Chasing New Species in China

From repeated exposure to heartbreaking moments, I've come to learn that one cannot, and should not, pass up opportunities to catch new species of fish, no matter the circumstances.

My last trip to China, in the early spring of 2016, was yet another reminder of such an experience. I was in Tulufan, Xinjiang in the Gobi Desert, walking around a system of trails along the thousands of miles of underground irrigation canals. In the dim light of a lamp, movement caught my eye. Swimming in the water were small fish, the largest of which was several inches long. In the darkness, I couldn't make an identification, but I am sure that if I had a tanago hook with a little piece of worm I would have had the opportunity to catch a fish that I will very likely never in my life see again.

2017 rolled around, and I found myself heading to China once more, this time to teach English in rural Hebei with a program partnering with Tsinghua University in Beijing. This trip was going to be different. I came prepared to seize opportunity; the chase was on.

Luckily for me, I was able to make many stops along the way to visit family and friends before and after my teaching position, the first of which was in the heart of Shanghai, the second most populous city in the world. Nearby my uncle, aunt and baby cousin's apartment was a small, shallow canal. Poking around for a little bit, I found some medium sized cyprinids which were extremely spooky and wanted nothing to do with me or anything I had to offer. In the shallows I had found some western mosquitofish, a species I had only caught recently.

As unassuming as this fish was, it was a fish, and caught in China at that! China was now my 4th country to have caught a fish in.

Soon I bid my goodbyes to Shanghai and family, and headed west on a high-speed train to Changsha, to visit my grandparents.

My grandfather and I enjoying noodles for less than 1USD. 

The fishing in Changsha was mostly restricted to fishing man-made ponds for a variety of carp species. We used pellets for packbait, and the primary technique was securing several pellets with a rubber band to the hook under a float, and chum the water with pellets, which would sink slowly.

As would be expected given the constant fishing pressure in these ponds, the fish were reluctant to bite except for a few small common carp caught by my grandfather and his friend. Unfortunately for me, I had no such luck and was thoroughly convinced I would get skunked. However, as we were about to head back, I noticed a pod of small grass carp just meandering around the surface of one of the pond sections. I had noticed this behavior before, but the fish would generally scatter as soon as I got near enough to make a cast. If the off chance occurred that I placed my bait in the correct location, they would generally ignore it. Nonetheless, I gave it a shot and cast out my bait. I did, interestingly enough, miss my target slightly. My float and bait landed square in the middle of the pod, as opposed to off to the side a little, which I would have preferred to avoid spooking the fish. As expected, the fish scattered. In the murky water, I lost sight of them in seconds.

Just a few moments later, to my surprise, I watched the float shoot down.

I remember setting the hook hard. The fight that ensued was strong, especially given the size of the fish. It wasn't by any means a large grass carp, but it sure put up a decent struggle. A quick sweep of the net and I had my grass carp, the first new species of the trip, putting me at 98 species total.

Which became lunch. Americans seem to shy away from anything with bones, but once you learn to avoid them, the meat of the grass carp was white, flaky, and delicious. After several more days in Changsha, it was time to head to Beijing, China's capitol and where I would be spending several days with a family friend and several at Tsinghua University.

Not many fishing options in the city, so I paid a visit to the local aquaculture market, which was massive. I've included several snapshots of the more interesting things; several fish I wasn't allowed to take photos of but snuck in one or two anyways. A pretty cool experience seeing a variety of exotic species. 

Melanistic alligator gar

A 40,000 Yuan arowana—to top it off it says "no negotiations"

A leucistic alligator gar—as I reached my phone out to take a picture, the vendor jumped out of his seat and exclaimed that pictures were not allowed. I took one anyways. 

The best thing about living in a city like Beijing is by far the food. Food is good and cheap and always nearby.

My time with the family friend came to an end, so I was off to the University. I spent the first night walking around, watching the sunset and scoping out potential fishing locations, as any normal human would do upon arriving to China's most prestigious institution.

I was delighted to find people fishing for carp in a pond across the road from where I was staying. I remember being relieved, because it meant I wouldn't have to figure out a way to illicitly fish. I decided I would return the next day.

The days at Tsinghua were busy, so I really only had a short window of time each day to catch fish. The first day, I had some time in the early afternoon. I saw schools of small fish in the water, but quickly realized they wouldn't even react to the artificial smelly stuff I had brought along.

I realized bait would be an issue. I rushed off to the supermarket on campus as fast as I could walk, which took a fair deal of time, given the huge campus. There I bought a small loaf of sliced bread, only to find upon my return that the bread was "slighted toasted" as advertised on the label. Alas, it would have to do. The toasted aspect made getting it on the hook troublesome, and like most bread, it tended to come off the hook whenever disturbed by, for example, a fish. Despite this, the quantity of fish in the water resulted in the inevitable catch of something.

That "something" turned out to be stone moroko, an invasive species in Europe but native to Asia. Species #99 was in the books.

The next fish came when I got tired of the morokos, and moved a little aside from the schools of fish that dotted the shallows. I threw a bit of bread by some reeds hanging over the water, and lo and behold a small, brown fish popped out to grab it. I then fumbled to put some bread on my hook, and the same fish came out again to eagerly grab the bait. Species #100. A milestone. Not the most impressive specimen for the three-digit milestone, but hey, I'll take it.

A female Round-tailed Paradisefish (Macropodus ocellatus). Not an impressive fish for the species, either, but no one's complaining.

I noticed bitterling species swimming in the same school with the morokos, but the morokos proved to be the more aggressive fish, not allowing the bitterlings to reach the bait. I moved aside from the school to chase some colorful bitterling in the shallows. I couldn't tell if they were spawning, but they were chasing each other around. It took a while of coaxing before one finally bit long enough to hook into. Another new species, this time a rosy bitterling (Rhodeus ocellatus), #101.

That was it for the first day. I headed out the next morning before sunrise, and luckily got another new species, Acheilognathus sp., #102.

I also tagged into a beautiful male rosy bitterling. Absolutely stunning.

Hey, it's the fish on the hook packet!

As the sun rose, I also got a prettier specimen of paradisefish, a male. The photo doesn't quite do the iridescent blue on the fins justice. Interestingly enough, the aquarium-bred counterparts of this species are a good deal more colorful, kind of like goldfish and their bronze wild counterparts.

The cafeteria food wasn't bad. 

The last day at Tsinghua, it came to my attention that their was some sort of predatory goby in the pond (direct translation: old-headed fish). I devoted hours to try and find one, and find one I did. It first bit my split shot and then my bait, but I hooked it and it came off. It did not want to bite again, despite my best efforts. I didn't find another one, unfortunately.

My nemesis, camouflaged into the substrate. 

I left the university with a grudge against gobies. It was off to rural farmland in Hebei, where I would be teaching. No fishing was done here, but it sure was pretty. And hot.

I made one more pit stop in Beijing on the way back before my flight. Here I stayed with the family friend again, and we stopped by a small lake to see if we could catch some carp species. It was not to be, but I did catch an interesting new species. Every now and then, I would see small, shiny fish come to the surface. I tried using a bit of bun from lunch, but it didn't seem to attract the fish at all. Then, as I lifted the bait out of the water, I saw a fish try to come up and grab it. That gave me an idea, and I tried skimming the bait on the top of the water, similar to the way I attract mosquitofish. This worked fairly well, and I proceeded to have fun for the next hour with vicious little topwater strikes micro-fishing.

A new species to boot, Hemiculterella wui. #103 if you're following along.

Seafood hibachi for dinner, with beef sashimi, regular sashimi, and caviar. 

The next day it was a hot pot restaurant specializing in beef. They cut the meat up front by the window.

The flight back to Newark was long, but I had lots of fish photos to go over and identify. I ended the trip with 6 new species, a rather meager number but decent considering I had very little time to fish and didn't really know where I would be fishing or what I would be fishing for. One of these days I'll go back to get that darn goby. 

Enneacanthus in the Pine Barrens

In the summer of 2017, I was presented with the opportunity to conduct an independent research project in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. I had won a project grant from my school with a proposal I drafted to study fish species distributions in Pine Barrens watersheds. I had read about the Barrens for years, and although its ecology fascinated me, I had never had the privilege of actually visiting, despite living in close proximity to it almost my entire life.

The Pine Barrens is a large expanse of coastal plain stretching across more than seven counties of southern New Jersey, isolated from the rest of the coastal plain habitat farther south. Its nomenclature refers to the area's sandy, acidic, and nutrient-poor soil. For this reason, the Pine Barrens has a unique ecology that supports an aquatic environment. Several species of fish have ranges in New Jersey primarily restricted to the unique ecosystem of the Barrens.

Of course, what this project in the Barrens allowed me to do was sneak in a little time for species hunting for those less common species. My primary interests were the sunfish of the Enneacanthus genus and Acantharchus pomotis. These smaller sunfish species, namely the bluespotted, banded, blackbanded, and mud sunfish, have captivated me for years with their beauty and proximity, similar to the Pine Barrens themselves. Also in the Barrens were several fish species which took less priority, as I expected them to be much harder to catch: these were the pirate perch, redfin pickerel, and eastern creek chubsucker. So the sunfish remained my primary targets.
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Upon finding myself in the Barrens for the first time, it was everything I could have imagined and more. The landscape was in fact quite alien, in a beautiful way.

Sand roads crisscrossed the pine forests; in places it was tough to get the minivan across. I particularly found the tannin-stained blackwater fascinating. It was only a matter of time before I could drop some lines in pursuit of new species.

But first there was work to be done. With that aside, I settled on a single location I had surveyed earlier in which I knew all the four target sunfish were present. I only had about an hour of daylight after a long day of work, so I set myself upon the water fairly quickly.

The first fish came quickly. I was fishing a tanago hook with a nub of worm close to shore, and by that I mean no more than several inches from shore. I dropped my line by a slightly undercut bank, and lo and behold, a sunfish popped out. A couple jiggles of the bait were all it took for the fish to commit, and I had species #95, the banded sunfish (Enneacanthus obesus).

Originally, I had thought this fish to be a bluespotted sunfish, but upon returning after the trip, I looked through my photos and realized I had caught a banded sunfish. The key identifier here was the shapes of the light facial markings: bluespotted sunfish would have more prominent dots, whereas banded sunfish have more crescent and line shaped markings, as shown in the fish above. 

I was then treated to a handsome bluespotted sunfish in actuality: Enneacanthus gloriosus, species #96.

I also caught plenty of more drab female bluespots, convinced that they were banded sunfish and I had caught both bluespotted and banded. They proved to be female bluespots, however, and I was upset I failed to catch the banded until the realization came that my first was a banded.

The blackbanded sunfish was the tricky one. The final Enneacanthus species, it was also the smallest, and I could see it darting in and out of the weeds in the shallow water near shore. Before fishing however, I had the opportunity to read this: the story of another lifelist angler's experience with catching blackbanded sunfish. I can say that the total number of people who have caught this species can be counted on one hand, but this guy had a specific recommendation for the technique used to fish for these skittish, small sunfish.

To sum it up, it was basically moving the split shot much farther up the line, so the bait would have a more natural presentation of free-falling in the water, rather than the jiggle motion which the other species would react to. Being snubbed by the blackbanded sunfish, I decided to give this technique a go. On the first try, I watched as a blackbanded sunfish slowly approached the bait as it slowly dropped, and nonchalantly sucked it in.

I set the hook, and the fish promptly came out of the water and into my hand. A success! Species #97, Enneacanthus chaetodon. I had caught all three Enneacanthus species in less than an hour!, which I was fairly excited about.

One target had not been caught: the mud sunfish. It was not to be, however; I ended up hooking one, but it came off the tanago hook as daylight faded. Curiously enough, I also hooked a very large chain pickerel, around 18-20 inches, on the tanago hook. It snuck into shallow water, almost motionless, and very gently ate the bait. It snapped the line, as was to be expected with the hair-thin filament snelled onto the hook.

The Enneacanthus had been conquered, but one more sunfish remained.

I would be back in subsequent months, as my project needed to be done over time, so I did not feel that missing the mud sunfish was too significant of a loss, especially given the short time frame allotted.

Here are some various pictures from my project (fish not caught by hook and line).

Western Mosquitofish

A short outing to Carnegie Lake proved uneventful, except for the capture of a new species: the western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), species #94.



Also caught were droves of white perch, a previously elusive species. Funny how that works sometimes.