By Bill Seager

Contacting Adam Kirby after reading his blog about when he fished at Skiathos, he had advised me to search the area close to the port boatyard for my target species, the strange and beautifully marked peacock blenny. With relatively deep water and a number of rock-built jetties leading to the locals’ moored boats to fish from, it was an area away from the crowds and ideal for sight-fishing. I soon found my quarry lurking under a tiny bridge where the inland lake is connected to the sea.

Using a Tanago hook and tiny pieces of Isome and Gulp Sandworm, the peacock blennies were very obliging. By adding a small Majorcraft Nano Aji metal, I was also able to gain the attention of gobies and small bream. I improvised on a second trip by using a short length of bamboo cut from a local stand of the plant, and married it to a quiver tip purchased for 8 euros from a tackle shop in the main street of the town. There are two shops in the town with a surprisingly good selection of tackle for the holiday angler. By attaching a length of fluorocarbon to the bottom ring of the quiver tip, and adding a snelled tanago hook, I was fishing as light as possible.

The jetties were home to some black-faced blennies, and trying to lure these fish, which were in their breeding colours, proved a fruitless pursuit and a real thief of time. I was so engrossed in trying for a red-coloured specimen that I failed to realise there was a large shoal of sarpa salpa bream surrounding me and I missed the opportunity to catch one of these as well. The old port area had bigger fish and I saw a small shoal of leerfish on a couple of occasions as well as plenty of bream and the smaller damsel fish.

All in all, great fun.

PS Warning: The Peacock Blenny has what appears to be two canine incisors!