Sicily 2025

The first barracuda of the trip on speed jigs

I headed off for a solo mission to Sicily, meeting up with Andrea Giardini and Luca of Sicilyfishing.com for a few days guided fishing (for me this time!) and then a week of me finding my way on the other side of the island.

Blue Runner- a first for me!

Being well looked after by Andrea (L) and Luca (R)

Il keep it relatively brief as it was almost 2 weeks long! But it was brilliant trip, despite some very challenging wind and swell.

I cannot sing Andrea and Luca's praises enough, and thoroughly recommend them for shore guided trips. I selected to go to Sicily because I came across their website, and their enthusiasm for exploring shorelines and having adventures in remote locations was right up my street, rather than wanting to go to Sicily initially. It was a great decision, and I shall be back to see them again, but perhaps not before they come over for some pollack action in Scotland for the return trip! It was a start to what I hope will be a long series of adventures together.

When with Andrea and Luca, we focused on shore jigging, speed jigging when conditions were best, and slow jigging and ripping sinking lures when the fishing was slower to conserve some energy for the next peak session.

It didn't disappoint despite some wind and swell, with the first session seeing barracuda following the lure in from the off, and not long after, we had our first fish in the grips! The highlight I will admit though was seeing a 4 kg bonito swim past just 10ft away from the rocks in crystal clear water. I was amazed, to the point I forgot to cast in front of it, and only when it was 30 yards away did I remember to actually cast, and rather pathetically chucked a jig over the top of it, with no luck!

The next morning we changed mark, and it was a bigger swell, with more wind! but I had another barracuda and a blue runner, the first "first" for the trip for me.

The following session, Andrea managed a bonito, a cracking scrap, and a beautiful fish, a mackerel on steroids! unfortunately it was too windy to try the fly, but I will certainly be back to get one of them on the 10 wt!

They were amazing hosts, doing everything they could for me, and the AirBnB hosts cooked our catch several times, so I was treated to local home-cooked Sicilian cuisine, treated like a king.

So onto my week solo; the weather had deteriorated even further, with 50 mph winds ripping through at points, and the rain had started too. Though this provided some amazing fishing in sunshine and warmth, with a big thunderstorm over the mountains next to me, quite spectacular. I

hired a moped, and bopped about the island happily, exploring every nook and cranny!

I had several sessions for barracuda, landing a couple, and another blue runner, but I spent most of the time species hunting with small hooks and bits of squid and prawn from the local supermarket.

I had about a dozen species, with a few new for me: an ornate wrasse, and red scorpionfish (?). Il admit I haven't the time to get the names of everything as I write this at 1am, but I recognised the faces of the other species, with painted groupers, various bream and meditteranean rainbow wrasse being the highlights.

I did manage to get the fly rod out briefly in a weather window, and caught a couple species of mullet; thin lipped and flathead I think.

So to summarise, Sicily, I will be back!