I fished the Avenue of Stars on the first couple of nights and days using just bread (with bacon or ham) from the many bakeries around Kowloon or Hong Kong and only managed to catch a several Broad-banded Cardinalfish which was a new species for me. My only other Cardinalfish was the Southern Cardinalfish which I dont have a photo of. There are several species of Cardinalfish that occur in Hong Kong, which have two dark strips above the lateral line which extend into the tail. This species is positively identified by its tiny first dorsal fin which is lacking in the other species.
Broad-banded Cardinalfish - Apogon fasciatus - #82
While planning for this holiday, I found a nice little hiking path on Lamma Island. Halfway down the track there was a nice beach and I decided to fish here, hoping to find something different but only caught a few Grass Puffers, using the same baits I used on the previous days. I species I previously caught in Japan.
Grass Puffer - Takifugu niphobles
On the final day, I decided to buy proper bait from one of the many street fishmongers around the city, it was a bowl of fresh prawns for $15HK, and went straight to the Macau Ferry Terminal to fish. Straight away, I caught some White-spotted Rabbitfish. Fish of this family, closely related to Surgeonfish, but have venomous spines. I managed to get stung half a dozen times by them. They are extremely painful and the pain lasts about 10 minutes, but it does eventually ease off. The throbing pain didn't deter me from fishing, but caught no other species except for more Cardinalfish.
White-spotted Rabbitfish - Siganus canaliculatus #83
Chinese Demoiselle - Neopomacentrus bankieri #84
Later in the afternoon, I decided to fish in Kowloon again to finish off the remaining prawns. This proved successful and got me a further 3 new species. Earlier on, I kept losing my bait but I downsized to no16s and landed a few Chinese Demoiselle. This were nicely coloured small damselfish which looked like they belong in a reef aquarium. Next new species was a Marbled Rockfish. A close relative to the Scorpionfishes, they do have venomous spines but look more like Groupers or Perches, luckily I managed to avoid being stung. The next new species was the Striped Catfish. I had previously seen these in public aquarium around the world but never thought I'd ever catch one. This is most possibily the most venomous catfish in the world and there have even been reported deaths involving this species. I didn't know this at the time, although I knew that all catfish have venomous spines, so I was quite careful holding it up for a photo, but I droped in and had a spine in my hand and another one in the thigh. Fortunately, I don't think I got stung deep enough so I wasn't really affected by the venom and it was not very painful. It had been a successful days fishing, so I thought I would call it the day there. 4 new species is not a bad result.
The end result for the trip was 6 species in total of which 5 were new species, bringing my species total to 86.
Marbled Rockfish - Sebastiscus marmoratus #85
Striped Catfish - Plotosus lineatus #86
