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Another Fishing Trip to Madeira - 20/04/16

 

Another trip to Madeira

After returning to Madeira last October, we had such a lovely time that Sandy wanted to go back this year and timed it to coincide with the Flower Festival.

I am sure the regular readers will know that this wouldn’t be my holiday of choice, but Sandy booked into an hotel with a quay at the rear for the latter stages, knowing that I would take my travel rod and be as happy as Larry just dabbling seeing what I could catch.

 

We arrived on 9th and stayed in a hotel in the “Old Town” which is a fascinating area which has retained the charm of old Funchal and the architecture is much more interesting than the western end where all the new hotels are.

 

The Flower procession was on Sunday and it was a scorcher, so hot my head got sunburnt and blistered (Sandy says this is due to the lack of hair).

 

On the Monday we moved to my favourite hotel, Casa Velha do Palheiro which is an older country house style of hotel with fabulous gardens.

I could take pictures of the birds and butterflies and well as go for good walks around the grounds and along the levadas; a system of channels cut into the hillside to move water for irrigation.

 

We stayed there 2 days which wasn’t long enough before we moved to the Cliff Bay Hotel just west of Funchal where there are swimming pools and a couple of quays at the bottom of the cliffs where I could fish from.

 

The daily routine for the next week was to get up between 7 and 8am, have breakfast then go on a trip around the island, do a levada walk or visit the gardens taking a packed lunch. We would normally return about 4pm, have a swift pint in the pub over the road and then have a fish for an hour or two before having dinner (on four of the days).

 

Whilst I fished, Sandy would swim, relax or have a massage.

 

I took some rubber maggots and plastic corn with me for emergency in case I couldn’t get any bait and both proved totally useless. I managed to get a large bag of prawns and one of squid, as well as bread to use as bait. Even though I kept the artificial bait in with the prawns to absorb the odour, they still didn’t work.

 

The prawns were fabulous bait, as soon as they entered the water near the rocks, the ornate wrasse would descend upon them and rapidly strip them from the hook. To catch anything I free-lined with a BB shot to slowly sink the bait and use a size 14!! I rarely fish that small.

 

The wrasse plagued me all the time, there were just so many. The catches were interspersed with the occasional bluefin damsel fish.

 

I managed to get some larger weights from the tackle shop in Funchal Marina which sank the bait down to a ledge below the quay faster bypassing the very small wrasse.  Madeira is a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so if you cast farther out, the depth is incredible and the lead weights always drop into the crevices between the rocks resulting in lost terminal tackle.

 

On this ledge below the quay I caught a wider variety of species; black-tailed comber (a small species of grouper and you really know when you hook one of those), Madeiran scorpion fish which had spines everywhere. I caught three and unhooked them by holding the dorsal fin between thumb and finger and using forceps. One of them did get a spine into my hand which felt like a wasp sting.

 

My favourite species was undoubtedly the puffer fish which were so sweet. I have decided that when I am too old to fish I will get an aquarium and have puffer fish in it. They were only small but fascinating fish.

I wanted to catch other species by different methods and tried throwing flakes of bread on the surface. If they were large the seagulls were attracted and eat the lot, but I noticed that pieces about the size of a 5p thrown in on a “little and often” basis were smashed by fish taking them from the surface – but at a range of about 80 yards, way too far out to cast a my float.

 

For the final session, I decided to try to focus on catching one of these fish. I got a bubble float, half filled it with water so that I could cast as far as possible whilst still having enough showing so that I could see it at that range. I fished as the tide ebbed which took the float the extra distance to the fish and was able to use the crosswind on the line to help steer the bait into the target area The higher I raised the rod into the wind, the more the wind would push my line and the float to the side. The only problem remaining then was being able to strike fast enough with the considerable amount of slack line on the sea between the rod and the float.

 

The solution to this was to fix the float on the line with a shot immediately above and below and tying the hook about 6” away so that when the fish smashed the bread, they hooked themselves for long enough for me to take in the slack and play the fish before the barbless hook was ejected.

 

I was delighted when this caught me a saddle bream. You always enjoy the capture more when you have worked out a way of catching difficult fish, and it proved the perfect way to finish an excellent holiday.