually saw us catch a few. Ryan had never caught a mullet before, so the ones he caught were his first. We also caught some small seabream and I caught a small bass. Our thirty sixth species of the trip. Yes, I was still keeping track, despite personally not catching anything I hadn't caught before.

One of the bigger ones I caught. Most of them were much smaller. Still frustratingly good fun trying to catch though!

A little spiky silver nugget.

Next we headed to Caleta de Famara to try fishing from its small harbour. This was also another spot that we'd never visited before. After catching a few painted comber we spotted a few groups of bigger mullet cruising around, coming into and leaving the harbour. We were out of bread so Ryan walked into town and got us some more. These mullet proved a little easier to catch, and we'd soon caught over a dozen. Great fun on our ultralight tackle. We even needed the net for some of the bigger ones.

Most of them were rather plump thick lipped mullet.

There were also a few golden grey mullet in amongst them too.

As the sun set the sky gave an indication that the weather was going to improve. Pity we were leaving the following day!

That evening, after dark, we headed to the pier in Punta Mujeres to fish for stingrays again. The sea was still pretty rough though, with water coming up over the end of the pier occasionally. We'd got some blue jack mackerel from a large supermarket on the way but decided to fish only one beachcaster for the stingrays while we messed around with small fish baits on our ultralight rods. Things were very slow but I did get smashed up again by something big. Same issue with my rig going at the loop knot when I tried to bully whatever it was away from some rocks. I think I'm going to be trying to find an alternative knot or make some kind of modification to make it stronger. Anyway no sign of any stingrays again and I only caught one cardinalfish all night. Ryan did get a nice bastard grunt though, adding another species to our tally. I told the lads I felt we could hit forty if we got lucky on the final day.

The biggest bastard grunt I've seen caught.

The final day had arrived, but as our flight didn't leave until the evening, we squeezed in one final session. After visiting a couple of marks fairly near the airport that were unfishable due to the swell, we decided to head back to Caleta de Famara harbour, reasoning that we could park the car nearby, and also we'd fished it over low water the day before, and I thought it might produce fish over high water. It fished very well and even produced a few species we hadn't caught yet!

We caught lots of ornate wrasse in Caleta de Famara harbour. Nick really loves ornate wrasse.

I caught a solitary zebra seabream. These seem to be quite rare, so I was over the moon to catch one.

We all caught some nice striped seabream fishing over the sand well inside the harbour.

We also caught our last few canary damsel. One of Ryan's favourite fish of the trip due to their bright purple markings.

Nick took a break from catching endless ornate wrasse and caught a common two banded seabream. This seemed to cheer him up slightly.

I then caught a couple of juvenile bluefish, taking our "let's forget targets and just have fun" species hunting tally to a nice round forty for the trip.

It was a nice session to end on but before long it was time to pack up our gear and head off to the airport. Forty species between us over the duration of the week, despite some difficult conditions, a night on the town and the subsequent hangovers, wasn't too bad.

No new species at all for me, and this was the only disappointing aspect of the trip for me personally. That and the lack of action whilst we were targeting stingrays after dark, but that was more down to the conditions I think. Here's a summary of what I caught...

1. Annular Seabream
2. Atlantic Lizardfish
3. Axillary Seabream
4. Bass
5. Black Goby
6. Black Scorpionfish
7. Black Seabream
8. Bluefish
9. Blue Jack Mackerel
10. Bogue
11. Canary Damsel
12. Cardinalfish
13. Common Comber
14. Common Two Banded Seabream
15. Couch's Seabream
16. Diamond Lizardfish
17. Emerald Wrasse
18. Golden Grey Mullet
19. Guinean Puffer
20. Hairy Blenny
21. Macronesian Sharpnose Puffer
22. Madeira Goby
23. Madeira Rockfish
24. Ornate Wrasse
25. Painted Comber
26. Pandora Seabream
27. Planehead Filefish
28. Ringneck Blenny
29. Rockpool Blenny
30. Saddled Seabream
31. Salema
32. Striped Seabream
33. Thick Lipped Mullet
34. White Seabream
35. Zebra Seabream

Species caught by the lads that I didn't catch myself...

36. Azores Damsel
37. Bastard Grunt
38. Blacktail Comber
39. Greater Weever
40. Wide Eyed Flounder

I've been to Lanzarote three times now and if I'm honest I'm not sure I'll return in the near future. If I do, I'll be focusing on catching new species. I'd also like to revisit Tenerife and catch the ferry over to La Gomera while there to do some game fishing. It's safe to say I've got my passion for travel back though. I'm off to Asia again soon, in March I'll be going for three weeks, visiting Seoul, Busan and Jeju Island in South Korea and also the Japanese island of Okinawa with Lillian. Of course, some fishing tackle will be going in my case.

Tight lines, Scott.