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.
