THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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THE ULTIMATE ANGLING 

BUCKET LIST 

Dr. Phill Williams 

Copyright © 2016 by Dr. Phill Williams 

ISBN 978-0-9957216-1-6 

All Rights Reserved 

To be born a fisherman is to win first prize in the lottery of life 

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THE ACTUAL BUCKET LIST 

100 species of fish from British and Irish waters 

300 hundred species in total worldwide 

A 200 pound fish from my own trailed boat 

A 200 pound fish from the shore 

A 100 pound fish from freshwater 

A double figure trout 

A double figure bass 

Any fish in excess of 1000 pounds 

A British record fish 

A European record fish 

A World record fish 

Write features for all the UK sea angling magazines 

Produce 200 archive audio angling interviews 

Complete a fishery based Ph. D research project 

Produce and publish this book 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

I've been taking photographs of fish and fishing, often badly, for as far back as I can remember, and as 

a result, I have recorded a lot of angling history as well as different fish species. 

Unfortunately, many of what would obviously have been the best and therefore most important 

photographs have not survived, primarily because magazines often didn't extend the courtesy of 

returning transparencies, used or otherwise, in the days before digital cameras. 

To some extent, the knock from this is reflected in the illustration used here, of which I acknowledge 

there is rather a lot. In addition to the sheer volume, the range of coverage in terms of quality is another 

factor worth mentioning. 

This includes everything from high resolution digital images and old black and white shots through to 

scanned colour transparencies. Even occasionally, scanned newspaper clippings, and to fill in the gaps, 

a few pencil and ink sketches here and there which due to my RA problem were extremely difficult to 

do. 

I make no apology for all of this. To my way of thinking, this range and diversity in terms of age and 

quality actually contributes to the finished item as a historical piece, charting one anglers life-time 

progression from that first serious wetting of a line through to semi-retirement from fishing on medical 

grounds, with all the changes in technology and fortunes that have paralleled it along the way. 

In order to illustrate and support the text to the extent I wanted, I have had to turn to a number of angling 

friends, journalists, and other members of the angling community for help, which in all cases, and at 

times even from people I didn't previously know, has been freely given, and without whose generosity 

the finished item would most certainly have been much the poorer. So to the following people I owe a 

particular debt of gratitude....... 

Graeme Pullen: for photographs, accommodation, and many instances of good fishing both home and 

abroad over the years. 

Dave Lewis: as with Graeme, for photographs too numerous to mention individually, accommodation, 

and instances of good fishing both home and abroad. 

Mike Millman: West Country journalistic legend and copy right holder of so many amazing big fish 

pictures accumulated over that period of angling history when there were still plenty of big fish about, 

with excellent record prospects, and Devon and Cornwall sitting right at the epi-centre of it all. 

World Sea Fishing (WSF): Both Mike Thrussell Jnr and Snr for shots of wreckfish, john dory and 

gilthead bream. 

Bill Rushmer Anglers Mail: Not only for some beautiful shots of crucian carp, grass carp and golden 

orfe, but also for steering me in the direction of other missing photographs. 

Ron Greer and Alastair Thornes: Ferox 85 co-founders, for providing some of the ferox pictures and 

some excellent memories of some truly wild fish caught in truly wild conditions. 

Andy Griffith: for photographs of mako and porbeagle sharks in particular, plus others including black 

mouthed dogfish and albacore. blue shark, blue fin tuna and conger. 

Michael McVeigh: Irish charter skipper based near Downings and pioneer of blue fin tuna fishing who 

provided some of the tuna photographs, plus several other less common species such as megrim and 

cuckoo ray. 

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Colin Penny: skipper of the Weymouth based charter boat 'Flamer IV' and the man behind many 

amazing catches and photographs including here, undulate rays, sunfish, axillary bream, and many of 

the smaller less commonly caught species such as red band fish. 

Keith Armishaw: my man at Angling Heritage who provided some of the freshwater photographs and 

his PB common skate. 

Mike Winrow: River Ribble barbel specialist and the man who introduced me to barbel fishing. Mike 

provided not only some of the barbel photographs, but also shots of big tench, bream and carp. 

Rob Rennie: Welsh charter skipper and shark specialist who provided the thresher shark picture. 

Mark Everard: who as you might expect from a specimen roach fanatic provided the roach photographs, 

plus some of the smaller freshwater species which for me were difficult to get in front of a camera lens, 

including the pumpkinseed. 

Warren Harrison: for photographs of his world record carp haul from Euro Aqua Lake which included 

fish of 87, 90 and 94 pounds. 

Alex Wilkie: Scottish fly fishing fanatic who attempts to catch everything in freshwater and at sea on 

the fly. 

Andy Bradbury: Fleetwood charter skipper who I often fish with and who helped out with pictures of 

scad, sole and mackerel. 

Paul Kirkpatrick: Whitby charter skipper who provided some of the cod and halibut photographs. 

Paul Maris: A man I have fished with on many occasions for tope and skate. A big fish specialist who 

provided the specimen conger picture, plus quite a bit to write about with regard to big fish. 

Kev McKie: Liverpool charter skipper who provided photographs of a number of unusual fish including 

the topknot. 

Jon Patten: Big fish specialist whose name appears under many enviable fish pictured throughout the 

book. 

Sean McSeveney: For the streaked gurnard photograph. 

Dean Lodge: Species Hunt App – for pointing me in the direction of some of his species photograph 

sources, and for providing the greater pipefish shot. 

Jonathan Law: Provider of pictures of butterfish, connemera sucker and other mini species. 

Adam Kirkby: Pictures of leopard spotted goby and bogue, plus setting me up for others with several 

of his Face Book friends. 

Andy Copeland: well known shore match angler, species hunter and LRF fanatic who baled me out 

with some of the rarer mini species. 

Sven Hille: German Baltic trolling expert who provided me with some excellent fishing, plus 

photographs of salmon, sea trout, pike and cod. 

Aram Taholakian: Owner of 'Gone Fishing' Fuerteventura where I walked in off the street to talk fishing 

and came away with shots of some of the rarest fish around. 

Tony Parry: Rhyl/Mersey charter skipper and friend who has provided much in many ways including a 

dragonet picture for this book. 

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Greg Whitehouse: For taking thin lipped mullet fishing to another level and providing the photographic 

evidence, some of which is used here in the form of two record fish. 

Ken Robinson: Some interesting cod fishing sessions over the years and a photo of his Scottish shore 

record cod from Balcary. 

Shawn Kittridge: Photographs of rudd and gudgeon. 

Duncan Charman: Beautiful shot of brace of elusive 3 pound plus Silver Bream. 

Robin Howard: fishyrob.co.uk for his amazing grayling picture. 

Steve Perry: stingray and giant goby photographs. 

Alastair Wilson: Irish dinghy caught blue fin tuna photographs. 

Richard Torrens: Tanked photograph of bitterling. 

Eddie Weitzel: Sketch of the late great Les Moncreiff. 

FaceBook as a concept through which I spent many hours searching for suitable pictures and people to 

contact, some of whom contacted me when they realised the project was on. 

Philip Gill: Who not only prepared the working template along with giving guidance on its use, also put 

in a lot of time tidying up pictures and illustration, followed by an even longer time finally presenting 

the volume for website upload and free download. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

The Actual Bucket List 3 

Acknowledgments 4 

Table of contents 7 

Introduction 16 

PART ONE – Home waters species 

The cartilaginous species 

Cartilaginous fish biology 18 

Mako Shark 24 

Porbeagle Shark 26 

Thresher Shark 31 

Blue Shark 33 

Six Gilled Shark 38 

Tope 40 

Common Smoothhound 47 

Starry Smoothhound 48 

Spurdog 51 

Bull Huss 54 

Lesser Spotted Dogfish 57 

Black Mouthed Dogfish 59 

Monkfish or Angel Shark 60 

Flapper Skate & Blue Skate 62 

Bottle Nosed Ray or White Skate 69 

Thornback Ray 72 

Small Eyed Ray 78 

Blonde Ray 80 

Spotted Ray 82 

Undulate Ray 84 

Cuckoo Ray 86 

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Sandy Ray 87 

Sting Ray 88 

Eagle Ray 90 

Dark Electric Ray 91 

Marbled Electric Ray 92 

The bony fishes 

Bony fish introduction 93 

Introduction to Cod Family 93 

Cod 94 

Pollack 106 

Coalfish 110 

Haddock 112 

Whiting 115 

Blue Whiting 119 

Pouting 120 

Poor Cod 121 

Hake 122 

Ling 125 

Torsk 128 

Greater Forkbeard 129 

Tadpole Fish 129 

Three Bearded Rockling 130 

Four Bearded Rockling 131 

Five Bearded Rockling 132 

Shore Rockling 133 

Introduction to Flatfishes 133 

Plaice 136 

Dab 142 

Flounder 145 

Lemon Sole 149 

Witch 150 

Halibut 151 

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Long Rough Dab 153 

Turbot 154 

Brill 159 

Megrim 163 

Common Topknot 164 

Sole 165 

Introduction to Bass Family 167 

Bass 168 

Comber 178 

Wreckfish or Stone Bass 179 

Dusky Perch 180 

Introduction to the Mullets 181 

Thick Lipped Grey Mullet 181 

Thin Lipped Grey Mullet 185 

Golden Grey Mullet 190 

Red Mullet 191 

Introductions to Mackerels & Tuna’s 192 

Blue Fin Tuna or Tunny 193 

Big Eyed Tuna 198 

Long Finned Tuna 199 

Pelamid 200 

Mackerel 201 

Chub Mackerel 204 

Introduction to the Jacks 205 

Scad 205 

Greater Amberjack 206 

Guinean Amberjack 208 

Almaco Jack 208 

Blue Runner 209 

Pilot Fish 210 

Introduction to the Sea Breams 210 

Black Bream 211 

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Red Bream 217 

Gilthead Bream 220 

Couches Bream 222 

Bogue 223 

Pandora Bream 223 

White Bream 224 

Axillary Bream 225 

Saddled Bream 225 

Rays Bream 226 

Introduction to the Wrasses 227 

Ballan Wrasse 227 

Cuckoo Wrasse 233 

Corkwing Wrasse 234 

Goldsinny Wrasse 235 

Rock Cook Wrasse 236 

Scale Rayed Wrasse 236 

Baillon’s Wrasse 237 

Introduction to the Gurnards 238 

Tub Gurnard 238 

Red Gurnard 240 

Grey Gurnard 242 

Streaked Gurnard 242 

Introduction to the Garfishes & Skippers 243 

Garfish 243 

Short Beaked Garfish 245 

Skipper 245 

Introduction to the Herrings 246 

Herring 246 

Pilchard 247 

Anchovy 248 

Twaite Shad 248 

Allis Shad 250 

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Introduction to the Gobies 251 

Black Goby 251 

Common Goby 252 

Rock Goby 252 

Sand Goby 253 

Giant Goby 253 

Leopard Spotted Goby 254 

Introduction to the Blennies 254 

Tompot Blenny 255 

Shanny 255 

Butterfly Blenny 256 

Black Faced Blenny 257 

Yarrell’s Blenny 257 

Viviparous Blenny 258 

Catfish or Wolf Fish 258 

Introduction to the remaining species 260 

Conger Eel 260 

Angler Fish 267 

Opah 270 

Sunfish 271 

Trigger Fish 272 

Puffer Fish 275 

Lumpsucker 276 

John Dory 278 

Boar Fish 280 

Norway Haddock 281 

Bluemouth 282 

Greater Weever 283 

Lesser Weever 284 

Short Spined Sea Scorpion 285 

Long Spined Sea Scorpion 286 

Blackfish 286 

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Cornish Blackfish 287 

Barracudina 288 

Butterfish 288 

Connemara Sucker 289 

Dragonet 290 

Great Pipefish 291 

Snake pipefish 291 

Pogge 292 

Red Band Fish 293 

Greater Sandeel 293 

Corbin’s Sandeel 294 

Fifteen Spined Stickleback 295 

Argentine 295 

Smelt 296 

Sand Smelt 297 

Big Scaled Sand Smelt 298 

Coho Salmon 298 

Freshwater fish species 

Introduction to freshwater species 299 

Carp 300 

Grass Carp 305 

Crucian Carp 307 

Brown Goldfish 308 

Roach 309 

Rudd 311 

Bronze Bream 312 

Silver Bream 313 

Tench 314 

Golden Orfe 315 

Barbel 317 

Chub 320 

Dace 321 

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Bitterling 322 

Gudgeon 323 

Bleak 324 

Perch 324 

Ruffe 327 

Zander 328 

Walleye 331 

Pike 331 

Silver Eel 335 

Wels Catfish 339 

Bullhead Catfish 342 

Stone Loach 343 

Bullhead 343 

Minnow 344 

Three Spined Stickleback 345 

Pumpkinseed 345 

Atlantic Salmon 347 

Humpback Salmon 349 

Brown Trout 350 

Sea Trout 354 

Rainbow Trout 355 

American Brook Trout 360 

Grayling 362 

Char 364 

Schelly, Gwyniad or Powan 369 

PART TWO – Fishing abroad and foreign species 

Cape Cod 376 

Florida - Banana River 379 

Florida - Biscayne Canal 381 

Florida - Cape Coral 385 

Florida – Islamorada 389 

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Florida - Key West 392 

Florida – Kissimmee 395 

Florida - Port Canaveral 396 

Florida - Stick Marsh 397 

Rudee Inlet - Virginia Beach 400 

Ascension Island 403 

Australia 410 

Borneo 411 

Bulgaria 413 

Canada – Fraser River 416 

Canary Islands – El Hierro 421 

Canary Islands – Fuerteventura 424 

Canary Islands – Gran Canaria 425 

Cuba 430 

Egypt – Lake Nasser 433 

Gambia 436 

Germany 439 

Gibraltar 443 

Iceland 446 

India 450 

Israel 452 

Kenya 452 

Madeira 454 

Malaysia 456 

Mallorca 457 

Mauritius 458 

Mexico 460 

Namibia – Skeleton Coast 463 

New Zealand 468 

Norway 469 

Peru – Amazon 472 

South Africa 476 

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Spain 479 

Thailand 479 

Tunisia 484 

PART THREE – Individual specimen targets 

A national record 485 

A European record 493 

A world record 493 

A Trout in double figures 498 

A Bass in double figures 503 

A 100 pound fish from freshwater 504 

A 200 pound fish from the shore 511 

A 200 pound fish from a trailed dinghy 514 

A fish in excess of 1000 pounds 520 

PART FOUR – Peripheral & historical angling related topics 

The evolution of small boat fishing 525 

Angling journalism targets and achievements 530 

Record and archive 200 audio interviews 533 

Fisheries related Ph.D research project 534 

A lesson from history 546 

Appendix 1: Audio Interview Archive List 552 

Photograph Credits & Copy Right 572 

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INTRODUCTION 

In theory, there is never an ideal time to present a book such as this built on a finite tick list and 

potentially infinite species list. Always there is the chance that something else new will come along, 

either on the end of your own line, or added by others to the overall species list. But to write it, there 

has to be a cut-off point, and for a number of reasons, late 2015 was mine. 

Aged 67, and with every targeted tick in place except for one, that elusive 'grander', I set up a trip to 

Ascension with amongst other things, the objective of trying for a thousand pound plus six gilled shark, 

knowing that if I got one, the whole project would be complete, and that if I didn't, well, I was getting 

too long in the tooth anyway to have another go. So, either way, the timing could not have been more 

right. 

What I didn't realise when that trip was initially arranged, was that between setting it up and finally 

flying out, health-wise, my fishing prospects would take a very rapid down-turn in fortunes, also 

pointing to a late 2015 cut-off. By that stage, rapid onset rheumatoid arthritis was making fishing 

difficult at best, and at times virtually impossible. 

Fortunately, I was able to persuade my consultant to provide me with wrist splints and a steroid injection 

for the trip, after which I would have to be more realistic about my day to day activities. Then again, 

with the fishing I've enjoyed, the places I've visited, and having virtually no previous medical issues of 

note, most people would settle for that. So even if I was forced to completely retire from fishing 

tomorrow, which is starting to look increasingly likely, I can't complain. 

If you read all four parts of this book in sequence from beginning to end, which I doubt anybody ever 

would, it will very quickly become apparent, and I might be criticized for this fact, that there are areas 

of over-lap and repetition, particularly between the individual big fish targets and certain home waters 

species or venues, and between some of the more closely related home waters species themselves in 

terms of identification and tactics. 

I make no apology for this fact. The 'Ultimate Angling Bucket List' is not a novel. It's a fact-based 

reference book in which every individual unit needs to be able to stand on its own, allowing people to 

dip in and out of it at any time and at any point, dependant on what it is they are looking for, and to do 

so without the feeling that something is missing which they might need to search for elsewhere. 

At the time of writing, there are one hundred and fifty one saltwater species, plus a further thirty six 

freshwater fish species officially ratified as caught on rod and line by the combined record fish 

committee's of Britain, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, referred to collectively from this point on as 'home 

waters' species. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as having their own record lists, also 

contribute to the overall British record list. But for some inexplicable reason, there is no separate 

English record list. 

Actually, those species stats are not entirely accurate, as the British Record Fish Committee (BRFC) 

appears to have gotten itself into all sorts of difficulties with its record keeping over recent years, with 

some species included which for various reasons should not have been, a fact I have pointed out to 

BRFC Chairman Mike Heylin, which as an individual I know he is sympathetic to. But as yet the 

problem remains unresolved. Where relevant, these will be high-lighted as we go along. 

Taking those officially quoted figures then at face value, as I must, we are looking here at a combined 

total availability to angling species enthusiasts such as myself of one hundred and eighty seven named 

targets, with me wanting to catch at least one hundred of them from home waters, which believe me, is 

no easy task. 

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As always, with any sort of ambitious project, things tend to get under-way well enough. Initially in 

fact, you race away. Then gradually the brakes start to be applied to the point where, despite at times 

making even more of a determined effort than previously, little if any meaningful additional headway 

seems to result. 

I reckon my brakes started sticking when I got up around the seventy species mark. However, one 

anglers stumbling block can be another anglers 'quick tick', for which reason, appreciating that we won't 

all be targeting the same one hundred species of fish, I have decided to deal with all one hundred and 

eighty seven of them, indicating for each my success or failure, with all sorts of tips, tactics, and relevant 

history thrown in for good measure. 

Don't however expect the same level of detail for the foreign contingent of my targeted overall total of 

three hundred species world-wide. Instead, the foreign fishing will be dealt with on a location by 

location basis. Then there's the individual specimen targets, and finally the more peripheral related stuff 

such as the journalism and fisheries research. 

Things kick off with my main comfort zone, the saltwater species, mainly caught from boats, which for 

ease of flow, I'm going to break down under the two natural biological groupings of cartilaginous fishes, 

which for our purposes here are the sharks and rays, and bony fishes, which is everything else including 

all the freshwater species, dealt with under their various family headings. 

A couple of final points to highlight before getting into the main body of the text itself. The first is that 

this being a self-published ebook which has not been subjected to the level of proof reading and scrutiny 

that a professional printing company might go to, means there could well still be small over-looked 

errors here and there which familiarity with the text and electronic spell-checks don't always pick up. 

Inevitably, I find a few more each time I read it through. But a point must come when it has to go public 

and that time has now passed. So I apologise if any small niggles still remain and trust the book doesn't 

suffer too greatly as a result. 

The second concerns the presentation of the book completed towards the end of 2016. The final draft 

contained just short of 600 illustrations. Unfortunately, ebook publishers are not good at handling file 

sizes of that magnitude causing us to think long and hard about the various options open to us, finally 

coming out in favour of a three pronged approach. Firstly, whatever we could get out of ebook 

publishers such as Smashwords and Kindle; secondly, a fully illustrated version either for reading or 

down-loading from www.fishingfilmsandfacts.co.uk, and finally, perhaps half a dozen printed and 

bound copies for The Britsh Library, Angling Heritage, and family ownership. 

Finally, the Irish listing of roach-rudd and roach-bream hybrids, plus the Welsh listing of ghost, mirror, 

and common carp as separate record list inclusions has not been reflected here in the over-all species 

count, as hybrids and within species variants are not biologically recognised as separate species of fish. 

Sea trout and brown trout, which are also the same species Salmo trutta, should in my opinion also be 

treated as a single inclusion too, despite what fish recorders and game anglers might think. 

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PART ONE 

HOME WATERS 

THE CATCHING IN HOME WATERS OF ONE HUNDRED SPECIES OF FISH 

FROM THE RECORD LISTS OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND AND 

WALES. 

Bucket List status – result 

SALTWATER SPECIES 

THE CARTILAGINOUS FISHES 

These are the sharks and rays. Fish whose musculature is built onto a flexible cartilaginous frame with 

only the teeth becoming hardened through calcification. In home waters there are no indigenous 

cartilaginous freshwater species. 

There are however freshwater rays elsewhere in the world, plus freshwater dwelling bull sharks which 

are even more deadly than great whites, exploiting an adaptation that allows them not only to penetrate 

rivers and lakes, but also to it seems to breed there. 

I haven't caught any freshwater sharks yet myself, but I 

have caught freshwater stingrays thousands of miles away 

from the sea on some of the Peruvian tributaries of the 

upper Amazon. 

There are also a few more distantly related cartilaginous 

species which are neither sharks nor rays. Deep water 

rabbit-fishes for example. 

Meanwhile, back within regular angling range, the 

monkfish or angel shark as it is now starting to be known, 

plus the many sub-tropical and tropical guitar fish species, 

are arguably transitional forms between the round bodied 

sharks and the flat bodied rays. 

For taxonomic classification purposes, monkfish are 

included with the sharks and guitar fishes with the rays, 

giving a global total of just under a thousand cartilaginous 

species, of which almost four hundred are sharks and just 

over five hundred are rays, with the remainder being 

chimaera's and the like. 

Skeletons aside, obvious external features setting 

cartilaginous fishes apart from bony fish species include 

Amazonian freshwater Stingray having between five and seven gill slits on either side of 

the head in the case of the sharks, and on the underside of 

the body either side of the mouth in the case of skates and rays. 

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Working in conjunction with these in the skates and rays, on each side of the head close to the eye, is a 

small hole known as a spiracle through which water is drawn in to oxygenate the gills over which it is 

passed before exiting the respiratory system through the gill slits. 

Were skates and rays to take water in through their mouths like bony fish, they would run the risk of 

also taking in sand and other unwanted particulate material from the bottom they are resting on. 

Spiracles vary in size, though evolution has seen to it 

that some of the larger free swimming shark species, 

and in particular the mackerel sharks and thresher 

sharks, have managed to do away with them altogether, 

passing water over their gills via the open mouth 

passively while swimming. 

Thornback spiracles 

One feature however all round bodied cartilaginous 

fishes other than angel sharks or monkfishes share is 

uneven tail lobes, with the upper lobe always being 

longer than the lower, which in conjunction with large 

pectoral fins in many open water shark species helps 

produce lift when swimming as they are negatively 

buoyant and would otherwise sink. 

Characteristically, they all also lack traditional scales, having instead opted for small sharp edged overlapping 

back pointing denticles for aqua-dynamic stream-lining, which is the reason why they have 

such a rough feel when brushed against the grain from tail to head. 

Less obvious will be the many tiny pores dotted around the nose and mouth. Dependant on species, 

these relay information of varying quality back to one of the most amazing and sensitive natural 

detection adaptations known to science, the ampullae of lorenzini. Special jelly filled pores which act 

as electro-receptors capable of locating weak electrical impulses from the blood circulatory system of 

potential prey items. 

This feature is not entirely unique to sharks and rays, all of which have them, as they can also be found 

in some non-cartilaginous fishes such as reed fish and sturgeon. 

Sharks and rays are also able to pick up subtle pressure 

changes using their lateral line. But arguably, the sense 

they are perhaps best known for is their legendary ability 

to detect minute quantities of blood and other lost body 

fluids in seemingly vast volumes of surrounding water. 

Smell is the main detection sense acting at long range on 

organic traces such as blood, though it is actually tuned in 

to a whole range of odours of the type released typically by 

injured or distressed prey species. 

This is facilitated by the extraordinarily large size of the 

Pores – ampullae of lorenzini olfactory lobes of the brain, which when water containing 

an odour enters the nostrils, the information provided is 

analysed specifically by these lobes, which can be as much as two thirds of the weight of the entire 

brain, a level of development unique to sharks and rays. 

Having nostrils placed wide apart on either side of the head also allows for directional swimming along 

the greatest line of concentration of an odour back to its source, aided by side to side movement of the 

head to keep the fish on track. Taste only comes into play once an item of potential interest is located. 

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Test biting then allows taste buds inside the mouth to determine whether the item in question is suitably 

edible or not, which explains why surfers and swimmers attacked by sharks are often rejected. The 

problem is that because of the high speed mode of attack of say a great white, the damage inflicted can 

be so catastrophic that the victim bleeds to death anyway. 

Sight is another sense which if the evolutionary processes that have developed it in some shark species 

is anything to go by, also plays an important hunting and feeding role. But only at very close quarters 

once the other senses have directed the hunt almost to the victim. 

Sight generally works on the basis of incoming light being focused by a lens onto the retina at the back 

of the eye, which then uses a combination of rods and cones to get the fine detail. The rods detect shades 

of light and therefore movement, whereas the cones detect the fine detail and colour, which varies 

species to species according to the ratio between rods and cones. 

It was thought that sharks and rays could only see in black and 

white, and in some cases that may well be the case. But not so 

in all species. The human eye, which gives both definition and 

colour, has a rods to cones ratio of four to one. Exactly the same 

numbers as a great white shark. Other species however have 

ratios as low as fifty to one. 

Sharks and rays have another visual trick up their sleeve known 

as the tapetum lucidum, which is a reflective layer of shiny cells 

behind the retina for enhanced low light and nocturnal vision. 

Tope eye - nictitating membrane They also have two eye lids, with those species belonging to 

the requiem shark family having a third even tougher eye lid 

known as a nictitating membrane. This closes upwards from the bottom to protect the eyeball when 

attacking prey, something you can see in use when disgorging tope. 

Arguably the most important anatomical difference between cartilaginous and bony fishes, certainly 

from an angling perspective, is their breeding strategy. Sharks and rays all show clear signs of sexual 

dimorphism or outward physical difference based on sex, with long thin modifications to the pelvic fins 

known as clasper's in the males which are clearly missing in the females. 

These are erectile and are used to transfer sperm into the female during mating, ultimately leading via 

one of three different approaches to the production of low numbers of well-developed offspring. 

A great survival strategy in some ways in that unlike broadcast spawner's such as cod which eject 

potentially millions of eggs and sperm for external mixing, the vast majority of which won't make it 

through to adulthood, the offspring survival ratio for sharks and rays can theoretically be very high, 

which is great when everything is at a point of natural balance, but potentially disastrous when that isn't 

the case. 

The first and most primitive of these three approaches, and 

the one favoured by rays and dogfishes, is oviparous 

reproduction. After fertilization, the eggs are laid in horny 

capsules which you often see washed up empty on the strandline 

of the beach. 

Another approach is viviparous reproduction resulting in the 

birth of live fully formed young. Option three, which in terms 

of evolutionary progress falls roughly between the other two, 

is ovoviviparous reproduction, now also termed aplacental 

Viable ray or dogfish egg capsules 

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viviparous reproduction, and the method favoured by most sharks. 

Here the fertilised eggs are retained in the two oviducts within 

capsules known as candles into which the young will hatch 

within the mother. After feeding on the remainder of their 

yolk-sac, glands within the mother secrete a nourishing uterine 

milk. 

Ray about to deposit egg capsule 

Later in their development, the most advanced of the pups in 

some species become what is termed 'oophagus' and will eat 

not only other ovulated eggs, but also their smaller siblings, 

which is why ovoviviparous species tend to produce small 

numbers of offspring. 

A good example of aplacental viviparous reproduction and its potential for unfortunate consequences 

is the spurdog. Once this was the most common small shark in northern European waters. I remember 

trips back in the 1970's where we would have to up-anchor to get away from the things. 

It was like dropping baits into a vast grey hungry swarm, which, because of sexual segregation, which 

is common in spurdogs, if the shoal comprised all females, would often see the deck awash with yolk 

sac pups. 

Not surprisingly, within a very short time the spurdog was a critically engendered species due primarily 

to commercial over exploitation, though I'm sure angling must also have contributed here too. A species 

fished to the very brink of extinction compounded by the longest gestation period in the animal kingdom 

at 22 to 24 months, it has taken many years for even the weakest signs of a comeback to show. 

Even when left alone and with optimum offspring survival rates, a few remaining survivors simply 

cannot reproduce fast enough to facilitate recovery in the way 

that cod and other broadcast spawners with their millions of 

eggs per individual potentially can. 

It's imperative then that as responsible anglers we do 

everything within our power to help not only the spurdog, but 

all shark and ray species. Every individual counts. 

Unfortunately, proposed EU Common Fishery Policy reforms 

offer little in the way of salvation here, and may well 

ultimately result in even further problems for already Aborted spurdog pup 

struggling species, as it looks likely that all commercially 

caught fish in the future will have to be landed in response to the current situation of discards going 

back into the water dead. 

Some species such as porbeagle sharks and undulate rays may possibly be put onto a prohibited list, for 

all the good that will do. The tope was another species up for similar consideration. 

Unfortunately, a ministerial meeting in December 2014 decided not to award tope prohibited status due 

to objections from France and Spain who collectively have commercially landed over one million tope 

in recent times, and who in both cases exercised their veto. 

For my money, sharks and rays have poor culinary qualities at the best of times on account of the way 

in which they regulate their isotonic balance, as all marine fish must do due to the salinity of their 

environment being greater than that of their body salt concentration. 

The reason why the cartilaginous approach to isotonic balance makes for poor eating is because it can 

make the flesh both taste and smell like an incontinence pad. 

21

Marine bony fishes have to drink sea water to make up for losses from their cells, as the salinity either 

side of their cell membranes strives to find a balance through the process of osmosis drawing water out 

from their body. The salt in the water they drink is removed by the fish and excreted through cells in its 

gills. 

The reverse is true in freshwater species where the water surrounding them is less salty than in their 

cells, so water is absorbed, again in an attempt to achieve isotonic balance, which they can never do, so 

their kidneys must constantly off-load the excesses as urine. 

Cartilaginous fishes on the other hand are osmo-conformers. They achieve this by maintaining high 

urea levels within their tissues and body fluids. As the salinity of this can be at a slighter higher level 

than the surrounding sea water, a small amount of water is taken in via the gills which is later excreted 

along with excess urea. This explains the smell (and sometimes the taste) of ammonia in these fish. 

Unfortunately sharks and rays can only manage to achieve this at quite an advanced developmental 

stage, which in the case of egg laying rays and dogfishes prevents their eggs being deposited outside of 

the body without an impervious protective case containing fluid of a lower salt concentration than the 

environment outside. 

To avoid repetition, now might be a good time to comment on the handling of sharks generally, both 

for their well-being and that of anglers fingers and hands. Fearsome apex predators they may well be, 

but they are also highly sensitive animals, which even though they might appear to swim away 

unharmed, can die a slow lingering death later as a result of in-appropriate treatment. 

The first point to be made is to opt for in-water release if there is no pressing need to have a fish inside 

the boat. If it must come aboard, either for disgorging, weighing, or even a photograph, then wherever 

Tope supported in a weighing sling 

22

possible, use a landing net, and that goes for tope too which some charter boat skippers now routinely 

do. 

If you don't have a net and intend lifting a fish in, always try to keep it horizontal using the tail and 

either a pectoral fin or the dorsal fin as gripping points, then lay it down slowly and carefully onto the 

deck, all of which I know is easier said than done. But at least be prepared to try. 

The reason for this is simple. In-appropriate handling, particularly tail lifting either into the boat or for 

a photograph can lead to unseen internal bleeding and possibly even death. 

What happens is that when a big fish is removed from the support given to it by the surrounding water 

pressure, if not given replacement support either by the mesh of a landing net, the deck of the boat, or 

being cradled in an anglers arms, which I appreciate is not always practicable, then the heavy organs 

inside the body cavity can shift through gravity rupturing internal blood vessels. 

So get the fish down on the deck as soon as possible, cover its eyes with a wet rag to quieten it down, 

and if necessary, leave a deep seated hook in place rather that struggling to free it. Unless made of 

stainless steel, it should rot away over time. And always weigh sharks of all sizes and species using a 

supportive weighing sling. 

Female Ray – no claspers 

Male Ray – long claspers 

As for the skates and rays, these are just dorso-ventrally flattened out sharks. In other words, they've 

settled out on the sea bed resting on their stomachs, with their mouth, gills slits and anus underneath, 

unlike conventional flatfish species such as plaice and dabs which have come to rest on one side of their 

body, prompting the eye from the underside to migrate around the head to join its partner on the top. 

Another way of putting it is that rays are little more than smoothhounds or dogfishes that have been put 

through a mangle. Also with skates and rays, the pectoral fins have become enlarged and fused to the 

front of the head while extending horizontally outwards to form their now familiar wings. 

The obvious question here is what is the difference between the skates and rays. Anglers tend to see the 

smaller species with a short rounded snout and nipple like tip as being rays, while the larger species in 

which the wing tip takes an almost continuous line through to the end of a long well angled pointed 

snout are the skates. 

In actual fact, these are interchangeable terms, both of which have equal meaning and validity, which 

is perhaps as well with the white skate or bottle nosed ray as it is also known, having a foot in both 

those camps, with its well defined long nipple like snout, and a capacity to grow to something like two 

hundred pounds. 

The stingrays, eagle rays and electric rays, all of which are recorded from home waters, are the only 

true rays here. However, within the smaller skate-ray species there is one other very obvious and helpful 

23

identification feature worth noting. The thornback, small eyed, spotted, and blonde rays all have pointed 

wing tips, whereas the undulate, sandy, and cuckoo ray have noticeably rounded wing tips. 

SHORTFIN MAKO SHARK Isurus oxyrinchus 

Bucket List status – no result yet 

Andy Griffith’s fabulous Welsh Mako Shark 

Reputedly the fastest swimming shark in the sea with bursts clocked in excess of thirty knots. Also a 

species prone to leaping from the water when hooked, the mako is a beautifully streamlined yet heavily 

built fish with a sharply pointed snout. 

The first dorsal fin originates behind the origin of the pectoral fins, and the tiny second dorsal slightly 

ahead of the anal fin beneath it, whereas in the similar looking porbeagle shark, the dorsals originate 

over the origins of the pectorals and anal fin. 

The mako also has a single keel on the side of the tail stalk just in front of the tail lobes, while the 

porbeagle has both this and a smaller secondary keel below it. 

Colouration is a dark petrol blue giving way suddenly to pure white on the lower flanks and underparts. 

A fish that is still at times confused with the porbeagle shark for which it has a passing 

resemblance. 

24

Only when a world record claim was was made for a 352 pound porbeagle by Hetty Eathorne caught 

off Looe in 1955 and subsequently rejected by the IGFA because it turned out to be a mako shark, did 

the angling presence of the species as far north as the British Isles first come to light. 

Though there are external anatomical differences if you 

look carefully enough for them, the IGFA identification 

was made solely on the basis of the teeth. Those of the 

mako are long and pointed without cusps at their base, 

whereas porbeagle teeth are more triangular with very 

obvious cusps or spikes at either side. 

Unlike porbeagle's, mako's are northerly migrants from 

warmer southern seas to the Biscay area and extreme 

south-western parts of the British Isles, though there is 

no predictable pattern to any of this. 

An open water species usually found well offshore, 

often very close to or actually at the surface. Lengths of 

up to twelve feet have been recorded with weights well 

in excess of a thousand pounds, though half that size 

would be nearer the European maximum. 

Every mako shark I am aware of on rod and line in home 

waters has either come from, or very close to, the 

western approaches to the English Channel, and that 

includes specimens over on the Irish side. 

Some serious Mako dentistry To be even more specific, from the time that first 1955 

mako was correctly identified through to a fish caught 

by David Turner in 1971, I believe that every single UK specimen was taken by boats working either 

out of Looe around the Eddystone, or Falmouth around the Manacles and just beyond. 

In total, according to research figures provided by David Turner, forty five mako sharks were caught 

on rod and line during that period, of which thirty, which is two out of every three, fell to the Falmouth 

boats, and one skipper in particular, that being Robin Vinnicombe aboard his boat Huntress'. 

In addition to meeting up with and recording an audio interview with Robin Vinnicombe on the subject, 

I have similarly spoken on the record with Robin's brother Frank, and with David Turner, resulting in 

conflicting accounts of who actually caught what, though the weight of evidence from a variety of 

sources seems to sit most comfortably with Robin Vinnicombe and David Turners version of events. 

In fact, it was on Robin's boat that David Turner took his fish, which at the time of recording the three 

interviews was the last mako shark taken on rod and line in British waters, a fact that has always struck 

me as being odd, as mako sharks are supposedly a warm water species. 

You might be forgiven for thinking that if global warming and rising sea temperatures are a reality, we 

should have seen a steady stream of mako sharks since 1971, which catch statistics clearly demonstrate 

obviously isn't the case. 

In my personal opinion, a number of factors are operating here. First off, at the best of times, mako 

shark visits at our latitude have never been a common occurrence. Even when the popularity of shark 

fishing was at its height, which coincided with pretty much all of the recorded mako catches, they were 

still very rare fish indeed. 

25

Later, when interest in blue shark fishing slipped into decline resulting not only in far fewer baits in the 

water, but equally, fewer rubby dubby trails up which to entice an occasional visiting mako, a numerical 

drop off in the catch rate of an already rare and accidental encounter was always likely to be the result. 

The same numbers of visiting fish may well have continued coming. But with fewer anglers out there 

in with a shout of hooking one, the chance encounter rate understandably went right down the pan. That 

is until recently when South Wales skipper Andrew Alsop revived UK shark fishing big style aboard 

his boat 'White Water' out of Milford Haven. 

Catch rates and sizes for both blue sharks and porbeagle's aboard 'White Water', along with boats 

operated by Rob Rennie and Craig Deans have been outstanding, and as such, getting a spot on-board 

any of these three boats is understandably at a premium. 

One man who has spent a lot of time with Andrew Alsop is Kent property developer Andy Griffith who 

charters 'White Water' all to himself to have the very best shot, albeit an expensive shot, at anything 

good that might come along. 

As expected, though long overdue, in 2013 the two Andrews combined to catch and release the first 

UK mako shark in thirty seven years, on a day which amongst other things also turned up both blue and 

porbeagle sharks in excess of one hundred pounds, making it the first ever ton up grand slam of the 

three shark species in question ratified by the IGFA. 

How long it will be before we see the next mako is open to debate. Shark fishing in that corner of South 

Wales is still developing. As ever, the more rubby dubby lanes and shark baits there are going out into 

potential mako shark territory, the greater the chances of a repeat. But the odds were never high, not 

even when they were at their peak. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 31, 109, 112 and 137 

NOTE: As most mako sharks have been caught while fishing for blue sharks, from a tactical point of 

view, it might help to also read the blue shark account, particularly the part about rubby dubby and bait 

positioning. 

PORBEAGLE SHARK Lamna nasus 


A more stocky, heavily built fish than the 

mako, which if I'm honest, is a statement 

only of any real value when a straight 

comparison between these two related and 

similar looking species can be made. 

So superficially similar are they in fact that 

a claim submitted to the IGFA for a 352 

pound porbeagle caught by Hetty Eathorne 

in 1955 ultimately turned out to be Britain's 

first authenticated rod caught mako shark. 

That's a measure of how similar they are. 

Andy Griffith, Porbeagle 

Unlike the mako, whose first dorsal fin 

originates behind the origin of the pectoral 

fin, the origin of the first dorsal fin of a 

porbeagle is directly above the origin of the 

26

pectorals, with the second dorsal directly above the anal fin. 

Like the mako, there is a keel on the side of the tail-stalk just in front of the tail. But unlike the mako, 

there is also a smaller secondary keel just beneath it running onto the tail. However, it was the teeth that 

solved the riddle for the IGFA. Porbeagle teeth are more triangular than mako teeth, with obvious cusps 

or spikes at their base. Colouration is very deep blue to dark grey with off white lower regions. 

In angling terms, this is very different fish to the mako shark. For starters, it's more abundant, more 

widespread well up into northern latitudes so obviously better cold water adapted, and more willing to 

feed incredibly close to the shore. So close in fact that over in Ireland specimens have actually been 

caught from the shore, though not unfortunately in recent years. 

During the 1960's and 70's, the eastern fringe of the Isle of Wight and the inshore waters along the North 

Cornish Coast through on into North Devon were the UK's main porbeagle grounds, with Padstow being 

the Mecca to which most big shark enthusiasts at that time would gravitate. Then in seemingly no time 

at all, things started to change and catch rates went into decline. 

Angler pressure certainly won't have helped. Most sharks were killed and brought ashore back then, 

even the blue's. But if the truth be known, commercial pressure contributed most to sending porbeagle 

populations into free fall, which a slow growing and equally slowly reproducing species such as this 

was never going to be able to withstand. 

That said, all was not lost. Other holding areas were discovered around the country, and for a short 

while at least, it remained business as usual, albeit in some cases with smaller fish in fewer numbers as 

Wales and Scotland started to come into the frame. 

Porbeagle pioneers such as Mike Thrussell helped Aberystwyth and Aberdovey mid-way down 

Cardigan Bay in West Wales build themselves quite a reputation back in the 1980's, though as with the 

trend of their contemporaries, that too didn't last long either. 

Most of the fish there were at the smaller end of the size range, coming in just either side of the one 

hundred pound mark, which was way short of the average for the Cornish fish. And again unlike the 

Cornish fish, they were also found much further offshore. 

Then they too were gone, supposedly fished out commercially around Lundy Island which formed a 

part of their predictable migration ritual, though yet again, with seemingly all specimens brought ashore, 

angler pressure can't have helped. 

As for the Scottish link, that had been 

demonstrated as far back as the early 1970's 

when a friend of mine, the late Dr. Dietrich 

Burkel, set out on a summer long quest to 

demonstrate that porbeagles could be 

caught that far north, eventually taking one 

from a dinghy fishing off the tip of the Mull 

of Galloway. A catch that would later have 

quite a bit of controversy attached to it, 

much of which was sour grapes, which 

Dietrich cleared up in a recorded interview 

we did in 2013 just a few weeks before his 

death. 

Graeme Pullen, small dinghy Porbeagle 

A couple of other small specimens were 

also taken over the years in and around 

Luce Bay. But Scottish shark fishing never really came to muh until good numbers of big porbeagles, 

27

world all tackle records included, were discovered off Sumburgh Head in Shetland and Dunnet Head 

on the Pentland Firth. 

The west coast of Ireland, in particular Co. Clare was also a regular producer, including those shore 

caught specimens mentioned earlier by legendary Irish angler Jack Shine fishing from Green Island at 

the mouth of Liscannor Bay. But sadly, there too the trail now seems to have gone cold. 

However, in West Wales in July 2016 fishing from a well known rock mark, Simon Shaw and Mark 

Turner beat and released the UK's first ever shore caught porbeagle which had taken one of their tope 

baits, the fish being estimated at around 150 pounds. 

Though perhaps not immediately obvious, there is a link here between many of these potential porbeagle 

holding areas, with the possible exception of Cardigan Bay. That link is disturbed tide of the kind often 

produced by islands and headlands with submerged reefs and strong local tidal influences, though it 

should also be said that many of the current Milford Haven fish are taken well offshore. 

The Isle of Wight, Mull of Galloway, Lundy Island, Sumburgh Head and Dunnet Head are all typical 

examples. And let's not forget the stretch of coastline to the north of Padstow running across the Devon 

border up to Hartland Point, because this is where my link to the scene kicks in. An episode which starts 

with Graeme Pullen, Pete Scott, and a small trailed fifteen foot displacement boat launched (and 

occasionally swamped) through the pounding surf tables at Bude in the late 1990's. 

Graeme's exploits with big sharks on the world stage are legendary, so if there were sharks there for the 

taking, he was the man who would find them. But even he was to be surprised by the levels of their 

success. For while it had long been the known that porbeagles in the area frequented the tide rips and 

headlands dotted all along this inhospitable stretch of cliffs, most people had given up on trying for 

them thinking they had all gone. But not so, as Graeme and Pete would demonstrate. 

Some of the encounters the duo experienced close into shore were scary on a number of fronts. Huge 

fish in poor conditions from such a small boat, broken rods, big sea's, and with absolutely nowhere to 

run to in a sudden bad weather emergency, this can be a most unforgiving area, but also a very 

productive one, both for big fish and for big numbers of fish. 

Fortunately, they survived it, though at 

times perhaps only just, coming away with 

the knowledge that the very biggest fish 

were still there to be found almost within 

touching distance of the shore during March 

and April, backed up by larger numbers of 

smaller pack fish in the sixty to eighty 

pound bracket further off over the summer 

months. 

Porbeagle at the boat 

any stretch of the imagination. 

Typical of a summer trip is a two day 

session Graeme and I videoed for YouTube 

in 2009 aboard his seventeen foot Wilson 

Flier. By this stage, Boscastle had taken 

over from Bude as a far safer launching 

site, though not without its own pitfalls by 

The harbour there sits in a long very narrow ravine with poor access and a ramshackle slipway which 

can only be used for maybe half an hour or so either side of high-water on a big tide. Then there's the 

exit-entrance which is an 'S' shape. 

28

The harbour itself completely dries at low tide, and the opening is difficult to find on the way back in 

as it blends into the surrounding cliffs, in addition to which, when you go out, regardless of what the 

open Atlantic might throw at you, that's it for at least ten hours with nowhere else to sun for safety. 

Other than that, Boscastle is ideal, and a vast improvement on Bude, though on this occasion, it being 

midsummer, the radar dishes to the west of Bude were to be our destination anyway, drifting maybe a 

mile of so off the coast in around eighty feet of water. 

Key to good porbeagle fishing is rubby dubby. The more you put in, the more potentially you get back 

out in return. This cannot be over stressed, despite making repeated fairly short drifts which breaks the 

trail and could it's argued confuse the fish. 

Not just any rubby dubby either. Graeme is friendly with the people who run Avington trout fishery in 

Hampshire where they save the filleted carcases and fatalities for him. He then mashes them up, adds 

bran, and freezes it in onion bags ready to go at the drop of a hat. 

You could of course use mackerel if you can catch them, which probably won't be possible in March or 

April. But as oily as they are, mackerel don't come anywhere close to pellet fed trout, which literally 

ooze oil into the water. 

So there we were with four rubby dubby bags out fishing whole mackerel baits on 10/0 O' shaughnessy 

hooks to five feet of four hundred pounds wire attached to a further eight feet of similar strength mono, 

suspended under lightly inflated balloons set at various levels around three quarters of the depth of the 

water column using fifty pound class outfits. 

Not over inflating the balloons can be 

very important, as despite being apex 

predators, porbeagles can at times be 

quite skittish fish and will not take a bait 

they have any suspicion about, 

particularly if the balloon creates too 

much drag due to its size. 

Even so, some of the takes were still 

fickle. Tugs and snatches, or simply float 

bobbing with short half-hearted runs. 

Very much a waiting game, often not 

knowing when or if to strike, which 

unfortunately can lead to swallowed baits 

and deep hooking which is the last thing 

any of us want. 

Jack Shine, shore caught Porbeagle 

Maybe the answer would to use circle 

hooks which only expose the point in the direction of flesh as they exit the mouth where they invariably 

make contact in the scissor. 

Even for fast hard running fish such as blue sharks and tope they might prove useful, though for different 

reasons. Not so for skates and rays though. There are other ways to prevent more sedentary species 

becoming hook damaged. 

I think it's worth saying a few words about floats generally at this point, as some of the methods of 

suspending baits in the water can create more problems than they cure. 

29

In the early days, floats were circular net corks with a hole in the centre which were threaded on to the 

reel line. They would then have a knife cut in the side of the hole for the line to be pulled into and 

trapped which could quickly be released once the cork came back within reach. 

Plastic bottles, lumps of polystyrene; I've seen them all. But without doubt the best approach is to lightly 

inflate a balloon tying the end obviously so it stays up, then wrap an elastic band around the reel line a 

few times at the required depth, inserting the knot in the balloon through the two free end loops which 

will clamp up locating it in place. Then, when the balloon comes back within reach, simply pull it clear 

snapping the elastic band, leaving the line to run back freely through the rod rings or rollers. 

We knew we were after relatively small fish, which for the most part is what we got. But we were also 

rewarded with a lively specimen to my rod of around a hundred and seventy pounds, which proved 

much more of a handful. 

At one point, with the angle in the line rising towards the surface at long range, I thought it was going 

to jump, and secretly had my fingers crossed that I might be on for a mako. Then it went down again 

and gave me quite a mauling before we had it to the boat, disgorged, tagged and away. 

Surprisingly, we also had tope come right up off the bottom to take the shark baits, and conversely, 

when we put baits down on the bottom aimed at targeting tope, some of those were picked up by 

porbeagles too. But in the main, the tactics described offer the best option. 

I have tried to get down to Boscastle in the 

spring for a crack at the biggies, but invariably 

the weather has stepped in and written off all 

my attempts. Well, I say all of them, but 

actually that should read all but one which I 

couldn't make because of other commitments, 

leaving Wayne Comben to step in and take my 

place. 

A cold grim couple of days in reasonable 

conditions spent doing all the usual stuff, but 

very much closer to the shore making short 

drifts through known holding spots off the 

Porbeagle teeth 

headlands where the big female fish come in 

to pup. Quite a slow couple of days too as it 

turned out, until one obviously very good fish started going nuts at the surface in the slick. 

To cut a long hard fought story short, that fish, played by Wayne and filmed by Graeme, appeared all 

over the TV news and press with an estimated weight way in excess of the current all tackle World 

record of 504 pounds. Not that record proportions matter on a number of fronts here. After-all, what 

can you do with a shark of that size in a seventeen foot boat even if you had wanted to weigh it, besides 

which, how can anybody kill such a magnificent fish anyway. 

Into the bargain, and in common with a number of threatened cartilaginous species, the Convention on 

International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) now lists the porbeagle shark as being in need of 

protection, in addition to which, all commercial and recreationally caught porbeagle sharks must now 

be returned at the point of capture right across all EU member states. 

Quite where this leaves the British Record Fish Committee is anybody’s guess. But they need to deal 

with this situation and quickly, as anglers can no longer comply with their insistence that all record fish 

must be weighed on firm ground and not in a boat. 

30

Nor can weights be estimated by using length and girth measurements, all of which rather makes a 

mockery of record keeping as it currently stands. Some sort of weight estimation formula needs to be 

agreed and urgently. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 52, 54, 90, 120 and 141. 

NOTE: Milford Haven in Wales is currently the UK's chartering 'in venue' for all things shark fishing 

with Andrew Alsop aboard his boat 'White Water', Rob Rennie on 'Lady Jue 3', and Craig Deans aboard 

'Phatcat'. 

THRESHER SHARK Alopias vulpinus 


Rob Rennie & Andy Turrell, Welsh Thresher 

A temperate water family of sharks containing four species world-wide, all characterised by the length 

of their tail, which can be almost equal to the length of the rest of the body. As only one species is 

recorded from northern European waters, identification should present no problem whatsoever. 

Colouration varies from bluish grey through to brown and is white ventrally. Though recorded 

throughout all northern European waters right up to the Arctic, numbers actually penetrating north of 

the English Channel are not thought to be high, with both commercial and angling catches suggesting 

this is not an abundant fish anywhere, though specimens both turn up and are spotted with reasonable 

regularity. 

31

As with most pelagic sharks, actual sea bed geography probably means very little here. A fish found 

living and feeding in the mid to upper layers often quite close to the surface, and often in fairly shallow 

water, with a taste for various small fish, in particular pelagic shoaling species such as mackerel, herring 

and pilchard. 

The long tail is used to great effect when prey fish are encountered. The thresher will circle a shoal, 

balling it up by thrashing its tail which may also stun some individuals which are picked off after the 

initial attack. 

Something of a prestige species on account of its rarity in northern European waters, the thresher shark 

is caught in much the same way as the other recorded shark species, using similar gear, tactics, and 

rubby dubby to that outlined already for porbeagle fishing. 

Most recorded specimens in fact have been taken by anglers targeting porbeagle's, though legendary 

skipper Ted Legge fishing out to the east of the Isle of Wight made quite a name for himself in much 

the same way that mako skipper Robin Vinnicombe did, by taking many more than his fair share over 

the years. 

Obviously then he was doing something right. Again, location it seems has a big part to play, and for 

some reason, the area to the east of the Isle of Wight both was, and probably still is, for whatever reason, 

particularly attractive to visiting threshers. But there has to be more to it than that. 

Of course, there needs to be fish there to target. But it's how you target them it seems that also counts, 

and in that regard, Ted Legge most certainly had it well and truly sussed. 

As mentioned earlier, baits – in this case a small single mackerel due to the threshers relatively small 

mouth, suspended under floats at increasing depths with distance from the boat in a good rubby dubby 

slick, which itself becomes deeper further away from the boat as the heavier particles start to sink. 

This is the time honoured shark fishing approach, and no doubt some of the threshers, as well as 

porbeagle's would have been taken in this way. But most definitely not all of them. For invariably Ted 

Legge would also drop a bait straight down to around mid-water and leave it to hang there with the 

ratchet set on the reel, and it was this that would account for many of his customers fish. 

Thresher sharks pretty much went off the reporting radar for quite a few years after the porbeagle 

population collapsed around the Isle of Wight. Again, the link there I guess being lack of baits in the 

water leading to fewer if any bonus thresher shark hook ups. 

The same is probably true for other shark fishing areas around the country, though despite reported 

sightings and the odd accidental commercial encounter, plus plenty of shark angling activity, the West 

Country ports both north and south of the Lizard have added very few inclusions to the UK thresher list 

over the years. 

That said, buoyed up by his successes with the big Boscastle porbeagle shark already detailed, plus 

some amazing dinghy blue shark fishing out from Falmouth with Graeme Pullen, Wayne Comben, who 

fishes out of Langstone over-looking historically the best thresher shark grounds in the country, decided 

to launch an all-out attempt from his own Wilson Flier in 2013. 

Initially fishing alone, and with several blanks already to his credit, he eventually teamed up with 

Graeme, who while perhaps not expecting to see much in the way of action, tagged along with the video 

camera to make a historical documentary on the attempt, little knowing that it would make angling 

history in its own right. 

This was done with a huge thresher shark easily twice the size of Steve Mills British record taken back 

in 1982, also from a dinghy fishing the same area off the Nab Tower, and again, as with the duo's blue 

32

shark and porbeagle exploits, all on YouTube as part of Graeme's Totally Awesome Fishing Show 

collection. 

At one point at the side of the boat, the huge fish whipped its tail right across the two gunnel's, narrowly 

missing both Graeme and Wayne in the process. But eventually it was measured, tagged, disgorged, 

and sent on its way. 

In July 2015, the species put in a surprise double showing off the coast of South Wales. For years the 

Welsh record slot had stood vacant, then to use the old bus stop cliché, you wait for ages then two come 

along at the same time (well, almost). 

The first at 253 pounds was taken by Andy Turrell aboard Rob Rennie's 'Lady Jue 3' off Milford Haven, 

with the second three days later by Dave Thomas aboard 'Phatcat' skippered by Craig Deans also fishing 

the same area. So as with Andy Griffith's Mako Shark, again from Milford Haven aboard Andrew 

Alsops 'white Water II', if you put in the sea hours and play the percentages game, good things should 

eventually come your way. 

And one year on the British thresher record was bettered with a fish given a weight of 368 pounds 

caught and released by Nick Lane out from Illfracombe, the weight having been estimated from 

measurements given to the Shark Trust. Note: catch and release means that no official record claim can 

be made. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 141. 

NOTE: As most thresher sharks have been caught while fishing for porbeagle sharks, from a tactical 

point of view, it might help to read the porbeagle account, particularly the part about tackle and tactics. 

BLUE SHARK Prionace glauca 


Blue sharks are open oceanic fish found in all warm 

temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical seas world-wide where 

the depth exceeds around forty fathoms. In northern 

European waters they are most regularly found throughout 

the Biscay area, the western English Channel, and off the 

south and west coasts of Ireland. 

Occasional isolated specimens have turned up in western 

Scottish waters, and even further to the east off southern 

Norway, but such occurrences are rare. Long warm 

summers and prolonged south westerly winds will increase 

arrival numbers, and can extend their range to higher 

latitudes. 

Blue shark are pelagic hunters of small shoaling species 

such as mackerel, pilchard, and herring which frequent the 

upper layers of the water column. Squids too as they hunt 

close to the surface late in the day may also be taken. 

Mike Pullen, Irish Blue Shark 

In terms of physical appearance, a noticeably long slender 

fish with a long pointed snout and long curved sickle 

shaped pectoral fins. A strikingly beautiful animal, its 

33

upper surface being a deep inky blue giving way to a more brilliant shade of blue lower down the flanks, 

and an unbelievably pure white on its under-parts. 

Blue sharks have always visited the warmer parts of Europe, either where general sea temperatures have 

not been restrictive, or where warm water arms of the North Atlantic Drift or Gulf Stream have allowed 

them to penetrate beyond their normal latitude. 

For many years they were accidentally caught by Cornish pilchard netters who saw them as little more 

than a pest, though during the 1950's they would also become a much appreciated extra source of 

income, particularly later on as the pilchard fishery went into decline and a few early pioneering shark 

anglers began to sit up and take notice. 

This eventually led to the group embarking on a quest that would ultimately result in the tried and tested 

blue shark fishing techniques still used today, and to the port of Looe, which up until the 1980's at least, 

took pride of place on the UK shark fishing map. 

Shark fishing in northern European waters, and off Britain and Ireland in particular, differs radically in 

approach and technique to that practised in more regularly shark frequented areas elsewhere in the 

world, where the blue shark is held in less regard as a species to deliberately target. 

This does not however mean that one approach is right, and therefore by default, the other must be 

wrong. They are just different, with in this case, a history that has stood the test of time, primarily 

because it addressed all the basic requirements of a specific area where feeding takes place in the middle 

to upper layers over depth, and where both water clarity and salinity are high. 

It also addressed the habits of a species requiring vast open spaces to wander in, where it not only needs 

to be located generally, but drawn in specifically to an artificially created feeding zone to maximise the 

potential of a successful encounter. And so the Shark Angling Club of Great Britain (SACGB) was 

born. 

Without any doubt whatsoever, the most important outcome of the SACGB's early strategy meetings 

was planned continuous deep water drifting employing what they would call rubby dubby bags, and 

people elsewhere call ground-bait or chum, to feed scent and fish particles into the upper water layers 

over as large an area as possible. 

A long continuous drift, which in turn gives a long unbroken rubby dubby trail is a must if widely 

scattered sharks being drawn into the lane are to be able to work back towards its source and the baits. 

Broken trails only serve to confuse fish. A 

drifting boat in open water offers a great deal 

of potential fish coverage over the course of a 

day. But of greater importance is the way in 

which the rubby dubby is fed into the water, 

and where in relation to it the baits are set. 

Rubby dubby is, or should be, the previous 

day's mackerel which have been left to soften 

and ripen overnight which some people like to 

put through a hand mincer. 

Arguably, a better way is to smash them to a 

Mincing rubby dubby 

pulp in a large bin with a lump of wood. 

Mincing creates particles of uniform size in 

turn dispersing in the tide in a uniform manner, which is not what the principle of blue shark rubby 

dubby is meant to be all about. 

34

Mincing also makes demands on the mesh size of the bag, which has to be small if a rapid mass 

evacuation of the contents is to be avoided. The idea is that particles of varying sizes and weights escape 

continuously over the day, encouraged both by the motion of the boat and the tide, and by periodically 

shaking the bags which are suspended at the water’s surface. 

As a result, the smaller lighter particles ride high in the water while the larger heavier pieces sink at 

varying rates, creating a deepening lengthening corridor of attraction emanating from a source just 

uptide of the baits. 

Rubby dubby doesn't simply rely on mashed up fish particles. Blood, oils, and other body juices are 

also released to fill in the gaps between the bigger more visible pieces. So important is getting it right 

and getting enough of it out working that rubby dubby can literally make or break a shark fishing trip. 

In this regard, the addition of agricultural bran to help soak up and distribute the juices, plus a pint or 

two of concentrated pilchard oil will enhance its quality enormously. 

Several handfuls of the mix are then placed into bags with something like a half inch mesh, which are 

far superior to old onion sacks. These are then lowered just into the water spaced out along the length 

of the boat, where for the best results they should be shaken and topped up throughout the day. 

Positioning the baits at the appropriate ranges and levels is the next piece of tactical thinking which 

needs to be just right. Sea conditions are going to have some say in just how this is done. Wind and tide, 

either working with or against each other, or even absent altogether, will affect the shape and extent of 

the rubby dubby lane, and therefore the placing of the baits. 

So as far as is possible, drifts should be planned to work a complete half cycle of the tide. In other 

words, staying with it in one direction as it either ebbs or floods. Preferably not bits of both if that can 

be avoided, though if that is the case, it still shouldn't totally ruin the slick. 

Obviously, the best conditions are those allowing the boat and the particles in the developing lane of 

attraction to get plenty of distance between each other, but not too quickly, creating an efficient slick 

which encourages fish passing through it to turn and swim along the line of greatest concentration. 

No wind or tide at all is the worst possible scenario, with the rubby dubby particles `snowing' down 

towards the sea bed giving little or no ground coverage at all. 

There is no way of knowing exactly what level blue sharks might be feeding at on any given day, on 

top of which, not all of them will necessarily be following the same pattern. 

Those fish either at or close to the surface will continue to work that line towards the boat, whereas fish 

picking things up at the deepest level will follow the trails decreasing angle of depth as they close in on 

the source. Then there will be all manner of variation in between. So placing the baits at the wrong level 

could easily see fish missed. 

Offering baits as a pre-planned spread in terms of distance and depths helps mirror the profile of the 

rubby dubby lane, placing the shallowest bait closest to the boat, and the deepest furthest away down 

tide. 

Distances and depths are there to be experimented with, but as a starting suggestion, set the one closest 

in at say ten feet down, progressing in even increments for the others down to maybe fifty or even sixty 

feet with twenty to thirty yards between the floats until a feeding pattern for the day establishes itself. 

It can also pay to drop an additional bait straight down ten to twenty feet on the hang looking for 

confused fish that have made it all the way up to the boat, but having missed the other baits on the way. 

35

Blue sharks, which can grow big, usually 

range between around fifty to eighty pounds, 

though hundred pounders are becoming less 

scarce these days as the number of fish being 

brought ashore for weighing has virtually 

gone altogether, as was once the case when 

Looe and the SACGB were at the peak of their 

game. 

Blue Shark teeth 

So no special hand tackle is required. 

Certainly nothing heavier than a thirty pound 

class outfit, with a twenty pound set-up 

probably being more than adequate, unless of 

course, as is the case out from Milford Haven 

which is currently the UK's premier shark 

port, porbeagle sharks are also likely to take 

a bait. 

Down at the business end though, you still need a long durable trace, on the one hand to beat the teeth, 

while on the other to avoid rough skin contact with the reel line, as blue sharks have a habit of getting 

themselves wrapped up in the trace. 

It pays to use at least a couple of feet of suitable wire to a forged 10/0 or 12/0 hook, backed up with 

eight to ten feet of at least two hundred pounds bs commercial monofilament to act as a suitable 

protective rubbing length. 

I think it's also worth saying a few words about floats here too, as some of the methods of suspending 

baits in the water can create more problems than they cure. 

In the early days at Looe we used to use net floats which were circular pieces of cork with a hole in the 

centre threaded on to the reel line. A knife cut would then be made in the side of the hole for the line to 

be pulled into and trapped which could quickly be released once the cork came back within reach. 

Plastic bottles, lumps of polystyrene; I've seen them all. But without doubt, the best approach is to 

lightly inflate a balloon, tying the end obviously so it stays up, then wrap an elastic band around the reel 

line a few times at the required depth ready for inserting the knot in the balloon through the two free 

end loops which will clamp up locating it in place. Then, when the balloon comes back within reach, 

simply pull it clear snapping the elastic band, leaving the line to run back freely through the rod rings 

or rollers. 

Like a lot of people of my generation, my interest in sharks was prompted by what was happening out 

from Looe, with my first successful encounter taking place in July 1964. I remember it well as a sixteen 

year old who had just done battle with a fearsome monster from the deep. 

Least-ways, that's what the fishermen at Looe would have you believe as they went through the daily 

ritual of hauling shark corpses up on to the quay for weighing in front of terrified marvelling holiday 

makers, some of whom it was hoped would rush straight down to the tackle shop to book a trip and 

have a similar story to tell when they got home. 

This unfortunately was the first step on the slippery slope towards the decline of Looe as an angling 

port, the decline of the blue shark as a visiting species, and the decline in shark fishing interest generally 

with its over-powering tackle and barbaric ways. 

36

Plymouth and some of the surrounding ports played less to the holiday crowds. But even there the 

pursuit was tarnished, and for many years had virtually little if any following at all except for 'proper' 

anglers fishing over in Ireland. 

The discovery of good but short lived porbeagle fishing along Cornwall's north coast was probably 

another nail in blue shark fishing's coffin. 

Obviously, some blue sharks were still caught both sides of Lands End. But not in either the size or 

quantity range previously seen. And so it remained for many years until Andrew Alsop revived interest 

in the species with his exploits out of Milford Haven in Wales. 

There he has located and catches vast 

numbers of very good fish, many going over 

a hundred pounds, and some even topping the 

two hundred pound mark, including one 

which had it been brought ashore would have 

bettered the British record. 

Instead however, it was weighted at sea at 

222 pounds before being released, which 

thankfully they all are these days, providing 

a good solid platform for the species to 

recover as evidenced not only by an increase 

in average size, but catches of up to sixty fish 

and more in a single day. 

Wayne Comben, dinghy Blue Shark 

July 2016 saw a second record plus blue 

shark of 242 pounds estimated and released 

by another of Andrew Alsops clients out of Milford Haven, the captor this time being Danny Fitch. And 

again no record claim will be either made, or entertained by the British Record Fish Committee, because 

yet again the fish was not killed and weighed on solid ground as per the BRFC antiquated rules. 

As for my own recent personal exploits, these have mainly be out from Hugh Town on the Isles of 

Scilly, fishing the deep water fringing the south east of St. Mary's. 

Back in the 1980's when I first visited the place, we would get the occasional bird watcher booking on 

the trip too, as besides drawing in sharks, a rubby dubby slick will also draw in a wide variety of open 

water sea birds picking up fish particles floating on the surface. 

It was something of a novelty back then, which if nothing else gave you more fishing room on the boat. 

How things have changed. I was back there in 2006 by which time it was groups of specialist bird 

watchers booking the trips and me tucking in amongst them with the whole fishing well virtually to 

myself. 

Better still, the twitchers would bring along additional rubby dubby of their own to help attract more 

feathered interest. To me the birds were all 'seagulls,' but the twitchers would be literally wetting 

themselves with excitement over species like wilson's petrel and fork tailed skua, which are just a couple 

of the names imprinted on my brain. 

We'd be out a long way in some quite big seas at times too. But don't let that rule out the prospects of 

dinghy fishing for blue sharks which Graeme Pullen and Wayne Comben have done with great success 

on a couple of occasions recently out from Falmouth. 

Obviously you have to pick your day to be heading right off, which they did. There is however the fall 

back situation at Falmouth of staying inshore if conditions further off are not too good. 

37

The Manacles, providing you have a good chart for safe collision proof navigation, is a good area for 

conger and bass, plus of course, it has that long standing reputation for some reason of attracting in 

mako sharks. Nobody fishes for them there these days, so who knows what their current status is. Only 

one way to find out. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 54 and 144. 

SIX GILLED SHARK Hexanchus griseus 

Bucket List status – result outside of home waters 

To be more precise, the bluntnose six gilled shark, which is one of the largest growing, best distributed, 

and most common big fish in the oceans of the world. A very primitive animal related to the equally 

primitive greenland shark and seven gilled shark to name but two, with more extinct direct relatives 

than living examples. 

A fish characterised by its dorsal fin being set well back towards the origin of the tail, and its eyes, 

which look like large green jewels, having no nictitating membranes, none of which is particularly 

relevant in light of the fact that unlike all other shark species recorded on rod and line in home waters 

which have five gill slits, as the name here implies, this fish has six, and looks rather like a very large 

blunt snouted dogfish. 

A potentially huge fish which thrives on the bottom all along the continental slope down to depths of a 

thousand fathoms where it feeds on any available molluscs, crustaceans, or fish it can find, as well as 

disposing of corpses of various types that have descended from above. 

At face value then, not a fish you should expect to see on rod and line, and for the most part that is the 

case. At the time of writing, a single lone juvenile straggler of 9½ pounds taken off Penlee Point near 

Plymouth back in 1976 is the sole British rod and line example. 

38

That however isn't the entire story. This is a genuine rod and line target, even from a small trailed boat, 

and potentially the 'grander' for projects like my bucket list here, with authenticated specimens in excess 

of a thousand pounds having already been taken by anglers around the British Isles. 

The west coast of Ireland is already a proven six gill hot spot, with locations along the Scottish coast 

arguably also waiting to be discovered. 

Mixed amongst my two hundred plus audio podcasts are interviews with Irish charter skipper Luke 

Aston and Liverpool dinghy angler Mick Duff, both of whom have experience with big six gills in the 

area around Ireland's Shannon Estuary. 

El Hierro Six Gill at boat 

Mick first, fishing out of Kilkee, which is never a reliable 

prospect on account of the number of times you can't get 

out in a small boat there due to the Atlantic weather. He 

and his pals caught several on different occasions in 

around two hundred feet of water while fishing for 

common skate. 

This was in daylight too, which makes the story even 

more interesting, as six gills are said to stay out in very 

deep water by day, which in any case is close by all 

around the outer Shannon. Six gills normally only venture 

into shallower areas and up in the water column after 

dark. 

Fortunately, even huge six gills are fairly docile fish at the 

surface, which helps when bringing them up from a 

dinghy. For obvious reasons, all were cut free at the side 

of the boat with weights estimated up to around four 

hundred pounds, which in six gilled terms isn't even an 

average fish. 

I'm not sure what gear Mickey Duff used, though if he 

was targeting common skate and subsequently expecting 

big six gills, then it will have been fairly substantial. 

Going off my own experience, I did a 'biggie' once on an 

eighty pound class outfit. Graeme Pullen, who had far larger fish than mine, even managed to beat a 

'grander' on a stand-up outfit, though I personally would be a bit concerned about trying that. 

You really need to be sat comfortably when harnessed up to a huge fish in a safe way that won't see you 

suddenly vanishing over the side. This might sound dramatic, and big six gills can hardly be described 

as fighting fish, but they can pull, which added to the constant immense pressure you are already under 

from their sheer bulk, on a lumpy day could just be enough to tip the balance.....literally. 

So it's a big, wide, large capacity reel loaded to the hilt with quality powerful braid obviously due to the 

depth. Down at the business end we used quite a short wire trace of around four hundred pounds bs with 

two forged 14/0 hooks impaled into a whole bonito. 

A thousand pound six gill is over thirteen feet in length, so from the wire to the main line you will then 

need a good fifteen feet of ultra heavy mono to act as a protective rubbing strip, particularly as braid 

will have to be used for bite detection due to the depth. 

As for the take, that will be in the form of a few short tugs and pulls. That's it. Don't expect line to 

suddenly start vanishing from the reel. And last but not least, like Mick Duff, we did most of our fishing 

39

at anchor, so be aware of the fish getting around the rope, which in deep water is probably going to be 

at a steeper angle than usual. 

I have had them on the drift, but that was with the engine running bow into the tide trying to maintain 

position. Otherwise, think safety all the way through. For as docile as they often are, these are not fish 

to be messed with, particularly in a small boat, so treat them with the utmost respect. 

Luke Aston, who charters out from Carrigaholt further into the Shannon estuary, but who, weather 

permitting, spends a lot of time outside offshore fishing for all sorts of stuff, regularly has them take his 

clients baits in one particular area, and also during daylight hours. 

So again, as with Mick Duff fishing out from nearby Kilkee, he isn't targeting the six gills, and isn't 

fishing for them at supposedly the best time of day either. Yet still he catches them, with one particular 

fish brought ashore and weighed at 1,056 pounds which had scientists from all around the world 

clambering to come and collect it for research purposes as so little is known about the species. 

My biggest six gill was estimated at nine hundred pounds, though not in UK or Irish waters, something 

which is discussed in more detail in Parts 2 and 3. We also had them to 800 pounds over at Ascension. 

So I still need to get a grander of some species, which would more than likely be a six gill if I ever 

decided that I have to get that last missing tick, the time for which so far as I'm concerned has 

unfortunately passed. 

It can be done, and from what I hear from other parts of the world without too much difficulty either, 

other than the physical exertion of bringing the thing up, which from experience I know can be tough. 

Ireland currently is the leading proven contender in our corner of northern Europe. But I wouldn't rule 

out Scotland if given a proper go. 


TOPE Galeorhinus galeus 


About as typical of a shark species as any fish could possibly look, with a worldwide distribution at 

temperate latitudes, and extremely migratory in its habits. Specimens tagged here in the UK and Ireland 

have turned up as far afield as the Azores, the Canary Islands and even Iceland, very clearly 

demonstrating that whatever protection status is given to the species, must extend beyond the 

boundaries of the British Isles. 

A predominantly bottom feeding fish which for the most part comes within angling range from around 

the end of April through to quite late in the year, at which point falling sea temperatures push it back 

offshore and out of reach. 

Not a fish likely to cause much in the way of identification problems, though occasionally confusion 

does exist. Those species potentially mistaken for it, and of course visa versa, are the spurdog with its 

very obvious sharp spine in front of each dorsal fin which the tope doesn't have, and the smoothhound, 

some of which have white spots which tope lack, and all of which have a mouth resembling that of a 

ray, whereas tope are more typically shark like with lots of teeth. 

Upper colouration is a uniform greyish brown giving way to dull while below. Has a maximum growth 

potential of around one hundred pounds. 

40

Mark Ward, 71 pound Norfolk Tope I was once president, secretary, or something of that order 

within the Tope Angling Club of Great Britain (TACGB) 

during the late 1970's. I was doing a lot of rainbow trout fishing at the time on the any method hydroelectricity 

generating reservoir at Ffestiniog in North Wales, where a chap called Dick Elliot was in 

charge of the fishery side of things. 

Dick was a long standing and very well respected name on the Welsh sea angling scene, and had been 

active within the TACGB for many years right throughout the good times. 

By that stage unfortunately, interest had very obviously waned, and fearful that the imminent AGM 

might fall flat on its face, he persuaded me to attend. 

I thought it was as a journalist in the hope of drumming up some media coverage and extra support, but 

as I subsequently found out, it was as part of a potential future recruitment drive to fill any necessary 

vacant posts to keep the whole thing ticking over. 

So I was persuaded to get myself down to some big hotel in Colwyn Bay where I met the great and 

good on the tope fishing scene, including the legendary Bruce Millen, the master of catching them from 

the shore at the southern entrance to the Menai Strait over on the Anglesey side, which if for no other 

reason, made the journey down there worthwhile. 

One thing people need to realise here is that back then, not only tope fishing, but angling generally was 

still in the dark ages by comparison to the approaches and tactics we take for granted today. To describe 

typical tope gear as antiquated animal tackle would be no exaggeration, and to see dead tope piled up 

ready for dumping after a competition was the norm. 

Subsequent to that AGM, I was approached to set up a TACGB sponsored dinghy tope fishing 

competition on my home turf in Lancashire in conjunction with the Fylde Boat Angling Club, which I 

agreed to do, but only on the proviso that certain conservation rules could be put in place. 

41

The competition would be for the biggest individual fish as opposed to overall weight, and competitors 

would be required to broadcast weights immediately over their VHF radio so that everyone else would 

know to return all fish under that weight. 

Sadly, it still meant that some tope were brought ashore. But no huge pile of dead bodies, and if my 

memory serves me well, out of over two hundred tope caught across something like thirty small boats, 

no more than half a dozen were brought to the scales, which while still far from ideal, was a vast 

improvement on other events I'd witnessed in the past. 

The following year I was again persuaded to attend the AGM. Not in a hotel this time, but rather, in the 

lounge of someone's house with just four of us present – myself and Dick Elliot of course, some chap 

from Birmingham who was more interested in CB radio, and obviously, whoever it was that owned the 

house. 

In short, not enough people to occupy all the required active posts which saw us all multi-tasking, taking 

on two or even three committee roles until it could finally and legally be wound up, which shortly 

afterwards it was. 

Whether this was due to a lack of interest in tope fishing or simply in large single species clubs generally 

we will never know. The Shark Angling Club of Great Britain down at Looe endured a similar down 

turn in fortune, whereas the British Conger Club continues to thrive. The SACGB still exists, but its 

prestige has long since departed. 

Despite this, tope fishing as a pursuit has continued to be popular, and tope as a species have been the 

subject of a great deal of conservation effort, finally delivering some formalised protection, more of 

which later. So, the angling interest in the species is still very much alive. 

Unfortunately, the fish themselves have been a bit up and down at times in terms of availability, despite 

their current recreational fishing only status with a forty five kilo's per day commercial by-catch 

allowance in England and Wales, which suggests that all may not be well on the wider European scene, 

where long-lined fish only have to be retuned with no limits at all on netted fish. 

This is something the Scottish Sea Angling 

Conservation Network (SSACN) have been 

fighting on behalf of all home water anglers 

for quite some time now. So there is a 

certain irony in the fact that since protective 

legislation has finally been won by SSACN, 

stocks visiting the south west of Scotland, 

and in particular Luce Bay, appear to be 

experiencing the greatest pressure, and as 

yet nobody has been able to put their finger 

on the precise reason why. 

Rather than do a systematic sweep of the 

whole UK tope potential, some of which, if 

Tagged Tope ready for release 

I'm honest, I am not really in a position to 

comment on anyway, what I propose to do 

is offer a round-up of my own experiences, starting as you might expect on my home patch of 

Lancashire, where over the years I've had some very good fish and numerically good catches. But never 

with any real season on season consistency. 

Inshore we see a lot of small bait robbing tope hovering just either side of the double figure mark. But 

I've also had them to over fifty pounds within minutes of the beach. However, when you move further 

42

off around Shell Wharf to the south of Lune Deep, and Lune Buoy on the north side fishing along the 

Lune slope, tides allowing, bigger fish and more of them are a much better prospect. 

The patchy rough ground at the south end of Walney Island is another good area. I remember back in 

2008 going out from Fleetwood aboard Andy Bradbury's 'Blue Mink' to shoot some video and write a 

feature on a trip aimed at catching mixed species with a party from British Aerospace at Preston, which 

by default turned into a real tope trip to remember. 

Initially sticking with the game plan, the lads started off with a variety of traces and mix of baits, which 

unfortunately kept getting bitten off by tope. We finished up with over forty tope to around forty pounds, 

all of which is on YouTube, a haul made all the more creditable taking into account the fact that nobody 

had any tope gear with them. 

Other than a small spool of old wire for traces, there was nothing else suitable onboard. Imagine then 

what the final figures might have stacked up like had tope been the primary objective. 

Another memorable angling feature and video trip was a day spent aboard Stan Dickinson's Liverpool 

based 'Tusker'. The weather was perfect. A beautiful flat calm summers day at anchor many miles off 

towards a couple of rigs somewhere midway between Liverpool and Rhyl, and loads of good tope up 

to just short of fifty pounds, along with the usual huss, LSD's, plus some very nice tub gurnards. 

I suppose it would have been just as easy to hit the same area sailing out of Rhyl from where I've fished 

many times and for all manner of stuff including tope with Tony Parry aboard his boat 'Jensen II'. You 

would see some very good tope hauls out there with some very big female fish amongst them late spring 

to early summer. 

Or should I say, you did. Less so these days unfortunately in one of Tony's favourite areas, which 

features a gulley up which good numbers of big tope would run. That was until the North Hoyle and 

Rhyl Flats wind-farms were constructed and ran their power cables from North Hoyle back to shore 

right along the gulley in question. 

As I mentioned in my introduction to the cartilaginous species, sharks are very sensitive fish able to 

pick up tiny electrical signals from concealed prey fish, which for tope includes a high proportion of 

flatfish. 

Forget mackerel as an important prey fish. They make the best baits, but hardly feature at all in the 

tope's regular diet of dabs, whiting and the like. So they ran these power carrying cables emitting their 

electo magnetic fields (EMF's) right along one of the favoured pathways for tope to the north of Rhyl. 

It should have been obvious to their so-called science experts what the outcome was going to be, and 

not only to sharks and rays, but reputedly 

bass, plaice, cod and eels too if they were 

present. Yet research scientists funded by the 

energy companies concerned say there isn't a 

problem. 

What else would you expect them to say. You 

never bite the hand that feeds you. So in light 

of the many thousands more of these turbines 

that are proposed all around the country, isn't 

it about time that a meaningful independent 

investigation into EMF's as a barrier to fish 

migration and distribution is carried out. 

43

They get some very good tope fishing out of Holyhead, plus a few, though not as many as previously, 

throughout Caernarfon Bay. We've also taken some big ones in the dinghy around the base of some of 

the banks around the worryingly tidal Lleyn Peninsula. But it's further west out off Pwllheli that I've 

witnessed some of the best Welsh tope fishing over recent times. 

Around twelve miles pretty much due south of the port lie a series of shallow bouldery reefs which I'm 

told are moraines, these being deposits of solid material picked up and carried by long departed glaciers, 

hence their long finger-like shape. 

On the bigger tides throughout the summer, these are usually covered in black bream, with huss and 

tope tending to feed in the deeper water along their edges, though also willing on occasions to snatch at 

hooked bream over the tops. 

One such an occasion came in June of 2013 aboard Jason Owen's 'Haf Aled' where the tope were biting 

at our swim feeders and making off with hooked bream like there was no tomorrow. So much so that 

some of lads switched to heavier gear, taking literally dozens of the things to forty eight pounds. 

You get more tope, or you could, right along the coast of west Wales round into the Bristol Channel. I 

was given a tope lesson to remember one day off Tenby by Clive Gammon who took me out as a young 

up and coming angling journalist, a trip that also produced my first ever turbot. Nearby Swansea was 

another noted Welsh venue I fished several times. 

I've also taken them over the way on the North Devon and Cornish side too, occasionally on shark baits 

fished under a float. Graeme Pullen and I picked up a few there while fishing for porbeagles, and I know 

that they also catch, or at least hook them from some of the rock perches over-looking deep water such 

as Baggy Point which is where the current British shore record comes from. 

Moving along the mid English Channel, the Sussex Coast can be good, and further around into the 

southern North Sea, the Thames Estuary, with Bradwell in particular having an excellent track record 

both for numbers and size of individual fish. 

By far the best specimen tope I personally have seen, which weighed in at seventy one pounds, came 

out from Brancaster on the north Norfolk Coast fishing the northern entrance to The Wash, which years 

ago was a tope fishing Mecca in its own right. 

One area I haven't mentioned yet, and deliberately so, is south west Scotland, either out from Port Logan 

for the big end of season female fish, or from Drummore fishing in Luce Bay throughout the summer 

for the more numerous pack males out 

around The Scares. 

In both cases this would be with charter 

skipper Ian Burrett aboard his nineteen foot 

orkney fastliner 'Onyermarks', more often 

than not in the company of the Essex Boys 

Paul Maris and Dave Hawkeswood. 

We had some absolutely fabulous days out 

there with numerical catches up around the 

fifty fish mark, and individuals ranging 

between around thirty and almost fifty 

pounds. 

Dave Hawkswood, Luce Bay 

What also makes this so memorable is the 

fact that Ian Burrett is projects director for 

the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation 

44

Network (SSACN), and it was on these trips over the years that I observed his tactics for catching and 

handling tope evolve. 

So much so that in 2013, we made a series of short video's for the SSACN website demonstrating such 

diverse things as tope baits, tope handling, tagging and release, plus a little earlier in the year, all the 

same procedures for big common skate at Crinan on the Sound of Jura. 

In the early days, Ian and his customers would fish with carp rods and ultra-light uptiders to maximise 

the pleasure of each individual fish, which has its merits when you are not looking to catch fish to eat. 

It was also a good opportunity to practise tagging and handling and to devise the best ways of doing so 

with the least amount of stress. But more time spent on the end of the line can be a stress in its own 

right, for which reason it might be better to go slightly heavier in terms of rod, reel and line. 

Bait size and presentation was another thing that evolved over time, moving away from whole mackerel 

with their tails removed to prevent them spinning in the tide put on the hook with a baiting needle, to 

smaller half sections of a whole mackerel lightly hooked to allow for ease of taking by an interested 

fish, followed by a quick strike to minimise deep hooking.Stan Dickinson 

They also used to fish with short wire traces of around twelve inches in length attached to around six 

feet of heavy mono as a rubbing strip. That too has now changed to several feet of two hundred pounds 

bs mono without the wire. Occasionally a tope might get lucky and bite the hook off. But this would be 

an exception. 

Tope teeth can certainly damage and weaken the mono adjacent to the hook though, which if you start 

off with some surplus length in the trace, can be clipped out and retied or re-crimped. 

This is a far more user friendly approach from the point 

of view of the person taking the trace and guiding the fish 

in too, and a far cry from the six to eight feet of heavy 

duty wire fished from a billiard cue rod and huge 

multiplier loaded with fifty pound bs line that we were 

recommended to use back in the 1960's. 

The often quoted way of hooking tope, certainly when the 

sort of animal tackle I've just described was vogue, was 

to wait for the first run to end and a longer second run to 

really get under-way, then drive the hook home. 

The problem is that this much talked about short first run 

while turning the bait followed by a longer run with the 

bait properly inside the mouth is a fallacy. It might 

happen that way. But just as easily, it might not. 

Consequently, anglers were unsure when to strike 

resulting in gut hooked fish, which is a risk that need not 

be taken. 

Mackerel flappers, where the backbone is removed 

Stan Dickinson, Liverpool 

leaving the two fillets still attached to the head were 

ruled out on account of dogfish being able to mouth the 

bait easier than they can when fishing either a whole or a half fish. 

So the switch to smaller baits was made, which tends to result in less messing about on the tope's behalf, 

encouraging them to pick up and swim off taking line from reel more readily. And now through trial 

45

and error, Ian has demonstrated that a count to six when the ratchet is sounding out then putting the 

drag lever up to strike pressure usually does the trick. 

I mentioned in the introduction to the cartilaginous fishes the need for careful handling, cradled lifting, 

covering of the eyes and the like. All of this was devised and revised aboard 'Onyermarks' over the 

years. So too was the use of flattened down hook barbs with small pieces of wide rubber band pushed 

over the bump after baiting up to keep the offering in place. 

This is a particularly good trick when uptiding with squashed down barbs, as impact with the water can 

otherwise knock the bait off leaving you fishing an empty hook for ages without realising it. 

Slider float fishing suspending the bait a foot or so off the bottom to take advantage of any remaining 

movement from an otherwise dying tide towards slack water in an attempt to eke out a few extra fish 

was another successful Burrett experiment. 

With a couple of ounces of lead above the trace swivel to 

take it down and cock the float, and the reel out of gear as 

you pay out line trotting it away from the boat, this can be 

one of the most exciting ways of catching tope, which yet 

again can be viewed on YouTube. 

Two other things Ian has always been big on are mackerel 

live-baits when you can catch them to order, and rubby 

dubby. A nice long chum slick filled with blood, juices, 

and fish particles is just what the doctor ordered for all 

cartilaginous apex predators, and with that in mind, Ian's 

technique has always been to cut up and mash enough 

mackerel to fill a mesh bag, which he would then attach to 

the anchor before sending it down. 

Rubby Dubby 

Great when the boat is lying nicely in the tide with the baits 

spread out in the slick. Not so great when you get a breeze 

across the tide as it slackens taking you slightly off line. 

The trail still keeps working drawing fish up towards the 

anchor, but not necessarily under the boat, causing them 

to by-pass the baits. 

Far better to my mind to put a well weighted bag down 

over the stern which moves with the boat as or if it swings about, and can be topped up. On the other 

hand, with some of the tides they have in Luce Bay, lateral drifting may not be much of a problem, and 

getting the bag to stay down at the bottom might be. It could however be a worthwhile consideration 

for less tidal situations elsewhere. 

Ironically, and sadly, as I hinted earlier, those heady days around the turn of the century have given way 

to much leaner times in and around Luce Bay, despite SSACN driving the conservation agenda, and 

south west Scotland once having been one of the UK's most prized tope assets. 

Effective and administered legislation, certainly in the UK, may well be in place, but not across the 

remainder of Europe, which for a fish showing such strong migratory urges and carrying a set of fins 

with such a high commercial value on the Chinese market, looks increasingly unlikely to be enough. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 1 and 131 

46

COMMON SMOOTHHOUND Mustelus mustelus 


A typically shark like species with 

noticeably large powerful pectoral and 

dorsal fins, the second dorsal being very 

obviously larger than the anal fin sited 

below it. A greyish brown fish not 

dissimilar to a small sleek tope, until that is 

you turn it over and check out its mouth 

and nostrils. 

Smoothhounds with and without spots 

Here the mouth resembles that of a ray, 

with crushing nodules as opposed to 

conventional teeth lining both jaws as a 

means of dealing with hard shelled 

crustaceans. The nostrils are noticeably 

large with obvious flaps. 

That's all very well for picking out smoothhounds from other similar looking species. Not unfortunately 

for separating the smoothhound species themselves, where the only accurate way of identifying the two 

species is to check out the dermal denticles, which all cartilaginous fishes have instead of conventional 

scales, plus their respective reproductive strategies, both of which are difficult if not impossible field 

observations to make. 

The common smoothhound is viviparous producing live young, whereas the starry smoothhound is 

aplacental or ovoviviparous, meaning it has eggs which hatch within the oviducts where they remain 

and grow on, nourished by uterine milk, which as anglers, we are not in a position to investigate. 

Even a rudimentary examination of the denticles requires laboratory precision looking to see if those 

on the shoulders are rounded and ridged all the way to their tips indicating the species is M. Asterias, 

or are longer and slimmer with ridging extending only along the first half of their length as in M. 

Mustelus, all of which may well become academic and irrelevant anyway in light of recent findings. 

Getting straight to the point, because as a species Mustelus mustelus is listed as an angling catch by the 

BRFC, the Welsh, and the Scots, I have to treat it as an inclusion here, though in reality, it very likely 

should never have been listed in the first place in light of recent scientific evidence. 

This states that the species Mustelus mustelus doesn't occur at our latitude, and that ALL smoothhounds 

taken around the British Isles and most of northern Europe are the of starry variety, either with or 

without spots. 

A fuller explanation is given below under Mustelus asterias. For now, as I am basing this part of my 

bucket list on the published record lists which still display the two species, I must therefore continue to 

count it as an additional tick until such time as fish recorders see fit to combine the two inclusions as 

one. 

47

STARRY SMOOTHHOUND Mustelus asterias 


A typically shark like species with 

noticeably large powerful pectoral and 

dorsal fins, the second dorsal being very 

obviously larger than the anal fin sited 

below it. A greyish brown fish not 

dissimilar to a small sleek tope covered on 

its upper back and flanks with small white 

spots or stars, the only smoothhound species 

in fact that has these. 

Dr. Ed Farrell, Starry Smoothhound 

Like M. Mustelus above, the mouth 

resembles that of a ray, with crushing 

nodules as opposed to conventional teeth 

lining both jaws as a means of dealing with 

hard shelled crustaceans, and again the 

nostrils are noticeably large with obvious 

flaps. 

Unfortunately, the only accurate way of separating the two listed smoothhound species is to check out 

the dermal denticles which all cartilaginous fishes have instead of conventional scales, plus their 

respective reproductive strategies, both of which are difficult if not impossible field observations to 

make. 

The common smoothhound is viviparous and produces live young, whereas the starry smoothhound is 

aplacental or ovoviviparous, meaning it has eggs which hatch within the oviducts where they remain 

and grow on, nourished by uterine milk, which as anglers we are not in a position to investigate. 

Even a rudimentary examination of the denticles requires laboratory precision looking to see if those 

on the shoulders are rounded and ridged all the way to their tips indicating the species is M. Asterias, 

or are longer and slimmer with ridging extending only along the first half of their length as in M. 

Mustelus, all of which may well become academic and irrelevant in light of recent findings. 

As an evolutionary scientist myself, I have often wondered how two almost identical species with 

completely over-lapping distribution, feeding strategies, and habitat preferences, can co-exist without 

for some reason one ultimately displacing the other. 

Irish fishery researcher Dr. Ed Farrell it seems must have been thinking along similar lines, except in 

his case, he decided to tackle the question head on using DNA comparisons as the basis for his research 

and Ph. D thesis. 

Samples were provided from a number of sources dotted the UK and Ireland. In addition to these, tissue 

samples were also obtained from museum collections all around Europe, plus further afield, to get DNA 

data from reliably identified M. Mustelus against which to compare the European results, all of which, 

spots or no spots, came from the starry smoothhound M. Asterias. 

This confirmed to Ed what he already suspected, that being that European smoothhounds without spots 

are just variants on the starry layout, and that the common smoothhound M. mustelus does not occur at 

our latitude, which you could be forgiven for thinking would be a conclusive end to any argument on 

the subject. 

48

But you would be wrong. Because experts at the British Natural History Museum in London who advise 

the BRFC are not convinced. Consequently, the committee itself is not convinced. 

The Irish record fish committee have already gone for just the one inclusion, while the Welsh and Scots 

are still currently considering their position. So for now I must record them as separate species, even 

though having spoken at length to Ed Farrell, I completely accept his results and conclusions. 

From an angling perspective, the smoothhound has to be anglings greatest success story of the twenty 

first century so far, though the foundations for this were undoubtedly laid in the latter part of the 

twentieth century. 

I well remember my first encounter with the 

species at Bradwell while fishing with John Rawle 

back in the 1970's. Bob Cox, John's long time 

business partner had pondered in the press why a 

fish which hunts slow moving prey needed to 

evolve such a turn of power and speed, concluding 

that it must be God's gift to angling, a thought 

echoed by many people who regularly fish for 

them today. They are tremendous fun fish to catch. 

I next encountered them in The Solent fishing at night with Dink LeMoignan after drop netting for 

hermit crabs for bait, and later out from Penarth with Dave Lewis on peeler crab, who said at the time 

that if he had to be restricted to just one species of fish for the rest of his life, the smoothhound(s) would 

be heading up his list. And that pretty much was that. 

I knew they also occurred from maybe The Wash around into the English Channel as far west as the 

Isle of Wight. But as a dyed in the wool Lancashire dinghy angler by that stage, they were never going 

to feature too much in my plans. Or so I thought. Then, reports started circulating about the odd one or 

two showing along The Fylde Coast. 

Whether or not they had always been there and people had only just become aware of them, or had 

maybe even previously mis-identified them as small tope, is difficult to say. But in light of the situation 

both smoothhounds and sea angling find themselves in today, I think I can safely say that with hindsight, 

they started to make it into Lancashire waters during the mid 1970's, since when things have got 

better and better almost year on year. 

Why do I say this. Well locally they have become an integral part of our boat and shore fishing scene, 

particularly in the Cleveleys to Bispham area, though they don't seem to venture much further along the 

Fylde either to the south or to the north, and not too far seaward either, which for a fish which likes 

shallow inshore water is exactly what you would expect. 

But that of itself is not the reason. Back in 2005 I had an invite from 'Jensen II' skipper Tony Parry to 

take a look at the up and coming smoothhound scene in the harbour entrance at Rhyl for a magazine 

feature after one of the salmon gill netters had accidentally caught a few the summer before. Up until 

that point, smoothhounds weren't on the Rhyl radar. 

Just prior to my visit, Tony tried a few early exploratory trips fishing peeler crab almost up to the shore 

and they were most definitely there. So now it was time to tell the world, and a great days fishing 

ensued. 

49

Nothing bigger that around seven pounds, 

but plenty of them, and by all accounts, a 

brand new potential that had just presented 

itself as opposed to being something 

previously over-looked. 

Smoothhound on crab 

So they'd appeared off Lancashire's Fylde 

coast, presumably moving from south to 

north as nobody beyond the Cleveleys area 

had reported encountering them, and had 

somehow by-passed other north-west venues 

in-between. Then some years later they 

suddenly started back filling, first at Rhyl, 

then over the banks either side of the 

revetment walls leading out of the Mersey. 

Morecambe now has them too, with specimens also showing up in Cumbria. But the biggest surprise of 

all has been Scotland, where they have now installed themselves in vast numbers throughout Luce Bay 

right around into Wigtown Bay. 

So many in fact that Drummore charter skipper and fishing friend Ian Burrett invited me up to do a 

feature fishing for them out from Ardwell, as ever, tucked quite close in to the shore fishing with peeler 

crab, again with big numbers of small to average sized fish. 

They say smoothhounds like sandy to gravelly ground, but off the Fylde coast it can be quite heavy. 

Lots of rough stuff interspersed with small patches of sand lying under around thirty feet of water. 

Elsewhere in the country, inshore shallow waters also appear to be favoured, so no real problem in 

locating fish. 

No real problem either in catching them, though as ever, some tactics and baits are going to work better 

than others, which can and will vary locally, so some homework may also need to be done. 

As a general trend, from the shore it's peeler crab, preferably after dark over the late spring and summer 

months, whereas out in the boat, daylight fishing is more the norm, preferably uptiding if the water is 

very shallow. 

If not, then with a light drop down outfit, yard long flowing trace of forty to fifty pounds bs mono and 

a 4/0 hook, or even a mono trace tipped off with a short length of wire if tope are knocking about. And 

of course, the right bait. 

Smoothhounds in my experience will readily take squid, worm and crab. In fact, some of my biggest 

smoothies have come to a whole calamari fished early season for tope before the mackerel have arrived. 

I've even had the odd one on fish baits, though I wouldn't recommend trying them. 

You can also look at baits as much for what they might deter such as nuisance dogfish or un-wanted 

tope bite-off's as what they attract, particularly if the intended target doesn't seem too fussed either way. 

Obviously, peeler crab is tops. Unfortunately dogfish love them too, and there are far more of those 

critters about these days than hungry hounds. So in the summer of 2014 we took to catching hard backed 

crabs for bait on a kids crab line in the local boating lake for a YouTube video and feature for Sea 

Angler Magazine. 

Had we had suitable crab hunting territory along the shoreline we would have tried there instead. But a 

hard backed crab with the rear of its shell cracked or lifted up and lightly hooked will usually lie there 

untroubled by dogs until a smoothhound finds it, and they quite literally love them. 

50

There are lots of good smoothhound holding areas around the country. Too many to name here, and not 

all of them by a long chalk known to me. The local grapevine should satisfy that particular need. What 

I would like to do is point the finger in the direction of a couple capable to turning up better than average 

individual fish. 

Many venues will produce the occasional specimen from time to time. I've had them to just over fifteen 

pounds off Cleveleys, and one of Andy Bradbury's clients aboard 'Blue Mink' lost an absolute monster 

at the surface as it ran through all the other lines, chafing and finally parting his braid on somebody 

else's mono. 

What I'm talking about here is consistency, and in that regard, two particular venues spring to mind. 

One is Bradwell which has a vast array of marks to visit making it difficult to be more precise. 

The other is Holyhead fishing just across the way from the breakwater in and around Church Bay, where 

good doubles and occasionally fish of over twenty pounds are caught late spring to early summer on 

crab. Interestingly, the current Welsh record tope of seventy nine pounds was also caught here on a 

smoothhound trip. 

Currently, smoothhounds are one of the few species in home waters that are not under any sort of 

sustained commercial pressure, and as a result are doing very well. That unfortunately is most definitely 

not the case in other parts of the European Union where they are targeted commercially. 

A load of butchered carcasses and juvenile smoothhounds was found washed up on the Isle of Wight in 

2014 causing an Internet outcry, and rightly so, prompting fears of either EU trawling, or more probably 

some 'enterprising' UK commercial fisherman looking to make a killing and a quick buck. 

I've not heard of any repeat of that episode so far. Having the story splattered all over the press may 

well have had a deterrent effect. Either way, we must do all within our powers to see that our coastal 

smoothhound stocks remain safe as a recreational resource. 


SPURDOG Squalus acanthias 


From being the most abundant small shark in 

northern European waters to the verge of 

extinction in my angling lifetime, now, 

thankfully, with protective measures in place 

requiring that all spurdogs, both recreational 

and commercial be returned, the species is 

hopefully embarked very tentatively on the 

long slow road to recovery. 

Stuart Cresswell, Loch Sunart 

Unfortunately, a fact not helped by its own 

reproductive biology, as all cartilaginous 

species produce very small numbers of 

offspring, which even if they all survived, 

could at best only ever facilitate a moderately 

quick recovery. 

In the case of the Spurdog, although it can 

give birth to as many as a dozen pups 

51

(though typically less), having a gestation period of up to twenty two months, which is the longest in 

the entire animal kingdom, only exacerbates the problem. 

For those reasons, not too many current generation anglers will be that familiar with the species. Not 

that this will affect identification in any way, as this is the only home waters shark to have a large 

prominent sharp spine in front of each of its two dorsal fins. 

Colouration is some shade of grey on the back and upper flanks with a scattering of white spots which 

may not always be immediately noticeable. 

I remember once writing that anglers don't so much find spurdogs as spurdogs find anglers, after which 

it was often a struggle to shake them off. 

You sometimes had to move literally miles to be in with a chance of catching anything else, as the huge 

grey swarm of aquatic locusts went about its business of cleaning up everything edible in its path. 

Sometimes they would even swim up to the surface in their dozens following one of their hooked 

compatriots to the boat. 

Obviously, those days are long gone, and certainly won't be back within my life-time, if ever at all. It 

would be nice if they were, even at a fraction of the numbers back then, but most unlikely ever again to 

be so. 

Hopefully they would get a much better deal this time around, including from anglers, many of whom, 

myself included, treated not only the spurdog shoals, but all species back then as if stocks were 

inexhaustible, which we now know only too well is not the case. 

In embarrassingly scant defence of that snippet of history, quite frankly, we didn't know any better, so 

we'd keep pretty much every one that came into the boat, which if you happened to be over a shoal of 

pregnant females, as spurdogs tend to knock around in same sex shoals, the whole deck could be awash 

with aborted yolk sac pups further adding to the carnage. 

I'm told that if the pups aren't aborted too prematurely and are handled carefully they can survive if put 

into the water straight away, though I don't have any direct evidence for that. But shamefully, I'm not 

even sure we did that. 

We just took everything for granted, which 

combined to what the long-liners would 

later ultimately do once they cottoned on to 

their commercial value, plunged sea 

angling into a dark period of not seeing a 

single spurdog from one season to the next 

for the best part of two decades and more. 

There were still a few small isolated pockets 

just about managing to hang on here and 

there. But it was quite literally just a few. 

Mainly in Scotland in the Firth of Lorne and 

Sound of Mull area, with Loch's Etive and 

Sunart, which are part of this system, in 

particular acting as pupping and nursery 

Dorsal fin spur 

areas, which thanks to sustained pressure 

from the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network (SSACN) have now become conservation zones 

from which hopefully the species might be able to re-establish itself. 

52

But it was a long hard fought campaign. Every time a fishery minister was approached with any sort of 

conservation requirement request, the stalling technique of asking to see hard evidence was brought 

into play. 

So SSACN set about gathering that evidence through organised angling tagathons, acoustic tag 

recorders at the narrow entrance to Loch Etive, and many other similarly innovative data generating 

projects, all of which involved anglers. 

I took part in two of those tagathons on Loch Sunart, the first in the company of SSACN projects 

director Ian Burrett on his boat 'Onyermarks', and later with event organisers Stuart Cresswell and Willie 

Kennedy aboard their trailed boat, where in the second event, Gordon Goldie re-caught a spurdog he 

himself had tagged in the same spot three years earlier. Now what are the chances of that. 

As a result, slowly but surely the data built up to be collated and interpreted by SSACN's own fishery 

science team, until not only did the Scottish government relent in respect of Loch's Etive and Sunart, 

but also with protection for adult spurdogs, tope, and common skate to name but three species, all of 

which was also down to the efforts of SSACN on anglings behalf, not only here in the UK, but right 

across Europe too. 

The war is still far from won. That said, spurdogs are not too difficult to catch now in 2015 throughout 

that corner of Scotland, and are even starting to put in a regular showing in the deep water from Port 

Logan down to the Mull of Galloway, where back in the 1970's they were present in vast numbers. 

They can also now be relied upon in the deeper waters around Anglesey in Wales, especially Holyhead 

Deep, with reports starting to come in from other deep water locations dotted all around the country. 

Anglers thankfully can now target them once 

again, as I have myself with Gethyn Owen out 

from Holyhead recently for a magazine 

feature, only this time around, with the species 

welfare always the foremost consideration. 

That these fish must go back, morally as well 

as legally, is now a given. But the mere act of 

returning a fish doesn't necessarily ensure that 

it is going to survive, though we know from 

tagged recaptures that with the right level of 

care and attention, there is no reason at all 

why that shouldn't be the case. 

Ralf Stevenson, Holyhead Deep 

As regards fishing for spurdogs, rod, reel and 

line choice will be dictated by water depth 

and tidal demands rather than the size of the fish themselves, which under ideal conditions could easily 

be handled on a twelve pound class outfit. 

Top bait for me is a fresh mackerel-squid cocktail, though either of the two on its own will still catch 

well, as indeed will most fish baits, as these are not particularly demanding fish, which was perhaps 

part of their earlier downfall. 

My personal preference is to fish a short sixty pounds bs mono flowing trace armed with a 4/0 that has 

had its barb squashed down using a pair of pliers. Having the 'bump' this creates helps keep the bait in 

place, though pushing the hook point through a quarter inch piece cut from a wide rubber band after 

baiting up, then sliding it up over the 'bump' will help ensure it stays put. 

53

You can also catch them on other rigs including baited feathers. But why would anybody who isn't fishmongering 

want to be hauling up two or more fish at a time, each fighting against the other, thereby 

cancelling out their individual sporting attributes. 

One fish at a time using a landing net and quickly getting them back into the water is what's needed to 

ensure their continued revival, and for my part, make some sort of recompense for what went on in the 

past. 


BULL HUSS Scyliorhinus stellaris 


Picking out the dogfishes generally from 

the rest of the sharks is easy enough. 

Unfortunately, pinning exactly the right 

name on the specimen in question is at 

times something a number of anglers still 

find problematic. Lesser spotted dogfish 

are the other similar species responsible 

here for this confusion. 

Bull Huss & LSD nasal flaps 

When you have a 'dog' in double figures, 

you don't even need to think LSD. It's when 

weights come is at under five pounds that 

people seem to struggle. Time then for a 

full LSD – bull huss comparison, starting 

with colouration and markings, which are 

sometimes helpful, but can also be very 

variable, over-lapping, and therefore 

confusing too. 

Text book huss are generally sandy brown with large well spaced dark spots scattered over their back, 

flanks, and upper fin surfaces. But in reality, not always. Over heavy kelpy ground for example the 

spots can be smaller and denser giving an almost completely black upper body similar to that of an LSD 

over the same terrain. 

The archetypal LSD will also have a sandy brown base colouration, but with much smaller more tightly 

packed spots which often form light and dark vertical bands along the length of the body. 

The fool proof way of separating the two is to look at the positioning of the fins and at the nasal flaps 

on the underside of the head close to the mouth. If the nasal flaps overlap the upper jaw and are joined, 

one running on into the other, it's an LSD. If not and they are obviously individually separated and set 

well up the snout away from the upper lip, then it's a bull huss. 

As for the fins, in the LSD, the point at the back end of the anal fin lies directly under the base or start 

of the first dorsal fin located above it, whereas with the bull huss, the rear point where the anal fin 

actually joins to the body lines directly under the base or start of the first dorsal fin above it. 

There was time when I looked upon bull huss as being almost as much of a nuisance as LSD's. It was 

only the fact that there were fewer of them about that kept them from being treated with equal contempt. 

Then one day while out fishing over Holyhead Deep for a magazine feature aboard Gethyn Owen's boat 

'My Way', I had a 'road to Damascus moment'. 

54

The object of the exercise was to catch spurdogs, which were just starting to show some early signs of 

recovery after the commercial battering they had previously taken pushing them literally to the brink of 

extinction. Obviously, if caught, they would all be going back. What we needed was camera fodder to 

make the proposed comeback and conservation magazine article work. 

After a few hours inshore catching pollack and wrasse around the cliffs patiently waiting for The Deep's 

ferocious run to ease, Gethyn decided to head off half an hour earlier than planned, which meant a good 

pound and a half of lead would initially be needed for even a shot at touching bottom until the tide died 

away. 

Not that this affected the fishing. People were in straight away, struggling, and loving every minute of 

it, catching big bull huss as fast as they could get their baits down to them. 

I remember remarking to Gethyn that this was no good, which it wasn't from my perspective. But he 

soon put me straight, as did the other lads on-board. For while I needed to see spurs and they were also 

hoping to connect with a few tope, the huss were not a problem to them, nor to many other charter boat 

anglers around much of the country either for whom they can often represent the biggest and hardest 

fighting fish a lot of them will ever hook. There endeth the lesson. 

Huss can also be caught quite regularly from 

the shore in parts of north Devon and 

Cornwall, plus around the Lleyn Peninsula 

in Wales where there is deep enough water 

to cast a big bait out onto mixed to rocky 

ground close in to safe accessible cliff 

perches. 

Squid and mackerel cocktail 

Specialist shore anglers it seems can't get 

enough of them for the same reason as 

already outlined for many boat anglers. 

Especially during the spring when big 

heavily pregnant females come in close to 

deposit their egg cases, the corner tendrils 

of which wrap around weed stems to anchor 

them in position hidden from view. 

Close inshore like this they are definitely more nocturnal in their feeding than further off. It probably 

won't matter much what rig is used in purely presentational terms. But from a getting gear and/or the 

fish in without any hang-ups perspective, a single hook pulley rig has to be favourite. 

It has to be said though that huss are almost exclusively a boat anglers fish, preferring a bit of depth 

over their heads over mixed or broken through to heavy ground. They will stray out onto the cleaner 

stuff, but mixed topography seems to suit their feeding needs better, offering more in the way of 

variation and opportunity, as huss will eat virtually anything. 

Not that this influences what it's best to put on the hook. Some say fresh mackerel is king, while others 

prefer squid. Both catch well, and a cocktail of the two is even better. But they will eat just about any 

sort of suitably sized fish bait. 

I even had one come up having half chocked itself trying to swallow a small codling that had beaten it 

to the bait. Though not actually hooked, that fish simply refused to let the codling go right up to the side 

of the boat. 

Huss actually are renowned for coming to the surface clinging on to baits without having taken the 

hook, only to let go right at the very last moment and arrogantly swimming away. Very frustrating. 

55

Most rods and reels can handle huss, so that aspect of fishing for them is down to personal preference 

or local requirements. Because of the way they squirm and contort their bodies in the water, they are 

more of a dogged dead weight to haul in than an actual fight in the way that most free swimming species 

such as smoothhounds and tope are. No need then to fish too heavy. 

I remember a session we did in the dinghy close in to Blackpool's south pier on a day when the weather 

looked too ominous to be heading any further offshore, so I decided to fish with a light pike lure rod 

and fixed spool, not expecting much other than LSD's, gurnards, and a few dabs. 

Unexpectedly, that session brought us over twenty huss to around fourteen pounds which the flimsy 

outfit managed no problem at all. That came after the Holyhead trip mentioned earlier, and helped 

reinforce my new found outlook on the species. 

Typically that day, I used a flowing trace made up from four feet of heavy mono of around sixty pounds 

bs with a 4/0 hook. You don't need wire. So long as the mono is checked in the vicinity of the hook for 

tooth damage which can be clipped out and retied when necessary, you're not going to loose fish through 

trace failure, unless of course a tope comes along, which at some locations can be a distinct possibility. 

Heavy mono and a strong hook should also allow you to trace haul small to average fish on-board, 

though a landing net is always preferable. Then, as with the LSD's, to avoid hand contact while 

retrieving the hook, use a gemini T-bar disgorger. 

Never the best of fish to hold as anyone who has ever struggled to pose one for a photograph can testify, 

so the less hands on contact you have the better. Get it in, get it off, and get it away. 

56

LESSER SPOTTED DOGFISH Scyliorhinus canicula 


Picking out the dogfishes generally from the 

rest of the sharks is easy enough. 

Unfortunately, pinning exactly the right 

name on the specimen in question is 

something a number of anglers still find 

problematic. Bull huss are the other similar 

species here responsible for this confusion. 

Bull Huss & LSD fin layout and markings 

variable, over-lapping, and therefore confusing too. 

When you have a 'dog' in double figures you 

don't even need to think LSD. It's when 

weights come is at under five pounds that 

people seem to struggle. Time then for a full 

LSD – bull huss comparison, starting with 

colouration and markings, which are 

sometimes helpful, but can also be very 

Text book huss are generally sandy brown with large well spaced dark spots scattered over their back, 

flanks, and upper fin surfaces. But not always. Over heavy kelpy ground for example, the spots can be 

smaller and denser, giving an almost completely black upper body similar to that of an LSD over the 

same terrain. 

The archetypal LSD will also have a sandy brown base colouration, but with much smaller tightly 

packed spots which often form light and dark vertical bands along the length of the body. 

The fool proof way of separating the two is to look at the positioning of the fins and the nasal flaps on 

the underside of the head close to the mouth. If the nasal flaps overlap the upper jaw and are joined, one 

running on into the other, it's an LSD. If not and they are obviously individually separated and set well 

up the snout away from the upper lip, then it's a bull huss. 

As for the fins, in the LSD, the point at the back end of the anal fin lies directly under the base or start 

of the first dorsal fin located above it, whereas with the bull huss, the rear point where the anal fin 

actually joins to the body lines directly under the base or start of the first dorsal fin above it. 

If you want or need advice on catching lesser spotted dogfish, then if I'm honest, this account, and more 

probably this entire book are perhaps not for you. Advice on avoiding them; now that would be another 

matter altogether. Most of us can't, often at the expense of good baits and time wasted, both of which 

are aimed at targeting better fish. 

Something has happened in recent years that for most parts of the British Isles has brought dogfish 

numbers, or cat sharks as some scientists are now preferring to call them, up to almost epidemic levels. 

We always had a few here off my native Lancashire coast for example. But back in the 1970's on into 

the early 80's, you could safely put out a mackerel bait over the summer months and expect it to lay 

there until a tope or the occasional bull huss picked it up. Rarely an LSD. 

You can't unfortunately do that these days. Now anything and everything on pretty much any type of 

rig is destined to get dogged, sometimes well on into late autumn and early winter when they used to 

be gone. In fact, in some years now they don't even go at all. 

There's no doubting that rising sea temperatures and milder winters are contributing to this fact. But the 

problem goes deeper; very much deeper, and not only off the Fylde coast. 

57

Pretty much of all of Western Britain and Ireland is now affected, as is the English Channel running 

around into the North Sea. Less so further up into the North Sea where cod and ling dominate, though 

there are increasing reports of LSD's in that area too. 

What the reason is has yet to be officially identified and corrected, and I fear might take a lot of scientific 

input to accurately resolve. 

For my part, I suspect that extra food made available by commercial species being over-cropped is at 

least part of the problem. In addition to that, LSD's are hardy fish which nobody takes; they lack 

widespread predation, and are willing to eat almost anything. 

Like the supposed survival of cockroaches on land after a nuclear war, LSD's look set to out-survive 

everything and inherit the seas. What's left in the sea that is after all the plunder, pollution, dumping, 

and temperature fluctuations have done their worst. 

For those that do want a bit of advice on deliberately catching LSD's, and I'll wager there can't be many, 

then you' have definitely come to the right person here. 

I remember a session dinghy fishing in the Sound of Mull when collectively we had twenty four LSD's 

onboard of which I caught twenty three. 

On another occasion, again dinghy fishing this time out of Ballycastle in Northern Ireland looking to 

see what might be lurking at depth around Rathlin Island, I managed to haul one up from well over five 

hundred feet. 

Similarly, fishing the Sound of Jura for common skate and hoping to pick up a black mouthed dog on 

squid baited feathers. While others around me succeeded, again all I could get was LSD's. So I have 

something of a track record here. If I can't catch them, then usually nobody can. 

58

One of the few occasions when I can recall 

managing to avoid them completely while 

others around me were 'blessed' was while 

experimenting with limpets as bait to see 

what they might catch offshore. The answer 

turned out to be nothing, not even dogs, so 

still no miracle cure there. 

Unusual spot markings 

One way I have found of avoiding them over 

the summer months is when using hard 

backed crab which smoothhounds seem to 

love almost as much as peeler crab, and at 

virtually no cost all all, nor losses to the 

dogs, which are equally partial to peelers 

given the chance. 

If on the other hand I had to pick a bait to recommend, or in my case to avoid, it would be squid, run a 

close second by freshly caught mackerel, then worm, and that goes for both the boat and from the shore. 

As for presentation, it doesn't seem to matter from the boat so long as it's either at or close to the bottom, 

which baits cast from the shore at range invariably will be anyway due to the angle of the line. And 

expect more action as the tides starts to drop away. 

The only other point I would add here is to invest in a Gemini T-bar disgorger. The perfect easy to use 

hook retrieval tool without any need to handle the fish at all, and therefore no risk of having that rough 

LSD skin cause painful scuff wounds to the backs of your hands. 

BLACK MOUTHED DOGFISH Galeus melastomus 


A beautiful, delicate, amazing looking 

small shark species. Superficially similar 

to a lesser spotted dogfish in terms of 

anatomical layout, though slightly 

stumpier looking and with a tendency not 

to squirm around or even move much at 

all, quietly waiting for the hook to be 

removed so it can go back, which in all 

cases it must. 

Andy Griffith, Black Mouthed Dogfish 

A deep water fish widespread throughout 

northern Europe at depths traditionally 

beyond the regular reach of anglers baits, 

but one which does occasionally come 

within catching range, though still at 

depth, where even deeper water is 

immediately adjacent. 

Correct identification is easy due to the unusual patterning consisting of large round connecting blotches 

across the back and flanks with lighter margins at their lower edges. 

59

The nostrils are well separated from each other and from the mouth, the interior of which, as the name 

suggests, is very noticeably black. As with other deep water sharks, the eye looks like a green jewel. 

With my track record of catching dogfish you would have thought that ticking the black mouthed variety 

off my list would be a mere formality. 

Unfortunately not so, though I do have first-hand experience of the fish from a number of locations, 

including the deep water around Gibraltar where we were fishing for bluemouth. But always on 

somebody else's hook. In particular when fishing the common skate grounds either out of Crinan on the 

Sound of Jura, or both the Firth of Lorne and Sound of Mull. 

Much of my fishing around the Mull area has been from small boats, but there are also a number of 

charter boats working out from Oban which overlooks some of the deepest water, and therefore 

potentially at least, the best BMD opportunities. 

Mackerel feathers baited with small strips of squid are as good a ploy as any. Stick at it for long enough 

(or not in my case) and eventually one should come along mixed in amongst the inevitable stream of 

LSD's and spurdogs. 

MONKFISH Squatina squatina 


Monkfish, or angel sharks as we are now 

being persuaded to call them, look like an 

intermediate stage in cartilaginous fish 

evolution from a round body shape to a flat 

one, with the monkfish not having made the 

full transition, yet. 

But neither does it have the full rounded 

body profile more typical of sharks, making 

it a very difficult fish to put the wrong name 

to on account of its broad flattened front end 

and shark like hind quarters. 

Both the pectoral and the pelvic fins are 

extended horizontally outwards, but unlike 

in the skates and rays, these are not fused to 

the head, therefore creating only a semi-ray 

like profile. On the other hand, in common 

with the skates and rays, the two small dorsal 

fins are situated well back towards the tail. 

Dawn Williams, 55 pound Monkfish 

There is no anal fin on the underside, and 

unusually amongst sharks, with which, as the 

name angel shark suggests, this fish is 

classed, the lower lobe of the caudal fin or 

tail is slightly longer than the upper, and is a 

true upright fin. 

The eyes are very noticeably small and set well apart from the spiracles. Colouration is usually some 

shade of sandy brown to grey with a light flecked pattern depending on substrate and location. 

60

When they were more numerous than today, they would migrate both inshore and northwards over the 

summer months, preying on whatever small fish, molluscs, or crustaceans their fairly sedate way of life 

would allow them to catch. 

That unfortunately is no longer the case, and it's doubtful whether current Europe-wide protection 

requiring that all monkfish, be they commercially or recreationally caught must be returned, stands any 

real chance of turning the home waters situation around now at this late stage. 

Never at any time was this a common fish, but one distributed sufficiently well that a few specimens 

both could and would turn up every year pretty much anywhere around the British Isles. 

West Wales was a regular producer if that be the right term. I've seen them out from Porthmadog, 

Pwllheli, and Aberystwyth, and know anglers also used to catch them at some of the other ports nearby 

such as Aberdovey. 

A few also in south Wales, parts of the mid to eastern English Channel, and even occasionally the 

Lancashire coast all help give a flavour of their recent history. Then, suddenly, nothing. And by that I 

mean I haven't heard of even a single one caught anywhere over the past thirty or so years. 

The last one I saw was a fifty five pounder caught by wife Dawn in the Canary Islands where they are 

making a comeback. Yet we used to catch them virtually to order over the water in County Kerry. We'd 

put the boat in at the side of Fenit Pier, then motor back inland following the shoreline of Tralee Bay 

until we came to one particular old farm building that had a rusty corrugated tin roof. That was our cue 

to start creeping carefully inshore. 

We couldn't have been in much more than four feet of water and would be taking care not to run 

aground. Then suddenly, the depth would creep down a few more feet as we crossed the lip of a small 

shallow saucer like depression no more than a stones throw from the beach, famously known as the 

'monk hole'. 

Somewhere mid point we would put the anchor down 

followed by traces made up from four feet of eighty pounds 

bs mono tied to a 6/0 hook baited with half a fresh mackerel 

if we could find a few to the seaward side of Fenit Pier 

before heading inland, then we'd sit back and wait. 

Nothing we ever caught in there gave a running take. Just 

a few pulls and tugs, or maybe a yard or so of line clicked 

out slowly against the ratchet. But always plenty of 

interest, and plenty of fish. And as the name suggests, the 

place was a holding ground for big monkfish. 

Fortunately, that wasn't all it attracted. Small eyed and 

thornback rays were also plentiful there too. We even had 

a few stingrays, along with huss, and maybe an occasional 

small tope. But it was the monkfish that were the big draw. 

Probably on account of their size and novelty value more 

than anything, because they didn't put up that much of a 

fight, despite regularly being in the forty to sixty pound 

bracket. 

Phill Williams, Fenit 1986 

Let me re-phrase that to read they didn't put up much of a 

fight in the water. Because it was so shallow, they were up 

and at the boat in no time at all just lying there waiting for 

61

the next thing to happen, which of course was the landing net, and that they most definitely didn't like. 

We had with us a huge purpose built landing net made up for the winter jumbo cod we were taking 

throughout the 1980's along Lancashire's Fylde coast. That unfortunately didn't see the Irish trip out. 

One particular fish broke its way out through the bottom ending up back in the water being played 

through the hole in the mesh, which we later repaired, only to have the frame wrecked a day or so later. 

When you got them into the boat it was even worse. They turned from docile almost willing participant 

into a good impression of crazed crocodile. Very powerful fish too. Difficult to settle down, retrieve the 

hook from, then get back over the side, for which reason we didn't take too many photographs thinking 

that their availability would never end and that we could always get some pictures another time. 

Obviously, that wasn't the case. The following year we returned and caught virtually nothing. We heard 

that some 'live for today' commercial fisherman had also decided to pay the spot a visit, and in common 

with the UK just over the way, that as they say was the end of that. 

Tralee Bay does in fact still have the Irish Monkfish record, but unfortunately it dates way back. More 

recently however, the whole bay has been voluntarily closed to commercial fishing, though not to 

angling, in the hope that monkfish and undulate ray populations might start to re-establish themselves 

now that the pair have been given both ICES red list as well as Europe-wide legal protection. Fingers 

crossed. Only time will tell. 


FLAPPER SKATE Dipturus intermedia & BLUE SKATE Dipturus flossada 

Formerly the Common Skate 

Bucket List status – result (D. intermedia) 

62

With its recent history, can there be any more inappropriately named species of fish in the sea than the 

common skate. A name that is still in regular widespread use but has actually now been consigned to 

the waste bin, which on reflection is probably no bad thing. 

It all started when along with a couple of other skate and ray species, the common skate was taken out 

of the genus Raja and placed into the genus Dipturus. Then shortly afterwards, it was discovered that 

what had been thought of as one species with the new scientific name of Dipturus batis was in fact two 

very similar species. 

That name too has also now had to be binned in favour of two new names, which are the flapper skate 

Dipturus intermedia, and the blue skate Dipturus flossada, the unfortunate knock on consequence of 

which is that we've now gone from what was one of the easiest and most straight forward name pinning 

exercises to one of the hardest, as flapper skate and blue skate are so much alike, hence the earlier 

confusion. 

The big knock on question this then throws up is who previously caught what, and which species 

currently holds the British, Irish and Scottish records. Something the fish recorders are going to have to 

come to terms with and sort out ASAP. Meanwhile, we now have two identification sequences to go 

through. 

The five main points of difference are........ 

1. Eye colour: Both the easiest to determine and arguably the key identifier. In the flapper skate it is 

dark green or olive, whereas in the blue skate it is a pale yellow. 

2. Blotches on the wings: Flapper skate have dark blotches covered in lighter yellowish spots, whereas 

blue skate have dark blotches ringed by yellowish brown. 

3. Tail Spines: To say that these are larger and more prominent in flapper skate is of little help unless a 

direct comparison can be made, which is one field observation anglers will not be in a position to make. 

4. Dorsal fins: As in all skates and rays, these are set well back towards the end of the tail. In the case 

of blue skate, the gap between them is very small, whereas in flapper skate it's approximately half a fin 

width wide. 

5. Teeth: Again, not something for anglers to undertake as a field observation, if for no other reason 

than their own safety, plus of course the well being of the fish. 

Otherwise you are looking at potentially the largest skate(s) in European waters, with a long angular 

pointed snout and dirty greyish white underside covered in tiny mucus pores, each of which is marked 

with a black spot. Upper surface colour and markings can vary between grey and brown with a sparse 

covering of lighter blotches and black dots. 

Size alone will help eliminate most other smaller skate and ray species. If an individual is over forty 

pounds, the likelihood is that it's going to be either a flapper skate or a blue skate. If not, the CSI process 

kicks in. 

My understanding is that while the two species do overlap geographically, fish caught in what are (or 

now were) traditional common skate haunts along the west coast of Scotland are flapper skate D. 

intermedia, which as it turns out is the bigger of the two species. 

Blue skate D. flossada are said to have a marked southerly bias and are more likely to be the ones found 

in the Irish Sea and Celtic Sea, making the likelihood of fish caught off the southern Irish coast being 

blue skate. 

63

All very confusing and still early days yet in trying to untangle the situation, not helped by the many 

similarities between the two species. NOTE: From here on in and elsewhere in the book, I am still 

going to refer to the two as common skate. 

When I first started fishing, Shetland and Orkney were the top home waters venues for huge skate. 

There probably are still skate to be caught at both these locations, and as likely as not, access as much 

as decline will have played some part in reduced visitor participation. 

I fished both locations when they were in their hey day, and while Orkney fell well short of expectation, 

Dury Voe in Shetland produced some very good fish, which in the company of a bonus one hundred 

and sixty seven pound halibut on one of the skate baits, were all brought to the scales, a practise 

regularly repeated elsewhere at the time. 

Is it any wonder then that population 

numbers started to crash, sounding alarm 

bells in the corridors of academia hundreds 

of miles to the south in Glasgow. For it was 

there that the first tentative moves towards 

skate conservation were made. 

Dr. Dietrich Burkel & Ian Burrett, Crinan 

Instrumental amongst other people in all of 

this was Dr. Dietrich Burkel, who I talked 

with at length on the subject in 2013 just 

before his death. A day when with a touch 

of both irony and justice, his last ever fish 

turned out to be a male skate of just over a 

hundred pounds which he and Ian Burrett 

tagged and released. 

To cut a long story short, back in those earliest days, catch and release, tagging, and measurement data, 

were all collected and put on file at Glasgow museum where Dietrich worked. And there they remained 

for many years, long after his departure back to Germany until Brian Little and Davy Holt took the 

project over, adding much more data of their own from fish brought aboard Davy's boat based at 

Lochaline on the Sound of Mull. 

This ultimately lead to the compilation of the separate weight estimation tables for both male and female 

fish which most anglers happily use today, and which are said to be accurate to within around 5%. Not 

that this has cut any ice with the various record fish committee's. 

They still insist that all fish are brought ashore and weighed on firm ground as part of their record claims 

procedure rules, putting them squarely at odds with the law, which states that all so called common 

skate must be returned at the point of capture. 

Despite this, in the years before legal protection, Bill and Davy pressed on compiling the two separate 

weight estimation charts, because not only are the sexes proportioned slightly differently, but their 

maximum growth potential differs greatly too. 

It's the females that are potentially the big ones. Males rarely exceed around one hundred and forty 

pounds, and would be more typically nearer the hundred pound mark. Females on the other hand have 

the capacity to well top three hundred pounds. 

To compensate, despite the size differential, male fish often give a far better account of themselves 

when hooked. Another point worth mentioning here is that when you find a productive area, segregation 

of the sexes can also be evident, with the males forming small pods well away from where the females 

are foraging. 

64

Getting back to the history of those early tagging and 

measuring days, skate were still a single species Raja 

batis, and one which was in virtual free fall beyond mere 

decline, almost to the point of virtual extinction. 

The Swinbank brothers chartering out of Tobermory on 

the Isle of Mull were still catching and releasing a few, 

including the current British record of 227 pounds taken 

in 1986, which despite the rules laid down by the BRFC, 

was as I understand it, weighed on a gantry fitted to the 

boat and later released. 

They fished both in the Sound of Mull, and weather 

permitting, out in more open water as far north as 

Ardnamurchan Point, building for themselves quite a 

deserved reputation for a range of species of which huge 

skate were just one. 

No doubt other people would be fishing for the skate as 

well, particularly out from Oban at the other end of the 

Sound of Mull. But it wasn't until Ian Burrett and a few 

of his friends started taking a serious look at the species Keith Armishaw (Angling Heritage) PB 

after the Swinbank brothers had sold their boat on to 

Andy Jackson on Loch Sunart, that the future of skate fishing, and skate as a viable species, would take 

a very dramatic upturn. 

Ian chartered back then from a nineteen foot fastliner out of Drummore on Luce Bay over the summer 

months, fishing for tope and pollack where he has long operated an uncompromising all fish must be 

returned policy, fearful of the consequences indiscriminate and un-necessary taking of fish can have on 

vulnerable and localised populations. 

However, Luce Bay unfortunately does not fish well over the winter and early spring period, providing 

Ian and his friends with the opportunity to hitch up the trailer, and either pleasure fish or explore. 

Though I'd done magazine features with Ian previously in Luce Bay, I bumped into him for the first 

time socially on Loch Sunart, which lies at the northern end of the Sound of Mull. Dave Devine and I 

had gone up to Laga Bay to do a feature aboard one of Andy Jacksons self drive boats. There we bumped 

in to Ian at the salmon farm slip where he was putting his boat in, making ready to head out of the loch 

to fish for big skate. 

Only having a sixteen foot orkney longliner with an eight hp outboard clamped to the transom rather 

limited our potential. But before he vanished into the distance, Ian gave us some marks within a few 

minutes of the slip where he'd taken skate in the past, one of which was, and still is, the biggest fish he 

has ever had aboard his boat 'Onyermarks', coming out of the weight estimation formula at 235 pounds. 

A fish way bigger than the current record, though that doesn't concern him at all as all fish regardless 

of status are returned, which I know only too well having both seen and released record sized fish myself 

with him over the years. 

There can't be many places where you can potter off maybe half a mile on an eight hp outboard and 

expect to catch hundred pound plus skate. But thanks to Ian, plus some guidance from Andy Jackson, 

that trip produced fish of one hundred and forty and one hundred and five pounds, plus an assortment 

of spurdogs, conger and LSD's. 

65

By that stage Ian was still fishing with a few 

friends during March and April. That 

however quickly began to gather 

momentum to the point of having three fully 

booked boats up there for the best part of a 

month based at Ardtornish, fishing out of 

Lochaline down as far as the Firth of Lorne 

when the weather permitted, or restricted to 

the Sound of Mull when it wasn't, with 

nearby Loch Sunart as a really foul weather 

fall back if needed. 

It was also here that much of the tagging 

work done for the blossoming Scottish Sea 

Using the weight estimation chart 

Angling Conservation Network (SSACN) 

was done, and where conservation minded 

techniques, both for the fishing and fish handling were perfected, which I'll discuss in more detail 

shortly. A location which produced some truly outstanding catches. 

After yet more exploration work, Ian has since upped sticks and shifted his big skate operation to Crinan 

on the Sound of Jura where he puts in a few weeks chartering either end of his summer fishing in and 

around Luce Bay. 

A venue which again produces some very big fish. But also a better spread in terms of size, plus shorter 

sailing times, and for the most part more shelter on all winds other than a brisk south westerly. 

Typically, depths there are not perhaps as great as the Firth of Lorne, where I have anchored my own 

boat in over five hundred and fifty feet of water, though in the Sound of Mull it was probably more like 

four hundred feet, which depending on where you fish at Crinan is roughly what you can expect there 

too. 

Whether the Crinan fish have always been there or are the progressive overspill from around the Isle of 

Mull just to the north is difficult to say. Possibly even a mix of the two. But certainly there is an element 

of the SSACN driven conservation in the mix there as well, as evidenced by a few skate being caught 

now by Ian Burrett and his clients as far south as Port Logan down towards the Mull of Galloway, again 

after an absence of many years. 

In the early days, skate fishing was done using animal tackle. Applying sustained pressure to prise such 

a huge fish free using its size to create bottom suction requires heavy gear, and even today, fifty pound 

class outfits including a good lever drag reel loaded with as much as seventy or even eighty pound bs 

braid are used. 

It's down at the business end where most of the changes have taken place. Gone is the use of wire to 

beat the teeth. Now it's two hundred pounds bs monofilament right through, with an overall length of 

at least ninety inches, which is longer than the biggest skate likely to be hooked, so as to ensure that the 

fish’s tail sharp tail spines don't make contact with the braid and part it. 

Initially, the mono would have been one continuous length with a 12/0 to 14/0 hook at one end and a 

heavy duty swivel at the other, fished as a flowing trace using a tubi-boom, all of which is lowered 

down slowly to avoid tangles on the drop. 

That has since changed in terms of both the positioning of the sliding lead and the application of the 

bait, as a further step towards the conservation of these fish. 

66

Ross Johnson, skate from the shore I remember Ian using a five pound coalfish with its tail 

removed as bait. Dogfish and bunches of mackerel or squid 

have also caught their share. But all of that has now given way to a two staged trace comprising twelve 

to eighteen inches of two hundred pounds bs monofilament with the hook and a swivel at either end, 

and the remainder of the heavy mono attached to that swivel with another swivel at the far end to attach 

the reel line to. 

This time however there is no sliding tubi-boom on the main line. Instead, a four inch length of garden 

hose with a lead attachment clip cable tied to it is placed on the longer rubbing length portion of the 

trace between the two swivels. 

A split ring or some other form of stopper also needs to be fixed to the swivel on the short hook length 

to prevent the hose and the lead sliding all the way down to the bait. 

Why this arrangement works so well is that having the lead so near to the bait helps keep it tight to the 

bottom. But more importantly, if a main line breakage should occur, when the fish moves off, it pulls 

the remaining trace mono and swivel through the wide diameter of the hose thereby jettisoning the lead, 

all of which is video demonstrated on both YouTube and the SSACN website. 

The bait presentation has also switched from a single big offering to what is commonly called a 'kebab'. 

Mackerel are cut into two inch chunks which are threaded up over the hook and onto the trace until 

there is a necklace of them numbering around a dozen pieces. 

It's at this point that the bait is put onto the hook, which can be two or three mackerel, or a cocktail even 

of mackerel with octopus or squid. All work well on their day. A heavy duty elastic band is then 

stretched around the constituents of the bait to keep it all contained. 

67

Skate ‘kebab’ 

But long before the bait goes on the hook, the barb will have 

been squashed down using a pair of pliers so it can be removed 

easily with a long reach T-bar disgorger if a fish takes deep or 

swallows it. 

The only drawback here is that without the barb, bait can 

become dislodged from the hook. So a half inch square of 

rubber cut from an old car inter-tube is pushed onto the hook 

and up over the squashed barb 'bump' to ensure this can't 

happen, creating the perfect big stream-lined bait with its own 

rubby dubby source attached. 

Obviously, the reel is set on ratchet, but not so light on the 

drag that line is yielded in the tide. Big skate areas tend to be 

quite tidal over a base of sand and mud, though invariably, 

most of the action comes as the tide eases away, allowing the 

fish more freedom to forage and feed. 

Sometimes an interested fish will take line. On other occasions 

it can be no more than a series of bumps and tugs as it settles 

over the bait to eat it, after which it may not move much at 

all. 

Timing the strike is something to be decided on a fish by fish 

basis, though not so much a strike in the conventional definition of the word as winding hard in to the 

fish, then pulling at it to have the hook penetrate its thick skin. 

After that it's a case of hanging on while applying maximum pressure for as long as it takes until you 

break its suction with the seabed, which when you do, must be taken full advantage of by lifting and 

holding the fish clear if you can so it doesn't get back down, which I know is easier said than done. 

Though still hard graft, and often with a few power dives along the way, the journey all those hundreds 

of feet up usually isn't too bad. It's when you get it to the boat, and worse still inside the boat that the 

real problems can start, unless you have prepared well. 

This involves the use of two heavy duty stainless steel gaffs - one for the fleshy leading edge of each 

wing, inserted well clear of the body cavity with the fish top side facing upwards on the surface. 

Struggling with a single gaff will do neither you or the fish any favours. A two gaff lift placing the skate 

gently on to the deck is the way to do it, at which point, despite the size, it will usually lie there 

motionless accepting of its situation. 

At this point you can lift up the nose to expose the mouth for retrieving the hook. This is also the stage 

at which existing tags are read or new ones are put in and photographs or measurements can be taken. 

But don't take too long about it. They soon start to redden up where they should be white, indicating 

they've been out of the water for too long. 

All of that done, as quickly as you can, work a piece of trawl netting or tarpaulin underneath the fish 

allowing you to lift it at the four corners up on to the side of the boat then slide it back into the water 

and away. 

To the uninitiated, sticking gaffs into a fish can sound cruel and potentially damaging, but tagged 

recaptures and inspection of historical scars have shown that while it can't be much fun for them, neither 

is it harmful. So much so that some fish have been caught on multiple occasions, and every so often 

you get the same fish coming up more than once in the same day. 

68

From the shore, obviously, it won't be anything like as straight forward, though I would hesitate to 

comment on just how that would happen as I have no experience here to draw on. But yes, big skate are 

occasionally taken from the shore. 

The current record standing at 169 pounds comes from Loch 

Roag on the Isle of Lewis, with reports of three figure skate 

having been taken from the piers at both Lochaline and 

Achiltibuie, and anecdotally, there may even be some un-tried 

potential for them from a few of the deeper rock marks around 

Crinan. I know for a fact that Ross Johnson has caught and 

returned fish over the record. 

There are also historical tales of huge skate having been taken 

from the long stone pier at Fenit over in Ireland, though from 

my experiences there, these could well have been white skate 

and not one of the two common skate variants, which if that 

were not the case, because of the location, would very likely 

be the blue skate Dipturus flossada. 

Speaking of Ireland, there are some excellent boat prospects 

over that side that are also worth taking note of. Hamish Currie 

based at Cushendall in Northern Ireland gets some very good 

fish on his patch, which, as it's not that far away from the 

western Scottish population, will very likely be flapper skate, 

though obviously I can't say for sure. Either way, they are very 

big fish. 

Double gaffing large skate 

Further to the south, particularly out from Courtmacsherry, they see a lot of good skate too. Graeme 

Pullen who is a friend of local charter skipper Mark Gannon has trailed his own boat over, and using 

GPS coordinates given to him by Mark, had fish to well over a hundred pounds, which again 

speculating, as this is the Celtic Sea, could well have been blue skate. 

Either way, as before, they were very big fish. Similarly Clew Bay over on the Atlantic coast is another 

well known skate area, with lady charter skipper Mary Gavin-Hughes finding her clients quite a few 

decent specimens up into treble figures. 

Due to its location, I would not like to hazard a guess between blue or flapper skate for that one. But 

again, as ever, more very good fish. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 16, 121 and 153. 

BOTTLE NOSED RAY Rostroraja alba 


The bottle nosed ray or white skate as it is also known, is listed here so far as I am aware on account of 

a single British fish taken off The Needles in 1970, plus an undisclosed number of specimens, though 

presumably not too many from the west coast of Ireland, the biggest of which at one hundred and sixty 

five pounds was caught in Clew Bay in 1966. So potentially a very big fish, and by all accounts, these 

days at least, a very rare fish too. 

What sets it apart from the other so called ray species is the fact that the nipple like extension it has on 

the end of its snout is noticeably longer and bottle shaped, protruding from an obviously rounded head 

profile, hence the name, unlike the other large skate species where the line from the wing tip seems to 

69

stretch straight to the end of the snout in one continuous run, with only the slightest hint of a bulge at 

the head. 

Thankfully, there are easier ways of separating white skate 

from the other large growing species such as the common 

skates and long nose skate, and to access the main one, you 

only need to turn the fish over. 

As the name suggests, the white skate has a pure un-marked 

white underside with darker margins, whereas the underside of 

the other large skates is grey and covered in small black dots 

which are actually black ringed pores that are often tightly 

packed. 

Colouration on the dorsal surface ranges from a mottled 

greyish blue in the larger fish, to reddish brown with numerous 

white spots in younger specimens. Supposedly a deep water 

species, but in my experience, that isn't necessarily always the 

case. 

Brian Douglas, 140 lb White Skate 

Back in the early 1980's, Brian Douglas and I were invited to 

trail my fifteen foot dinghy across to Ireland's County Kerry. 

To Fenit in fact, to spend a week exploring the small boat 

fishing potential in and around Tralee Bay, after which we 

would report back to the Bord Failte as well as publicise the 

trip in the UK angling press. 

The arrangement was that we would follow a local charter boat about the area learning the ropes for a 

couple of days, at which point, the late great Kevin Linnane would join us with a view to making a 

promotional video for use on Irish Tourist Board road shows and the like, all of which was a great idea 

on paper, but in reality, didn't quite go according to plan, though with far better results than any of us 

could have possibly anticipated. 

We did initially follow the charter skipper around, both for safety reasons and to get a feel for the area. 

But he wanted to head out towards the mouth of the bay, where besides catching nothing much other 

than dogfish, also meant we had some quite sizeable Atlantic swells to contend with, which when you're 

sat so low down in a small boat, look as though they're coming in at head height. So not the most 

comfortable feeling. But we stuck with it anyway on day one. 

By mid-morning on day two however after 'enjoying' more of the same, enough was enough, and we 

decided to motor back inshore and do some exploring in the quieter areas just to the seaward side of 

Fenit Pier. 

The water there was quite shallow. Probably no more than twenty feet or so. But that didn't deter us as 

we'd heard there were monkfish to be caught close in, though by that stage we didn't realise just how 

close in, and had yet to discover the famous 'monk hole'. 

Pretty much immediately thank goodness, we started catching stuff other than LSD's, which of itself 

was reason enough to stick with it and continue to go our own way. As I recall we had tope, huss and 

thornback rays. 

All the other ray species came later, both closer in to the big concrete pier and in the 'monk hole'. And 

we also hooked two or three fish which initially took a short burst of line from the reel, but would then 

lock up solid on the bottom when they felt the hook. 

70

I remember one particular fish that I'd hooked suddenly taking off at right angles to the boat and actually 

pulling the stern around with it which had previously been held in the tide on the anchor rope. Then, as 

with other similar hook ups, everything went solid again. 

Nobody had mentioned to us anything about big skate, besides which, it was so shallow that when the 

boat was moved directly over the culprit, we could see the lead well off the bottom above it. So skate 

never once entered into our thinking 

The gear we were fishing was at best thirty pounds class, and in some cases less, though the traces were 

quite substantial. We figured they might be big monkfish that had taken the line under a snag, so we 

piled on the pressure looking to break free, which is precisely what happened. 

Three hang ups and break outs in succession; how unlucky can you get we thought. But as we were 

soon to find out, luck (good or bad) had nothing to do with it. Patience and having an inkling as to what 

might be on the end of the line was what we needed, and we got that when Kevin turned up the following 

day. 

We told him about what had happened, but at that stage he didn't comment much. Only when it 

happened again in his presence did he say right, be patient, keep the pressure on, you're into a big skate. 

Actually it was Brian who was hooked up that time around, fortunately on the heaviest outfit we could 

cobble together between us. 

Encouraged by Kevin, he hung on and hung on with the CFB video camera recording the whole thing. 

Then suddenly the mighty fishes bottom suction was broken, and almost immediately we could see a 

huge grey shape free swimming on the end of the line. 

In what seemed like little more than moments later it was up on the top and in went the gaff into the 

fleshy part of its wing, which as we had yet to discover was the easy bit. I then had to get it into the 

fifteen boat, which with three of us, plus the weight of the fish itself all on the same side was a 

combination of dodgy and difficult. 

Since those early days, I've racked up a lot of experience of 

dealing with huge skate in small boats. On that trip, fish of that 

size and shape had never been in our thinking, and with hind sight, 

we both could and should have done things differently. 

Back then unfortunately we didn't know any better. For starters, 

though I somehow managed, one gaff isn't really enough. You 

need one in the leading edge of each wing clear of the body cavity 

with two people doing the lifting. 

More difficult still was getting the thing back out and away 

afterwards. Nowadays we work either a piece of trawl netting or 

tarpaulin under skate and lift at the corners. Here everything had 

to be done by hand. But not before Kevin had identified it as a 

white skate and we'd measured its length and width with pieces 

of monofilament line. 

Jonathan Gannon & Mary 

Gavin Hughes at Westport 

Back at Godley's bar that evening, Kevin ran the dimensions 

through a measurement to weight conversion table, where it 

came out at around one hundred and forty pounds. 

The following day we had to go back out towing a tiny rowing boat for Kevin to sit in a few yards away, 

hang several pounds of lead on the line, then simulate the boat to boat footage he needed to complete 

71

the film, after which he headed back to Dublin leaving us with the rough location of the 'monk hole' to 

search for. 

For reasons which will become apparent in the account on catching monkfish, plus our lack of suitable 

heavy tackle, we didn't fish for the big skate again that trip, though we did give it a go the following 

year, with Brian again taking a fish that was obviously well over a hundred pounds. 

Following that magazine article, Dave Lewis contacted me for information, resulting in a similar 

encounter aboard his boat which I encouraged him to write about, and so began the glittering journalistic 

career we all know and love today. 

In addition, while browsing on FaceBook just before putting the final draft to bed, I came across a 

photograph on Irish charter boat skipper Mary Gavin-Hughes page of a 175 pound skate off Westport, 

which despite being labelled as a common skate, because it was posed underside up showing its white 

colouration, plus it's elongated snout, was so very obviously a white skate, and one which was bigger 

than the then Irish record. 

I notified both Jonathan and Mary who both agreed and representations were made to the Irish fish 

recorders. But in all honesty, it was pretty much a lost cause right from the onset. With no body to 

inspect for verification (yes, even in this supposedly enlightened day and age), coupled to the fact that 

the fish had been given a weigh at sea then returned, they simply didn't want to know. 

So what happened to the so called Irish enlightenment on matters of trail blazing and conservation. A 

lesson here for the rest of us on a number of fronts. 


NOTE: I recently found a VHS copy of Kevin Linnanes film which I had converted to digital and have 

uploaded to YouTube. 

THORNBACK RAY Raja clavata 


Theoretically, a straight forward fish to pin 

an accurate name to. In practice 

unfortunately, this statement can at times be 

some way short of the truth, the reason being 

the highly variable patterning, colouration, 

and markings the species can adopt, plus it's 

ability, be that deliberately or 

coincidentally, to mimic the patterning of 

some of the other ray species. 

Thornback mimicking Cuckoo Ray markings 

One consolation is that it cannot alter its 

basic body shape of having pointed wings 

which automatically eliminates confusion 

with the cuckoo, undulate and sandy ray. 

Equally, it can't avoid having the thorns, 

mainly on the top side, but to an extent also 

underneath, from which its name is derived. 

Numerically these thorns can vary from just a scattered few to a dense threatening carpet growing out 

from swollen calcified bases which are situated just underneath the skin. Geographical location can 

72

have a lot to do with numbers, distribution, and size of the larger thorns. The body will also be covered 

with smaller prickles giving the fish a rough feel all over. 

Colouration is typically grey to light brown with variable mottled or marbled patterning including off 

white blotches and darker spots. More often than not, the tail will be banded dark and light from its base 

down to the two dorsal fins towards its tip. 

I caught my first ever thornback way back in the early 1970's on a trip out from Rhyl. They were 

particularly abundant in that neck of the woods at the time, and although I caught several others that 

day, my first, which probably weighed no more than a couple of pounds, sticks in my memory because 

I was just so pleased with myself for how the trip had gone. 

In the car with us on the way down was a bucket full of pigs lungs, which by that stage had really 

ripened in the heat of the day. Someone it seems had written that thornbacks could be taken using pig 

offal, so one of the lads I was travelling with had brought some along to try. 

Needless to say, it didn't work. Even the seagulls wouldn't touch it when he finally threw it over-board 

having conceded defeat. At least it wouldn't be travelling back with us thank goodness. 

You could catch thornbacks pretty much anywhere over clean to mixed ground back then, and like bull 

huss and spurdogs, they would often be the amongst biggest fish most anglers would ever catch. We 

would see loads of the things in Loch Ryan and Luce Bay. Allonby over on the Cumbrian side of the 

Solway was another venue with a good reputation. 

Travelling south, Morecambe Bay was not only the next 

hot spot, but one of the finest thornback ray fisheries in the 

country throughout the 1970's and 80's. There they would 

congregate in huge numbers over the roughs towards the 

outer edge of the bay all the way from Lune Buoy through 

to Lightening Knoll. 

The big draw-back with Morecambe Bay is the ferocity of 

the tide. You could only really fish there at the lower end 

of the tidal cycle and the slack waters, and it was on this 

species that Fleetwood built much of its charter angling 

reputation after ex-commercial fisherman turned full-time 

charter skipper Frank Bee switched his vast knowledge of 

the area to putting anglers over fish. 

One particular stand-out day for me was the ports annual 

lifeboat match, the year of which I can't remember, but as 

all the dozen or more charter boats Fleetwood once had 

were involved, it probably dates it to the early 1980's. 

Typical Thornback patterning I was fishing aboard 'Happy Hooker' skippered by longtime 

fishing friend Keith Philbin, and we started the day 

very slowly just to the north of Lune. So slowly in fact that by lunch time we were in contention for 

nothing, so we moved a little further on up into the bay. 

What an inspired re-positioning that turned out to be. As fast as the baits went down they were taken 

by rays. But being a competition, we could only stick with it until such time as we had to make our way 

back for the weigh in, and in that short time we boated ninety seven, which to this day stands as the port 

record. 

73

Had we moved there earlier, or not had to leave prematurely, who knows what the final figure might 

have been. Ironically, two other boats also beat the old record of forty five fish that day, and to our 

shame, all fish over a pre-determined minimum size were brought ashore to be weighed. 

Kept component of Fleetwood record Thornback haul 

Preston on the River Ribble was another very productive Lancashire charter boat venue in its day 

producing lots of rays, in the main by heading south off Ainsdale and Formby to fish along the northern 

edge of the buoyed outer Mersey Channel. 

In those days we put the dinghy in from Pontins at Ainsdale and would catch loads of the things from 

the same area between the FT buoy and Jordan Spit. South of that, as I've already mentioned, Rhyl was 

the next hot spot, as indeed were most charter venues right throughout Wales, from Llandudno around 

into the Bristol Channel. 

The stand-outs, for me certainly, were Aberystwyth and Aberdovey which share much of the same 

ground. The boats there could catch them like there was no tomorrow. 

Once you rounded St. Davids Head, other ray species started to become as prevalent, particularly small 

eyed rays. The same was true along the north coast of Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset, rounding Lands 

End eastwards to the Isle of Wight. 

Thornbacks were still also regularly caught throughout that area. But it wasn't until you passed through 

the Dover Strait that they reclaimed their species dominance, with the Thames Estuary seemingly being 

alive with the things. Bradwell in particular springs to mind, fishing with John Rawle in the early days 

of uptide fishing. Further up into the North Sea, far less were caught. 

Whether that was due to the type of ground or the style of fishing, I'm not sure, though as you get 

beyond The Wash, cod and lure fishing tend to dominate much more of the thinking. 

74

That said, I have on occasion been out from Hartlepool aboard commercial fly shooters within a few 

miles of the shore, and while you couldn't describe the deck as being awash with thornback rays, they 

still put in a reasonably good showing, so obviously there were quite a few about there too. 

Shore anglers were also getting their share at selected 

venues. The rock marks looking out onto clean ground 

along the Solway always gave up a few. But it wasn't until 

you got down to Anglesey that they stated to feature well 

again, by-passing the long stretch of English coastline 

between the Scottish and Welsh borders in the process. 

The stand-out beach hot spot for me was the Dinas Dinlle 

just to the south of Caernarfon. But rock marks looking 

out onto clean ground all around the UK had the capacity 

to throw up a few. And let's not forget Ireland. I was on an 

Irish Tourist Board sea safari to Clifden one year when we 

split into two groups to fish the boats and the shore. 

Being a boat angler, I went offshore. Later, as we came 

back in passing the 'White Lady' at the narrow inlet, the 

other half of the party were all there on the rocks holding 

up a couple of thornbacks apiece having had a brilliant 

day. Again, sadly, most of the fish were killed as was the 

norm. 

Phill Williams, Morecambe Then suddenly, right throughout home waters, the species 

slumped into almost terminal decline. I'm sure the 'seek 

and destroy' mentality we all had back then can't have helped. But that wasn't the real under lying reason. 

Commercial over-cropping in tangle nets and by spurdog long-liners took this species, and doubtless 

other ray species too, very sharply down the slippery slope towards virtual oblivion. 

Of course, they couldn't ever get them all, and a time eventually did come when the cost of perusing 

those few that remained was out-weighted by whatever commercial value they might have had. 

The problem is that for cartilaginous species with their painfully slow potential recovery rates, that 

empty vacuum, as history has shown us only too well, would take many years to backfill and show even 

the most modest signs of recovery, which over the past several years, for thornback rays at least, 

thankfully has now started to happen. 

The Thames Estuary is once again full of the things. Unfortunately, elsewhere it's a mixed story of 

winners and losers, which hasn't necessarily always turned out quite as expected. 

In 2011 for example, I met up and recorded an audio interview with long time Aberystwyth charter 

skipper Dave Taylor in which he speaks of not seeing even a single ray there since who knows when. 

Similarly, Morecambe Bay has never recovered. You get the odd one or two along The Fylde now 

which we never used to see before. But from Fleetwood just around the corner, rays hardly enter the 

reckoning these days, and again at Rhyl they've had nothing to speak of for years, though a few are now 

starting to show up again close in to the shore. 

On the other side of the coin, the River Mersey from mid summer through to November is absolutely 

full of the things, and over the last two years, they have suddenly turned up from well up inside the 

channel at Morecambe right down to Heysham, where in calm conditions, and with not too much tide, 

we can regularly now catch them from the shore. 

75

Doubtless there are going to be other examples I don't know about. But it's the trend rather than the 

actual distribution that I'm looking to highlight here. 

Thornback numbers are on the increase with anglers seeing ever more of them, but for some reason, not 

always where they expected to find them from past experience, which is puzzling. Presumably the 

terrain won't have changed much over those absent years. So if it attracted them back then, why not 

now. 

I'm speculating here, but could it be the increase and imbalance between the rays and species such as 

dogfish possibly competing in part at least for the same food. Previously, competing species may well 

have been kept in check by a larger head of already established rays, whereas now the imbalance has 

become too great to challenge. 

Only targeted research can ever hope to answer that question. Simple dart tags are going into thornback 

rays in Scottish waters and here in the north west. What scientists might be able to do with the data 

these can potentially generate is another matter. 

Ever since that first fish of mine at Rhyl, I've always had a soft spot for thornback rays. Not necessarily 

to the point of regularly targeting them, though I do as the tide slackens when I'm cod fishing in October 

and November on the Mersey by putting out a whole calamari squid. 

As such, when one pops up anywhere, it's always welcome. And while they don't exactly put up a proper 

fight in the true angling dictionary definition of the word, they can be quite a handful due to their surface 

area in the tide, particularly if one takes your bait when the water is still running hard in the Mersey. 

Ask Welsh international angler Mike Morgan who I filmed having hooked one at peak flow during a 

cod championship anchored up just off Birkenhead town hall. A fish that took him a good forty minutes 

to bring to the net, after which he had to sit down for a spell to recover. 

Tactically speaking, what is true here of thornback rays 

goes for all the other ray species too, the only slight 

deviation being trace length, breaking strain, and hook 

sizes which need to be matched to the size, strength, and 

location of the particular species being targeted. 

Otherwise, it's a simple heavy monofilament flowing trace 

from the boats, and for my money, a similar gauge 

monofilament pulley rig from the shore, particularly if 

there are potential snags for the lead to go to ground in on 

the retrieve. 

For thornback and other rays up into low double figures, 

four feet of sixty pounds bs monofilament and a 4/0 hook 

should do fine. In the Mersey however, we tend to fish 

traces much shorter than that rigged as a self hooking bolt 

rig, not so much for the rays, but for the cod in the fearsome 

run, and these too work well. 

Dave Devine, River Mersey 

Having a shorter length in a fast tide helps keep the bait 

closer to the bottom instead of it bobbling and being lifted 

out of the feeding zone due to a combination of tide and 

resistance to it. 

Typically, when they find a bait, skates and rays will settle over and smother it, then start to position 

themselves so that they can get it into their mouth. 

76

I once took a bucket full of live mackerel to the Portrush aquarium, where, because mackerel are not 

the hardiest of fish, some did better than others in survival terms. 

One mackerel in particular in its death throes, dropped down between two rocks where it was difficult 

for the rays to reach it. Undeterred, a thornback quickly settled over it, which because it couldn't get 

hold by protruding its lips, started flapping its wings hard on the spot creating an upward current, which 

eventually, after several attempts, lifted the mackerel sufficiently to be grabbed and dragged off to a 

flatter spot where it could eaten it in the normal way. 

An amazing thing to watch. Anyway, I digress. So the fish settles down over the bait which might 

register as a few pulls at the rod tip. Leave it. Give it time to mouth the bait properly, or run the risk of 

foul hooking it instead. 

When it's ready, it may swim off, or it might just lay there for a while, so timing the strike can sometimes 

be difficult to gauge, leading occasionally to deep hooked fish. This is where flattened down hook barbs 

and a long T-bar disgorger come in to their own. 

I'm a big fan of the gemini T-bar disgorger. This has a fully looped end rather like an oval split ring to 

get it over the trace mono which is then positioned through the centre of the stainless steel loop so it 

can't come off. 

By lifting the fish with the disgorger and pushing the trace downwards with the other hand, the loop 

can be slid right down over the hook to invert it, allowing the weight of the fish, with a quick jolt from 

the angler, to dislodge it ready for it to go back, which beats putting fingers too close to those powerful 

crushing jaws, plus you don't have to hold the fish either further risking blood loss through scrapes or 

cuts. 

77 

When you do come to hold a ray, either for 

a photograph or to put it back, there is a soft 

indentation close to the edge of the body 

just up from the eye on the top, and to the 

side of the mouth underneath for the fingers 

and thumb. 

This is the only safe holding point on a ray. 

Then as I say, carefully place it back into 

the water and watch it swim off. They don't 

make good eating, besides which, they are 

too scarce a commodity these days to catch 

just the once. 

Safe hand gripping points 

One other point worth making on the 

subject of rays, and this crosses nicely 

over into the other species too, is boosting the scent attraction of your bait. 

I'm not so much thinking of marinating it in say pilchard oil or similar, though that will do it no harm 

at all. More a case of using the natural scent of the baits themselves, and not necessarily only your own. 

Have you ever noticed on a charter boat used for drop down fishing, how the stern of the boat is not 

only the most sought after spot, but often produces the most fish too. 

In part, this is because you can trot your baits down tide out of tangling reach of everyone else if you 

so wish. But there's actually more to it than that. Much much more. 

A combined scent trail from all the baits is going to wash down tide drawing in interested fish. And 

which baits are fish tracking back up that lane to source most likely to come across first.

This obviously doesn't work when uptiding. You can however use a small homemade swim-feeder on 

the lead, or even a purpose built grip lead swim feeder which are now available. Filled with something 

suitable, this can add a little extra scent to that being put out by your hook bait. 


SMALL EYED RAY Raja microocellata 


In Ireland this fish is also known as the painted ray, which can 

be a little confusing. Otherwise, a fish fairly readily identified 

by its very specific markings. The base colour is greyish to 

sandy brown over-laid by a series of off-white spots and lines 

spread over the entire upper surface, with the lines tending to 

follow the outline of the outer body profile. 

As a further aid to getting the identification right, it should have 

little in the way of sharp thorns, with any that are present being 

small and lying almost flat along the ridge of the spine. 

What smaller prickles there are present should be confined 

mainly to the front area of the body, leaving the back half with 

a much smoother feel, and as the name suggests, the eye is 

small. 

Ian Williams Small Eyed Ray Fenit 

The word microocellata as part of the scientific name here 

actually refers to the small size of the eye. Thornback mimics 

apart, the only other ray with markings even remotely to be 

confused with the small eyed ray is the undulate ray, which 

unlike the small eyed ray with its pointed wings has rounded 

wing tips. 

Undulate markings, while these also consist of lines and spots, are presented as a series of obviously 

darker wavy bands edged by small creamy white spots, with many larger spots of the same pale colour 

also woven into the pattern laid over a much darker brown base colour. 

Small eyed rays are fun fish to catch, and are rated at the higher end of the scale when it comes to 

awarding points for fighting abilities. Another big plus is that they are also particularly shore angler 

friendly, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as they often tend to be nocturnal in their 

feeding when they come within casting range. 

The downside unfortunately is their rather limited distribution within which they tend to form isolated, 

though at times quite abundant pockets over areas of sea bed which specifically suits their needs. 

The furthest northerly reports I have come across centre around Anglesey in North Wales. More 

specifically, the Holyhead area, and in particular, the south west facing side of the island where they 

are taken from various rock marks as well as from small boats launched at Trearddur Bay through to 

Rhosneigr on the main island itself. 

Then seemingly nothing right down to and around the Lleyn Peninsula on through Cardigan Bay and 

beyond, until you round St. Davids Head and the start of the run along into the Bristol Channel. 

78

With fast tides, a profusion of banks, and suitable adjacent beaches, South Wales, Somerset, North 

Devon, and to a lesser extent North Cornwall, make for prime small eyed ray territory. Then as you 

round Lands End, numbers again become sparse until you cross the border into Devon and progress 

along the channel towards the Dover Strait. 

Around the corner through Kent on up into North Sea, once again they are sparse to absent. South and 

West Ireland and the Channel Islands also see their share. 

While out boat fishing, I've picked them up in dribs and drabs 

pretty much throughout the entire distribution area described. But 

being predominantly a small boat angler tending to stick to my 

local Lancashire patch, I certainly haven't caught nearly as many 

as I would have liked. 

Charter boat fishing the offshore banks out from Dartmouth and 

Salcombe immediately spring to mind, as does a week Graeme 

Pullen and I spent boat and rock fishing from Lundy Island. 

There are however two particular instances where long distance 

dinghy trailing memorably saw us knee deep in the things. 

The first was a run down to the Gower Peninsula back in the 

1980's, which after an early morning kick off saw us first call in 

at Swansea marina to meet up with charter skipper Paul Radford, 

who then dug out his charts and advised on where we should be 

headed, accompanied by a set of navigator coordinates for the 

very top of the Helwick Bank. 

We then had to drive over to Oxwich Bay, put the boat in, and 

motor west along the coast to the bank using Paul's coordinates 

as a starting point to work out from. 

Phill Williams, Fenit 

That probably took us to around lunch time, and as we still needed to get back to Swansea in time to 

find ourselves some digs, it didn't leave us with a lot of time to fish on day one. But it was enough. 

Conditions on both days were ideal. Not too much tide and no more than a gentle swell pushing up over 

the slope and top under a clear blue summer sky. 

First drop with the anchor was smack on top of the bank at a point where we could trot our baits over 

the down tide slope in case fish were tucking in there out of the run. 

Not being on the helm, I was able to tackle my rod up on the run out, and as such was ready to drop a 

bait down the instant the boat tightened up on the rope. Pete Sharples on the other hand whose boat it 

was, had to set up in situ. 

By the time he had a bait in the water, I'd picked up a brace of turbot and a small eye ray, which was to 

set the pattern for the rest of the afternoon. No need to move looking for fish as they were stacked up 

directly under the hull. 

In approximately four hours of very exhausting fishing, we boated twenty six turbot and sixty four small 

eyed rays on a mix of mackerel, sandeel and squid baits fished on four foot heavy monofilament flowing 

traces, with all the rays and eventually quite a few of the turbot going back, with day two a virtual repeat 

of day one. 

The second trip is one I've touched on elsewhere whilst dealing with the monkfish. This was a week in 

which Brian Douglas and I trailed my boat over to Fenit in Tralee Bay and found our way into the once 

famous 'monk hole'. 

79

Thinking back, this recollection could well be a composite of two or maybe even three separate visits 

in different years during the early to mid 1980's, but no matter. 

Back then the 'monk hole' was a fabulous place. Obviously for big monkfish, plus quite a few stingrays. 

But far and away the most abundant fish in there at that time was the small eyed ray. A marvellous 

experience to have had. 

Alas, in common with the Helwick Bank and a good many other once prolific hot spots, that is no longer 

the case. For as with all the ray species, small eyed numbers took a very sharp down turn, which for a 

fish of patchy distributions and specific terrain requirements, can be a particularly deep hole to have to 

climb back out of. But not impossible, as once more increasing numbers of all ray species are now 

starting to demonstrate. 

There's still a long way to go yet, particularly to re-stock some of the offshore banks where they must 

have quite literally carpeted the sea bed. There are also promising signs of them showing up once again 

along some of the beaches and rock marks that used to regularly produce them. 

Small eyed rays are caught mainly over shallow offshore sand, shell grit, or light gravel banks with 

moderately deep water nearby creating quite a rush of tide up the bank slope and over the top. 

Shallow surf beaches, plus sandy patches within casting range of rocky headlands, again with plenty of 

tidal disturbance, are also attractive to these fish, particularly if, as with the offshore banks, they attract 

good numbers of sandeels which are a key staple in the diet of the small eyed ray. 

Obviously then, sandeel, either fresh or frozen, is going to be a preferred bait, though long thin strips 

of mackerel belly or cuts from the thinned down flanks can fish equally well. As I mentioned earlier, 

we also caught quite a few on whole calamari squid, along with some of the turbot. 

The same baits should work equally well from the shore. Again, fish a flowing trace if casting isn't a 

problem, or a couple of heavy duty long droppers if that's what you prefer. 

Personally, I would stick to a pulley rig tied from fifty pounds bs monofilament with a 4/0 hook, the 

idea being for it to help lift the lead clear of snags, particularly when fishing rock marks. 


BLONDE RAY Raja brachyura 


One of the largest growing and thankfully 

easier home waters ray species to identify, 

confirmed by a combination of both visual 

patterning and feel to the hand. Potentially a 

very large fish too with regularly confirmed 

weights approaching forty pounds, which is 

way bigger than the only other ray species 

likely to cause any identification confusion, 

the spotted ray. 

Both species sit within the pointed wing tip 

camp, so no help there. However, if the 

specimen in question is covered in spots and is 

80

igger than ten pounds, then it's a pretty safe you have a blonde ray. 

To confirm this, the dark spots of a blonde are reasonably uniform in size, spread over a pale sandy 

coloured back ground, and will cover the entire upper surface right to the edges of the wings. 

There can be a few small lighter blotches here and there which may be edged with dark spots, but not 

many. The fish will also feel rough and prickly to the touch over its entire upper surface. 

In complete contrast, a spotted ray will have dark spots which tend to vary in size scattered over a more 

golden brown background, all of which fail to reach the wing edges, leaving a narrow unmarked margin. 

Some of these may even group together to form a small tight clump known as an ocellus or eye spot in 

the middle of each wing, though this is not guaranteed to happen. Spotted rays lack rough prickles over 

the back half of their upper body leaving it smooth to the touch. 

For the most part, if you want to catch blonde rays, then you really need to be deliberately fishing for 

them. As with most species, there will always be incidents of chance encounters. But more often than 

not, the specific requirements of this fish tend to keep its presence under wraps, unless you specifically 

set out to do something about catching it. 

This means fishing offshore banks of sand, shell grit, or gravel, where fierce tides sculpt scours, gullies, 

and holes, into which fish can drop down and tuck in to get out of the run until it starts to ease. 

That is typical blonde ray country. But you won't or shouldn't be looking to take them on the drift. The 

boat needs to anchored in a position that allows the baits to drop into the type of refuge already outlined, 

or onto a down tide slope just as the flow starts to die away, which is probably best achieved at the 

smaller end of the fortnightly tidal range. 

This conceivably could be anywhere in the country. In reality however, where holding conditions are 

right, the English Channel and the west coast seem to be most regularly blessed, as are parts of Ireland, 

both north and south. 

This is not a species that is common in the areas I tend 

mainly to fish, and as such, not one that I have put a lot of 

effort into trying to catch. 

Normally, when I fish the kind of marks where blonde rays 

undoubtedly hang out, it will be on the drift trailing a live 

sandeel on a very long trace across the banks for bass, turbot, 

and brill, where I have picked up the odd one doing that, 

most notably a specimen just off the northern tide race at 

Lundy Island. But that isn't the norm. 

A static sandeel or mackerel bait on the usual four to six feet 

of at least sixty pounds bs monofilament hard on the bottom 

is what is required, and fished from a more powerful outfit 

than might normally be used for catching other rays, because 

these fish, besides potentially growing to a good size, also 

fight particularly well. 

In addition to this, you may well have a lot of tide and 

therefore quite a bit of lead to contend with too. A 

combination I remember only too well on a trip with Hamish 

Currie to fish the banks out from Cushendall in Northern 

Ireland a few years ago. 

Andy Griffith, Blonde Ray 

81

Noted for its big blonde rays, I decided to try out a rod I had been asked to put through its paces for a 

magazine review. I won't say what make it was. What I will say though is that having fought a very 

good blonde ray to the point where we could see it in the water coming up, the combined pressures 

mentioned earlier were just too much for the rods tip which broke, parting the line in the process. 

Needless to say, I didn't bother with the write up. 

A lot of good blonde rays are caught out of venues such as Weymouth, Salcombe, Dartmouth and the 

like. A friend of mine, Wayne Comben, targets them regularly out from Langstone to the east of the 

Isle of Wight, where he can, if he puts his mind to it, catch five different species of ray all in the same 

day, including his favourite blondes, though not all from the same spot. 

The Channel Islands are another very good area. I've seen quite a few brought in to Guernsey by the 

local commercial boats, and have been out rod and line fishing from Jersey over the Corbiere Bank 

where we had a few. 

Banks formed in some of the narrower outlets from Cork Harbour in south east Ireland are yet another 

renowned area, as are some of the Bristol Channel banks, particularly along the South Wales side. Brian 

Swinbank has even taken them around Caliach Point operating out of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. 

So potentially quite a widespread species which should not prove too difficult to locate from a boat, 

though less so from the shore, the main ingredient being to pick the right boat, book a suitable set of 

tides in terms of size and seasonal timing which the skipper should be able to advise on, then get some 

baits down there with the boat lying at anchor. 

As for shore fishing, I know an odd one has been taken from rock marks around the Holyhead area of 

Anglesey, including Rhoscolyn which I know well. But the safest bet would again have to be the 

Channel Islands, both from the rocks and from St. Catherines Breakwater on Jersey, fishing a heavy 

monofilament pulley rig. 


SPOTTED RAY Raja montagui 


Also known in Ireland as the homelyn ray, 

the spotted ray has a potential range taking 

in the whole of the British Isles, though it is 

less abundant along North Sea coasts. A fish 

similar in general appearance to the blonde 

ray, which is also covered in dark spots, but 

without the blonde ray's very much bigger 

growth range. So anything with spots 

weighing in at ten pounds or more is very 

unlikely to be a spotted ray, even a record 

spotted ray. 

To confirm the identity as being that of a 

spotted ray it will have dark spots which tend to vary in size scattered over a golden brown background, 

all of which will fail to reach the edges of the wings, leaving a narrow unmarked margin. 

Some spots may well group together to form a small tight clump known as an ocellus or eye spot in the 

middle of each wing, though this isn't always going to be the case. 

82

Spotted Rays also lack rough prickles over the back half of their upper body, leaving it smooth to the 

touch. Blonde rays on the other hand are prickly all over, have fairly uniform sized dark spots over their 

entire upper body right through to their wing edges, and are generally a paler sandy brown. 

One of the smallest, and supposedly in the past, most abundant inshore rays after the thornback. 

Certainly so when I first started fishing Luce Bay and Loch Ryan in south west Scotland where we 

would see them on a reasonably regular basis. 

Ireland, the Solent, and many venues to the east of the Isle of Wight also regularly produced them, as 

did some of the rock marks along the South coast of Devon and Cornwall. 

I even recall seeing a few around Anglesey in North Wales, occasionally in South Wales, and while out 

bottom fishing around the Scilly Isles. Then, suddenly, it all went sour. Not only for the spotted ray, but 

for inshore rays generally, as their numbers plummeted everywhere. 

Some say it was due to an increase in anchored tangle nets. Others put it down to rays being taken as 

bye-catch by the spurdog longliners. Very likely it was a combination of both those activities and more, 

coupled to their slow reproductive replacement rate, a set of 'problems' all cartilaginous species 

unfortunately share. 

Ray numbers generally right throughout home waters plummeted into decline, and while they are now 

showing some signs of making a measured comeback, that isn't everywhere. Nor is it always back to 

the locations they previously liked to frequent. 

Spotted rays however are to some extent sticking to the old game plan. So if an area had them before, 

chances are it could well see them again, albeit in perhaps smaller numbers than was previously the 

case. 

Two areas which immediately spring to mind are the Hampshire and Sussex coast to the east of the Isle 

of Wight, and the area I am more familiar with, which is south west Scotland where some of the inshore 

marks previously known for their populations of rays lay barren in that regard for many years. 

Around 2005, a few started trickling back, and by 2008 I am 

reliably informed that under the right conditions, you could 

more or less pick up a few spotted rays almost to order around 

Ardwell in Luce Bay, with others scattered throughout the bay 

around to Whithorn and possibly beyond, which is great news. 

Wayne Comben tells me a similar story for his stamping ground 

out of Langstone. I personally haven't fished for rays in that area 

so I can't comment from my own experience, though we used 

to pick up a few on ragworm baits in the Solent in years gone 

by. 

We also had a few in other parts of Luce Bay way back while 

fishing for rays generally, which used to be prolific out from 

Drummore. But I suppose my most cherished memory of the 

species is one of fishing mackerel strip on a typical fifty pounds 

bs monofilament flowing trace in Loch Ryan, where I caught 

my then Scottish, British and European record in 1973. 

Keith Philbin, Spotted Ray 

The Scottish shore record for the species also comes from the 

loch down at Cairnryan. 


83

UNDULATE RAY Raja undulata 


84

A strikingly beautiful fish which even in the least well marked specimens will immediately grab your 

attention. The kind of fish which if you don't know what it is, then you will almost certainly want to 

find out. 

Only one other home waters ray species in any way even slightly resembles it, and then only 

superficially, that being the small eyed ray which is a species with pointed wing tips, whereas those of 

the undulate are rounded. But of far greater importance are its markings and colouration. 

A small eyed ray will be some shade of pale sandy grey with white spots and white lines which tend to 

run parallel to the edges of the wings. Undulates on the other hand are usually a darker shade of brown, 

though with the patterning they have laid over it, base colour is a secondary consideration. 

This comprises a series of obviously darker wavy bands edged by small creamy white spots, with other 

larger spots of the same colour also woven into the pattern. The underside is white with a darker edging. 

When I first saw a picture of an undulate ray I fell in love with its incredible colouration and markings 

to the point that I just had to catch one. At that time, the Channel Islands and the south west of Ireland, 

in particular Tralee Bay, were the two stand-out venues producing them. Elsewhere they were rare in 

the extreme, and remained so until they were given protection back in 2009, after which their recovery 

has been little short of miraculous. 

I've no doubt they were also being caught along the mid-section of the English Channel, and 

occasionally in Cornish waters too. But the angling press kept pushing Tralee and the Channel Islands 

into my face. Particularly Fenit. So when Brian Douglas and myself got the invite to trail my fifteen 

foot Seahog across to explore Tralee Bay for Bord Failte, the undulate ray was placed very firmly at the 

top of the must catch species list so far as I was concerned. 

We were given other objectives too, including 

monkfish, plus more general exploration. We also 

fished from the huge concrete commercial jetty after 

dark where we saw both undulates and small eyed rays 

caught from the seaward side. 

That being the case, time was set aside one day to take 

the boat in close to the jetty, and give it a few hours 

fishing monofilament flowing traces baited with quite 

small mackerel strips. 

By this stage, even at Fenit, undulate ray catches had 

declined numerically, so it was very much a race 

against time to grab that particular tick before it was 

too late. Thankfully, at the first attempt, both of us 

succeeded. 

Granted, they were only small fish, probably similar in 

size to the ones the shore lads had hauled up the night 

before. But try as we may, both there and elsewhere 

throughout Tralee Bay with suitable baits properly presented on the bottom, despite catching shed loads 

of other ray species, we never saw another undulate. 

Then, as with so many ray species throughout the 1990's on into the new century, this species too went 

into sharp decline. Whether it was a more severe decline than the others, taking account of its smaller 

and more localised population numbers, is impossible to say. But certainly a decline severe enough to 

see it placed on the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) red list of threatened 

species. 

85

As a result, Tralee Bay is now voluntarily closed to commercial fishing, though not recreational fishing, 

in the hope that the small discrete populations of both undulate rays and monkfish might one day fully 

re-establish themselves. 

In that regard, European law now states that both of these species must be returned to the water 

immediately at their point of capture, so in effect, it is now impossible to break either rod caught boat 

record, because they can no longer be officially weighed as stipulated on solid ground. 

From what I see in the angling press, and from conversations with dinghy ray specialist Wayne Comben 

who fishes out of Langstone harbour, ray species generally, and undulates in particular are making a 

very strong come back from around Weymouth west along the Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex Coast. 

You quite regularly see pictures of good sized specimens in the magazines, and I know from Wayne 

that he can catch them pretty much to order inshore when conditions are right. One of five species he 

has caught on the same day in fact on a number of occasions in recent times. 

As for the shore prospects, the Channel Island rock marks and stone piers have always been favourite, 

with St. Catherines Breakwater on Jersey having a lot of history with this species. But without doubt, 

Dorset and Hampshire have stepped in to well and truly grab that mantle, particularly after dark from 

the beaches later summer well on in to the autumn and at times beyond. 


CUCKOO RAY Leucoraja naevus 


A small deep water ray with colouration and markings so 

obvious that mis-identification should be virtually 

impossible. I say virtually as opposed to absolutely, because 

I have seen thornback rays, which are potentially capable of 

mimicking other species, do a very good impression of a 

cuckoo ray. 

Not perfect, but enough to throw doubt into the thinking of 

someone not too well up in fish identification. That is until 

you look at the wing tip profiles, which in the case of the 

cuckoo ray are particularly well rounded, unlike those of the 

thornback which come to a point. 

Top side colouration should be some shade of pale brown 

with a prominent black and yellow patch known as an ocellus 

placed in the centre of each wing. There are no other 

markings. The upper surface is also covered in small 

prickles. 

For anglers, this is not a fish you can deliberately hope to target. If one comes along then it's a bonus. 

If not, don't invest any time in the species. But you can increase your chances by having suitably sized 

small mackerel or squid baits fished on a 2/0 to 4/0 hook hard on the bottom with a short flowing trace 

when over clean ground in deep water. 

The boat marks around the Isle of Arran are known to produce an odd one. I also once saw one brought 

ashore on rod and line at Aberystwyth, and have heard of an odd one or two from the boats around 

Anglesey and Caernarfon Bay. 

86

An occasional specimen might even turn up from a deep water shore mark such as one of the rock 

platforms along the north Cornish coast and the inner Clyde. But that's pretty much it. 

SANDY RAY Leucoraja circularis 


Quite a small ray species, which because of its liking for deep 

water, rarely comes within reach of anglers baits, though I don't 

doubt - in fact I know that they are occasionally caught, 

particularly at more northerly latitudes, where they are 

probably not recognised for what they are. One of those species 

in which the wing tips are rounded instead of being pointed. 

Colouration on the upper side will be some shade of light 

brown, possibly with a reddish tinge. But what ultimately gives 

it away are between four and six conspicuous creamy white 

marks spaced out across the wings and pelvic fins. There are 

also four tight rows of quite large curved spines present along 

the tail. 

slots vacant and open to claims. 

In some ways, this inclusion is irrelevant, as it hasn't officially 

been recorded on rod and line in any of the contributing record 

lists. The reasons why I have included it here are two fold. The 

first is that for some unknown reason, the British Record Fish 

Committee have it listed, but with both the boat and the shore 

In other words, none have ever been officially ratified. So why not then either remove it, or list all other 

species that anglers have yet to catch, a fact I have pointed out both in writing and at length in 

conversation with BRFC Chairman Mike Heylin. 

In fairness, this probably is the result of it once having been listed many years ago, and subsequently, 

along with a number of other dubious records, evicted from the list in a much needed purge as having 

been mis-identified. 

This leads me very nicely into my second point. Though I can't recall the weight involved here due its 

being maybe forty years ago, that standing record prior to eviction was sufficiently bigger than a sandy 

ray I did actually catch at that time, for which obviously no evidence was kept, and the fish was returned 

not knowing it could have been useful in the future when the old standing record was evicted. 

I was fishing the deep waters off the Isle of Arran in Scotland with Neil McLean who had caught his 

record cuckoo ray in the same area, and wanting to add that species to my list, I fished a traditional four 

foot fifty pounds bs monofilament flowing trace, very likely with either mackerel strip or razor-fish as 

bait and up it came. 

Just one more hard luck story, some measure of which all anglers suffer at one stage or other in their 

career. 


87

STING RAY Dasyatis pastinaca 


Stingray ‘sting’ 

The whip like tail with a sharp serrated 

venomous spine at its base will immediately 

set the stingray apart from all other home 

waters species, except maybe for one, the 

eagle ray. 

Points of difference between the two are 

that in the eagle ray, the eyes are set into the 

sides of an almost separate slightly raised 

and protruding head, whereas those of the 

stingray are more conventionally placed on 

top with only the tinniest hint of a snout 

appearing from its otherwise flat facial 

profile. 

The tail of the eagle ray is also very long 

and whip like with a short dorsal fin immediately in front of the spine In contrast, and a key 

distinguishing feature here, is that stingrays have no dorsal fin and the tail is very much shorter. 

Colouration can be variable with olive green through to brown being the most common shades. 

Of particular note is the thickness of this fish along its central ridge. It can appear almost triangular in 

cross section, the wing bases being especially thick, making it potentially a very powerful fish. 

There was a time during the 1970's and early 80's when stingray fishing really seemed to grab the 

angling public's attention. I'm not sure if that was down to increased availability, increased awareness, 

or just general angler interest levels. But you certainly don't hear too much about them in the angling 

press these days. 

Back then, reports were an almost weekly occurrence, particularly in and around the Thames Estuary 

from both the boats and the shore. St. Osyth beach was especially famed for them to the point of holding 

stingray competitions. 

Moving northwards, both the Welsh boat and shore records have been held from Aberdovey and 

Fairbourne respectively, both of which are on estuaries in Cardigan Bay, which could just as easily be 

a coincidence as a behavioural link. 

We even had a short spate of them being caught up here in Lancashire at Cleveleys around the 1980's, 

with specimens well topping twenty pounds caught from both the dinghies and the shore. 

But although I fished the Thames Estuary and probably harboured hopes of catching one there, that 

wasn't where I had my first stingray encounter, nor my best stingray experience. 

I've caught stingrays in many parts of the world, and some big ones too. My very first taste however of 

the power a stingray can turn on came while dinghy fishing out from Lymington on the Solent. 

Steve Lill and I used to trail our boat down to Christchurch for a couple of weeks during the summer, 

primarily to fish for thin lipped grey mullet in the lower Hampshire Avon just above Mudeford when 

the tide times were right, but also heading offshore armed with a tray of nice juicy ragworms which 

stingrays love when the early morning low water mullet fishing was off the agenda. 

88

Most of the time we spent fishing in the Solent was during the 

daylight hours, though I have done all night sessions there for 

bass, smoothhounds and stingrays, providing the loose weed 

washing backwards and forwards with the tide wasn't going to be 

an added problem. 

Even so, most of our stingray action came during the daytime, 

which is maybe as well considering what could happen when 

you're partly unsighted after nightfall, even with a good lamp. 

On one of earliest trips one very breezy afternoon, my then young 

son Ian who couldn't have been much more than about six or seven 

decided he wanted to tag along, and caught himself a twenty two 

pounder. And as the boat at that time had no name, he insisted I 

call it 'stinger', which when we got back home is what we did. 

Then, maybe four or five years later aboard a different updated 

incarnation of 'stinger' which Brian Douglas, myself, and Ian had 

trailed over to Tralee Bay in County Kerry, we spent a lot of time 

Ian Williams, Solent Stingray fishing a mark known locally as the 'monkhole' which was a slight 

depression very close in to the shore tucked up well inside the 

bay miles away from the open sea, where surprise surprise, huge monkfish used to hang out. 

Not only monkfish though. All manner of other stuff too, including lots of small eyed rays and stingrays 

which we took plenty of, along with a sprinkling of thornbacks, small tope and the odd huss for good 

measure, providing us with some excellent shallow water sport where the only way fish could run and 

fight was away from the boat and as hard as they could. 

Fortunately, the mix of fish in there all responded well to pretty much the same approach, that being a 

four to six foot sixty pounds bs monofilament trace with a 6/0 hook and mackerel bait. So much so that 

you quite literally didn't know what might be coming up next. 

Then suddenly, the monkfish throughout Tralee Bay were cleaned 

out commercially and quickly faded from anglers thinking. 

However they did it, while it was most certainly the monkfish they 

were in there after, there is no doubting that other species would 

have suffered too, and that would have included the stingray. 

Whether they had been the same ones returning year on year is 

difficult to know. But this hasn't stopped them completely, despite 

the fact that throughout the north east Atlantic to the north of 

Biscay, stingray numbers are now considered to be so low that the 

species has been declared as being under threat. 

The current Irish record of just over seventy pounds was taken in 

Tralee Bay in 1999, a good fifteen years after our last visit, so they 

must still continue to come. 

One of the main reasons why I love stingray fishing so much is that 

in terms of surface area when compared to say a thornback ray, 

they look deceivingly small. It isn't until you take note of the depth 

of their body along the spinal ridge, and the steep angle this takes 

into those short stumpy wings, that you really appreciate how much 

potential power there is there. 

Steve Perry, shore Stingray 

89

A good turn of speed, which along with a never say die attitude that would see some of the Tralee 

stingers quite literally leaping out of the water doing a pretty good impression of a giant bat, always 

ensured they were a handful. Spectacular stuff. 

No wonder then that so many people sang, and possibly quietly continue to sing their praises, and more 

than reason enough for boat and shore anglers to again go out searching for them, particularly 

throughout the calm shallow waters of inner estuaries and creeks where they love to bask over the sun 

warmed muddy sand 

EAGLE RAY Myliobatis aquila 


As with the stingray, which at a glance the eagle ray kind-of resembles, this is a 'true ray' species. The 

main physical difference between the stingray and eagle rays comes at the front end. 

In the eagle ray, the head itself is very pronounced, both in terms of appearing to be raised up and in 

the way it protrudes forward of the shoulders rather than being merged into them. This allows the eyes 

to be set into the sides of the head, as opposed to the traditional skate and ray pattern of positioning 

them on top. 

A heavily built thick bodied fish with wide pointed wings and a long whip like tail armed with a 

dangerous serrated spike or sting at its base just behind the small dorsal fin, a fin that is not present in 

the stingray. Colouration varies from dusky bronze though various darker shades of brown to almost 

black. 

90

Another of those at best rarely repeated catches which angling throws up from time to time. If my 

recollection serves me well, the original fish which put the species in the record list came from around 

the Isle of Wight.The same area that produced the current record at just over a hundred pounds back in 

2004. 

Coincidence..... possibly. Either way, not a common occurrence at our latitude, though in some ways 

there is no more reason for it to absent from Britain and Ireland's south coast than the stingray, both of 

which I have caught in big numbers elsewhere in the world on standard ray rigs comprising four to six 

feet of sixty pounds bs monofilament and a 6/0 hook baited with mackerel. 

It's said that eagle rays spend more time swimming well up off the bottom than other rays, which if they 

do, could help explain the catch rate discrepancy. But they still feed hard on the sea bed, possibly taking 

more in the way of molluscs and crustaceans than fish. 

That said, in my experience of bottom fishing out of Puerto Rico on Gran Canaria, we caught as many 

if not more eagle rays than stingrays, and all of them at the bottom on fish baits. So all the pointers are 

that in home waters at least, this still is a rare and occasional visitor from the south. 

DARK ELECTRIC RAY Torpedo nobiliana 


Electric rays are true rays which physically look completely 

different to what we as anglers tend to call rays. So much so 

that if even if you didn't know what it was you had on the end 

of your line, you would be immediately aware that it was 

something different, which in this case is perhaps safer left in 

the water. 

The head and wings form an almost completely circular shape, 

though slightly blunted at the front end, creating a profile not 

unlike the shape of a banjo as shown in the illustration for the 

marbeled electric ray below. 

The pelvic fins are also noticeably rounded, while the tail stalk 

is short and thick with two close set dorsal fins sited on it, 

terminating in a well developed tail fin which thornback rays 

and the like, plus stingrays, all lack. 

Electric Ray record 96.1.0 

Fish are the only vertebrates capable of producing an electrical 

current both for offence and defence, and in that regard, electric 

rays have quite a sizeable electricity generating organ sited in 

each wing, which collectively make up around one sixth of the 

fish’s total body weight. 

These are constructed from modified striated muscle fibres stacked against each other and connected 

up in parallel. The organs of a large specimen might contain as many as 500,000 such plates. 

Discharges of up to sixty volts are the norm, though this can vary with the size and condition of an 

individual fish. Large specimens have been recorded emitting two hundred and twenty volts with a 

current of eight amps. 

The upper surface of these fish is the positive side and the under surface the negative. Strong discharges 

however tend only to be used when the need arises 

91

The value of these organs to the electric ray is two fold. Foremost, it is a means of capturing and 

subduing their prey. They feed on quite a large variety of small bottom loving fishes which are 

smothered then stunned, thus rendering them much more manageable. 

The organs are also used for defensive purposes, though their power diminishes rapidly with each 

discharge due to the time required between usages to recharge the system. 

Also known as the Atlantic torpedo ray, the dark electric ray, or just simply the electric ray, is the largest 

growing and most northerly ranging of the three electric ray species known in European waters. Sand 

and mud at depths of between thirty and one hundred and fifty feet are generally favoured. 

In this case, additional features other than shape to look out for are a first dorsal fin that is very much 

larger than the second, and a lack of papillae (small growths) reaching into the aperture of the spiracles, 

these being the breathing holes close to the eyes on the top side, growths which the marbled electric ray 

has. 

Colouration on the top side is an unmarked deep brown to slatey blue. The underside is cream with a 

darker edging suggestive of the upper surface shade. A fish with a recorded distribution on the west 

coast of the country as far northwards as the Shetland Islands. 

Not a species I suspect you could ever actively target, particularly as it is thought to be predominantly 

nocturnal. As with the rarer and very much smaller growing marbled electric ray, they are very 

occasionally caught on rod and line, presumably using the same sorts of tactics likely to catch all rays 

such as a fish or squid bait on a four to six foot heavy monofilament flowing trace. 

One of those fish which simply happens along infrequently, particularly from the Channel Islands and 

up along the south coast, with both the boat and the shore records coming from Cornish waters, the boat 

record being not too far short of one hundred pounds. 

Also recorded in Irish waters from around Achill Island, and in Wales from Anglesey, this is most 

definitely a fish which it pays to know how to identify, if only to avoid inappropriate handling. 

Otherwise you could be in for a nasty shock......quite literally. 

MARBLED ELECTRIC RAY Torpedo marmorata 


Similar in shape to the dark electric ray 

described above, but in this case with the 

six to eight papillae, which are small 

conspicuous growths around and 

extending in to each spiracle, this being the 

breathing aperture situated on top of the 

head close to the eye. 

Top side colouration and markings are 

some variant on mottled or marbled brown 

through to cream with a cream coloured 

underside, the edges of which are tinged 

with the darker base colour, though not the 

markings of the upper side. 

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A much smaller fish of more southerly distribution than the dark electric ray, confined in home water 

angling terms mainly to the Channel Islands where both the boat and shore record have come from in 

the past. 

Being smaller, presumably it is less able to belt out the power of its larger cousin, an account of which 

has already been given above. 

Again, not a fish I suspect you could actively target. As with the potentially much larger dark electric 

ray, they are very occasionally caught on rod and line, presumably using the same sorts of tactics likely 

to catch all rays such as a fish or squid bait on a four foot heavy monofilament flowing trace. 

One of those fish which simply happens along from time to time, though with so many warm water 

species becoming increasingly commoner these days due to rising sea temperatures, maybe there are 

more to come, for which reason it pays to know what one looks like to avoid inappropriate handling. 

Not so far recorded in Welsh, Scottish or Irish waters, though I suspect it's probably just a matter of 

time. Certainly for Ireland. 

THE BONY FISHES 

In a nutshell, for angling purposes at least, this means every species of fish recorded as having been 

caught on rod and line in home waters, including those living in freshwater, that is not either a shark or 

a ray. Fish with recognisable bony skeletons as opposed to a framework of cartilage. 

Tail layout is another major distinguishing feature. Bony fishes generally have tails of equal proportions 

either side of the mid point, whereas sharks never do. 

Most bony fish species also have an operculum or gill cover to protect the gill arches which in turn 

support the gills. Scales are another common feature, though in some species these can be particularly 

hard to see or detect. 

THE COD FAMILY 

Economically, the most important group of fishes, not only around the British Isles, but throughout all 

northern Europe, and consequently, the one whose more popular angling species come under the 

greatest measure of commercial pressure. 

Cod as a species are also arguably the most important angling fish on the British scene, though slightly 

less so when you look at the British Isles or home waters as a whole. 

Almost equally important, though thankfully of far less commercial interest for the moment at least is 

the whiting, which is another of sea anglings main bread and butter species, both boat and shore. 

The family as a whole encompasses some of our most sought after sporting species too such as pollack 

and coalfish, plus a whole raft of other species with different body forms and fin layouts, ranging from 

top end predators such as ling through to mini versions of the same in the rocklings. 

Collectively therefore, they deserve to be the first point of focus for this section of the book, starting 

with the family father figure itself, the cod. 

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COD Gadus morhua 


Despite the cod’s potential for quite a wide range of base colour variation depending on location, 

feeding, and habitat, upper body mottled patterning will always be present. Fish living over shallow, 

reefy, kelpy ground for example are often a brilliant reddish colour, while deeper water fish can be 

anything from green or brown through to sandy yellow. 

This mottling however can vary in tone from dirty cream to brown, along with a scattering of small 

brown flecks. The lower sides and belly which are un-patterned should be white, but in shallow water 

fish, can often be some shade of dirty grey. The lateral line is very obvious and is white. 

Cod have three dorsal fins and two anal fins, each of which is noticeably rounded at its peak. The chin 

carries a very prominent barbel. A fish with a very wide ranging and opportunistic appetite willing to 

eat everything from worms, shellfish and crabs, through to sea mice, squids, and some quite large fishes 

such as sizeable whiting. 

Fish feeding actually plays a major role at certain times of the year, with the larger cod concentrating 

on sandeels, sprats or herrings, along with pretty much any other suitably sized fish they can catch. 

Bass may well be the iconic anglers fish, but its the cod that is the true anglers fish. More time, effort, 

and money goes into fishing for cod than bass have ever enjoyed, and if I'm honest, as much as I love 

bass and believe they should be given exclusive recreational status, when the chips are down, if I had 

to choose between cod or bass to go with my plate full, based on reality as opposed to fantasy, the cod 

wins out on all levels for me. 

It has the numbers, the growth potential, and the distribution both offshore and from the shore, plus it's 

what the vast majority of us not only aspire to catch, but unlike bass, regularly succeed in catching, 

which is vitally important if waning angler interest levels are to have any realistic chance of being held 

in check. 

94

As with all species, and for a range of reasons, population density can fluctuate. Usually though there 

will be some fish available in worthwhile numbers somewhere. 

Not only that, but available to a wide enough range of tackle, tactics, and baits to keep a great many 

people both interested and happy, as cod are neither difficult fish to find or to catch, which for the boat 

angler is something that can readily be tapped into by chatting to any prospective charter boat skipper 

before booking, asking questions about seasonality, local tide preferences, and approach. 

From the shore it takes a different type of investigative work to get a handle on what might be going 

on. A mix of talking, watching, and trying. Also of walking the beach at low water on a big spring tide, 

noting where features such as rough patches, gullies, and worm beds are. That's my key snippet of shore 

cod fishing advice. 

Approached properly, both opportunities can produce fairly predictable results, on top of which, it 

would take a book in its own right to chronicle everything there is to know about fishing for cod 

throughout the British Isles. 

With that point in mind, what I intend to do here is reflect on a number of historic case studies, which 

tactically speaking, should hopefully take us from where we were when I caught my first cod to where 

we find ourselves today. 

My interest actually started before I'd even seen a cod caught on rod and line. I was at school at the time 

living a good thirty miles inland from the coast still fishing farm ponds for small rudd, when I started 

buying Creel Magazine, which later became Angling Magazine, under the editorship of the still highly 

regarded Brian Harris. 

Back then it seemed that the eastern end of the English Channel was the place to be, with quite a few 

of the Kent and Sussex ports catching incredible numbers of cod. 

Boat fishing out of Newhaven in particular sticks in my 

mind. But far away my most vivid recollection is of Les 

Moncreiff's shore casting abilities around Dungeness, 

and the huge hauls of big fish he would take from a 

beach mark known as 'the dustbin', which I believe was, 

and perhaps still is, one particular swirling back eddy 

in which food items became trapped. 

I never got to fish any of those places, so I can only go 

off what I've read, but to a young lad they looked and 

sounded fabulous. Similarly, the winter marks both 

sides of the Isle of Wight. 

I never got to fish those either, but again from what I 

read, while they weren't exactly teeming with fish, they 

could certainly attract some huge specimens taken on 

large squid baits combined with wire line to beat the 

tide, the forerunner of the braided lines that do the same 

job today. 

Les Moncreiff by Eddie Weitzel 

Sadly, shortly afterwards, both those locations slipped 

into decline, though the Isle of Wight has once again 

started showing signs of a comeback over recent times. 

I can however comment from personal experience on many of the remaining big cod hot spots, though 

not always with any appreciable or consistent measure of success. 

95

Though I had sea fished while on holiday a few times, it wasn't until 1970 that I actually took it up 

seriously, and later, pretty much exclusively. 

I will be discussing some of my earliest trips to Loch Ryan fishing from a sixteen foot open boat 

skippered by Davy Agnew more fully in Part 2. But still I need to mention it here briefly, because Davy 

introduced me to the pleasures of both catching cod, and of small boat fishing as a means of getting to 

them, which was to play a major role in my fishing several years later. 

Sandwiched between those key two events however was the hey day of monster cod fishing in and 

around the Clyde and its sea lochs. Doug Dinnie, George Mann and Bill Freshwater, otherwise known 

as 'the trio' were making the headlines on an almost weekly basis with cod to over forty pounds from 

their little fourteen open boat out over a mark known as the Gantocks. 

They were also making headlines for their tactics of using heavy metal pirks, which while these are 

common place now, at that time were virtually unheard of and had to be imported from Scandinavia by 

ABU. 

Lots of good cod were running the Clyde system each winter back then, passing over the Gantocks on 

into the various sea lochs where boat and shore anglers were having an absolute field day. 

To get a better first hand flavour of how all of that went, I've spoken at length with some of the people 

who were involved at the time, including Tony Bridge regarding the boat fishing, and Ken Robinson 

from the shore. 

I even managed to get up there myself where we picked up a few half decent fish. But unfortunately, 

due to a combination of my young age, the distances involved, and having only just started getting into 

boat fishing, I saw the very tail end of it all, after which it plunged very rapidly and spectacularly into 

terminal decline. 

So bad in fact that the Clyde is still even now a virtual desert and may never recover, which again is 

reflected in the audio interview I recorded with Ken Robinson. 

Though I was travelling north quite a bit in search of 

cod during the early 1970's, around 1973 I decided 

that I also needed to travel south. The Thames 

Estuary at that time was producing both big numbers 

of cod and big specimens, though not on the 

Gantocks scale of things. 

John Rawle and Bod Cox had everyone wanting to 

learn about and buy into uptide fishing, with the 

usual knock on effect of all the big tackle companies 

clambering to get in on the profit generating band 

wagon too. 

The uptiding scene has come a long way since those 

early days of buying in twenty and thirty pound class 

boat rod blanks that had not been cut down to size, 

then ringing them to be used as boat casting rods. 

News paper clip of ‘The Trio’ 

So I did a couple of runs down to Bradwell fishing 

with John, both to learn all I could first hand from 

the master, and to get a slice of the excellent fishing 

action they had down there, and once again now have in that neck of the woods. 

96

Our first trips didn't exactly light up the world. We caught plenty of small to middle range cod. But it 

wasn't about fish numbers. It was more about learning and perfecting a technique which back then was 

just about as alien as things could get to any dyed in the wool boat anglers way of thinking. 

Uptiding actually came about through a combination of accident and evolution. As skippers, forced to 

fish up on the bow out of the way, John and Bob started casting to keep their lines clear of their paying 

customers. The holding out across the tide bit was a slow progressive development spurred on by 

catching more fish than the clients they were trying to keep clear of. 

At the same time as all of this was going on, I also discovered the Isle of Arran with it's brilliant haddock 

and cod fishing in the company of local expert Neil McLean, fishing both from his charter boat and his 

self-drives, the latter which just happened to be GRP versions of Davy Agnew's Loch Ryan based 

sixteen foot MacKay Viking. 

Briefly, why this fact is important to this particular strand of my cod fishing, is because one day we 

misjudged things at Arran and got caught out very badly by the weather to the point that we genuinely 

thought our number was up. Fortunately, the little MacKay powered by its tiny Seagull outboard did 

eventually bring us safely through, though in hindsight I'm not sure how. 

So impressed was I with the boat that I actually ordered one of my own, partnering up with my fishing 

buddy Steve Lill who bought the 9.9 hp Johnson outboard to power it, all of which fell in perfectly with 

the start of historically one of the best small boat cod fishing episodes I am aware of. 

This was the decade long jumbo cod era along my own patch 

of Lancashire's Fylde coast between Bispham and Rossall 

Point from the late 1970's through to the late 1980's. 

Coincidentally, around the same time, anglers were enjoying 

a similar quality of fishing in South Wales from the Bristol 

Channel through to Swansea, plus what was arguably the 

best shore cod fishing ever known from Balcary Point in 

south west Scotland. 

Whether there is a connection here, who can say. At all three 

venues the big cod appeared around the same time and 

ultimately would disappear around the same time too. One 

perhaps for the conspiracy theorists, so think what you will. 

Equally coincidental was the fact that all of this kicked off 

at roughly the same time as the bumper big cod catches 

previously taken elsewhere around the country were starting 

to slip off the radar. 

Garth Haslam Cod 38 pounds Rossall 

The growth of dinghy fishing along the Lancashire coast 

probably dates back to the early 1970's. An era of twelve to 

fourteen foot displacement boats powered by Seagull 

outboards, transported on rotting painted trailers running on 

wheel barrow hubs. 

No electronics. Probably no safety gear either if the truth be known. But most definitely plenty of good 

fish, something technology and outfit quality improvements have done nothing to keep pace with. 

Looking back, we had more and better fish back then from nothing more than a shell of a hull compared 

to today's small boats fitted with everything as standard, which in my case now includes radar and AIS. 

97

New years day Rossall early 1980’s 

A magic time, affectionately known as the Fylde coast 

jumbo cod era. But, nostalgia and rose tinted glasses aside, 

it wasn't a given that if you went out you would bag up with 

quality fish. In fact, it wasn't even guaranteed that you would catch anything at all. 

There were actually some pretty tough times too as I recall, and often it was very much colder than 

today's winters, with freezing fog a regular occurrence, which in a small open boat with nothing more 

sophisticated than a hand held compass can be quite daunting, particularly at night, as we often fished 

after dark to compensate for weekend daytime blow-off's, though if I'm honest, despite night fishing 

supposedly feeling like it should produce the goods, it was often disappointing. 

I think we possibly went out too far as evidenced by the successes of the beach night lines. But anywhere 

between Bispham and Rossall over very heavy ground in thirty to forty feet of water fishing at anchor 

on a good sized tide put you in with a shot. 

Some people claimed they had marks, and it's true that there were a few gullies which on their day could 

produce quite well. But I've been out and had a burster prompting me to put down a buoy to return to 

the following day as we had no GPS back then, only to find that people elsewhere around me caught 

while I didn't. 

In truth, there were never a lot of cod about. But as a percentage of the species population, a high 

proportion of them were decent sized fish, and it's fair to say that every time you got a bite, there was 

the genuine expectation that it could result in a twenty pounder. 

Quite a few even topped thirty pounds, and Mark Millar fishing from ex-charter skipper Frank Bee's 

dinghy had one of forty two pounds, all within a mile or less of the shore. 

They would catch them equally as big, and on occasions even bigger, on set lines pegged out on the 

beach at night. The problem was that at times there wouldn't be much else about in support, particularly 

98

etween Christmas and the last big tides in February when the mature fish started pushing too far 

offshore to reach. 

It's never been satisfactorily explained why we suddenly got these big cod in the first place, or why they 

disappeared. Regarding the why we got them part of the query, with dinghy fishing in its infancy at the 

time, it could be that they had always been there, but nobody up until then was aware of the fact. 

Part two of the query regarding what happened to them is probably easier to explain. When big fish are 

taken out and not given the opportunity to replace themselves, slippage into a cycle of ever decreasing 

size maximums is inevitable, which is exactly what happened, but in our case with some bumper years 

in terms of sheer numbers of fish. 

Unfortunately, these were small fish up to maybe a couple of pounds. I well remember us catching 

dozens of them and thinking just wait until next year when they come back as five to seven pounders. 

But that didn't happen. It was just more of the same, and eventually even they stopped for quite a few 

years, after which, as with many other venues around the country, we struggled for quite a while 

The same thing happened at Balcary on the Dumfriesshire Coast, where a number of low rock marks 

looking out on to sand produced a run of huge cod over several years before they too was gone. It wasn't 

unheard of to get two or more twenty to thirty pound cod there in a session. Sometimes even more and 

bigger. Ken Robinson topped it all off by taking the Scottish shore record with a monster of 40 pounds 

11½ ounces in 1988. 

Ken was also a regular fishing the rock ledges on his home 

patch up in the north east. Now I'm no shore fisherman, but I 

did manage to get across there on a few occasions to fish with 

him. In particular I remember one bleak winter night when 

Ken took myself, Gordon Thornes, and John Stonelake to a 

spot on Blythe Beach, then left us to it as he had to be 

elsewhere else. 

Fishing blacklug on a simple two hook dropper rig, we all cast 

out, but unfortunately, due to my shore fishing inexperience, 

I got into a birds nest on my very first throw, which with my 

poor eye sight in the headlamp light, I struggled to sort out. 

While I was doing so I could feel fish tugging at my rod tip. 

So I wound in, disgorged a nice codling, then re-cast to expose 

the overrun and continue sorting out the mess when the same 

thing happened again, and again. Sometimes one fish, other 

times two. 

Ken Robinson, Balcary shore Cod 

Gordon and John meanwhile were just getting odd ones, and 

in the dark couldn't see where my lead was landing. Obviously 

I could repeat the distance every time because that was all the 

available line I could get out due to the tangle. Amazingly, 

that birdy led me to catching forty two cod. 

In 1989, the then British government decided to break up the big drinking water companies, hiving off 

their pollution enforcement teams from the supply side of things to form the National Rivers Authority 

(NRA). No longer would both poacher and game keeper share the same office space. 

Also around that time we had the Toxteth riots in Liverpool, followed by Michael Hesseltines pledge 

to make huge environmental changes on Merseyside, which included a clean up of the River Mersey, 

and a new effluent treatment plant at Sandon Dock. 

99

As an NRA officer, and later an EA Environment Officer, I worked on the Mersey in those early years, 

and actually took the first ever compliance sample from the newly commissioned Sandon primary 

treatment facility, thereby playing my part in the running sewer to running salmon revival of the River 

Mersey, which amazingly took a mere thirteen years. 

I mention this because at the same time as the big cod were showing along the Fylde Coast, Balcary 

and in South Wales, anglers were also catching some very good fish on occasions from Seaforth rocks 

at the Mersey entrance. But unfortunately, as with the Fylde Coast fish, that too tailed off for a while. 

Later, when cod numbers did eventually start to come back, returning fish were faced with a very much 

cleaner River Mersey than previously to spread up in to, sometimes as much as several miles inland to 

the Britannia Pub and beyond, making the Mersey one of the best and certainly most sheltered winter 

cod fisheries in the country. 

On the downside, the ferocity of the river flow on all but the smallest of tides also makes it one of the 

toughest boat venues I have fished. Not so bad on tides up to around 8.2 metres with the right gear, plus 

a knowledge of how to go about it. But sole destroying at times for first time enthusiasts, as I've 

witnessed on more than an odd occasion, if any of those elements are even slightly out of kilter. 

Beach launching over at New Brighton 

isn't that great either. Not so much for 

the risk of getting bogged in with the 

trailer or towing vehicle wheels, 

though that can happen. More because 

of New Brighton's position at the 

southern entrance to the Mersey 

leaving it so exposed, while up-river 

where the fish are it can be flat calm 

and perfectly fishable, if only you 

could get to it. 

There are better and more sheltered 

slipways all along the Wirrall side of 

the river, which for whatever reason, 

the local authorities won't allow to be 

used, preferring to let small boat 

anglers, including local rate payers, 

Launching New Brighton on the Mersey 

struggle and put both their outfits and 

themselves at risk, despite the fact that it would cost nothing to offer the use of these facilities as they 

are already built. 

The charter boats on the other hand, which can take more weather anyway, start off up river at the 

marina, so never have to go down to the exposed entrance if they don't want to. 

I once fished a trip aboard Tony Parry's 'Jensen II' in fifty seven knots of wind which equates to force 

eleven on the Beaufort's scale, and there was hardly a ripple over on the sheltered side. 

It's the strength of the run that is the main Mersey bug-bare. Fortunately, when the Fylde Coast was 

producing its better cod, we would fish there on the big tide weekends and the Mersey on the smaller 

tides, which worked out quite well. 

As both are roughly the same depth and fish best on baits pinned to the bottom in coloured water 

conditions, you would think that the tactics would be inter-changeable. We thought that ourselves. But 

it quickly became apparent that modifications were going to be required. 

100

The Fylde would fish best after a bit of a blow to stir things up and colour the water. This keeps the cod 

feeding hard on the bottom, whereas when visibility is better, they can move up in the water column 

hunting sprats, which means less chance of them finding the baits. 

Always one to keep things simple, a four foot fifty pound bs flowing trace was all I ever used. Forget 

add-ons or bling. Let the bait do the attracting. In coloured water, bling won't be visible anyway. Always 

this was with one or two large blacklug either on a single hook set up or a pennel rig, depending on 

personal preference. 

With six to eight ounces of lead lobbed down-tide over the stern sufficient to hold bottom, that was the 

ideal Fylde coast terminal set up. Try that in the Mersey however and you stood a better than even 

chance of catching nothing. In fact, you probably wouldn't even touch bottom when the tide was 

running. 

There, only uptiding with a decent grip lead guarantees a good bottom hold. It you have an angle in 

your line away from the boat, then you must be holding bottom. 

Baits and trace presentation also had to be modified. In the Mersey, squid is a very good bait, and large 

blacklug-squid cocktails held together by elasticated thread presented on a pennel rig are even better. 

As for trace length, that too has been changed, with a reduction down to at most a couple of feet. 

The power of the water hitting a bait that is not aqua-dynamically streamlined will tend to throw it all 

over the place, even lifting it up clear of the bottom, where in the low visibility, and with the fish keeping 

their heads down in the fierce run, is not where it needs to be. 

My favourite way around all of this is to use a bolt rig pennel trace designed by Tony Parry, which very 

often sees the fish hooking themselves as they move off in the tide away from the grip of the wired lead. 

Essentially this is a short pennel rig of around eighteen inches to two feet. The difference between this 

one and just any other short flowing trace is that it has a second component. A tubi-boom with a bead 

at either end trapped between two swivels on a fifteen inch length of fifty pounds bs monofilament. One 

swivel for attachment to the reel line, the other for a link such as the Gemini snood clip on the end of 

pennel rig. 

Using a link clip in this way allows a second pennel to be baited up ready for a quick swap-over each 

time the trace comes in, thereby minimising lost fishing time in the way that shore anglers do by double 

patting. And when a fish picks up the bait, it can only run a very short distance before the sliding tubiboom 

hits the stoppers and it's pulling against the anchored lead, thereby hooking itself. 

On the smallest of tides, and in the 

slower period leading up to peak flow 

around mid tide on anything larger, six 

to eight ounces of standard fixed nose 

wired grip will usually hold out. Any 

more run and it starts to get more 

difficult, a problem anglers all around 

the country can be faced with from time. 

To get around this I decided to produce 

a 'super grip' lead. However, the one I 

use now is not the same as the pattern I 

started off with. That's evolution. 

Bob Jones, Mersey Cod 

Initially I had a bomb lead with four 

stainless steel wires poking out from 

101

each side which I bent over in the traditional way to grip, but with the bends on one side going the 

opposite way to those on the other. 

This was so that which ever way it settled out it would have four well spread grip wires instead of the 

normal two biting into the seabed. 

Unfortunately, I very quickly learned that it wasn't quite as simple as that, because depending on which 

way you bent the wires in relation to the positioning of the attachment loop, and which side of the boat 

you cast it from, you might very well end up with the grip wires all pointing skywards. Lesson learned, 

I switched to putting all eight wires into the nose. 

To do this I had to find myself an open ended mould, which I did by using an adjusti-mould with the 

plunger removed and the side pouring hole sealed up. 

12 ounce super grip lead 

What's more, this could take up to 

twelve ounces of lead. As for the wires, 

these are separated off into four pairs 

fanned out like a grass rake, then bent in 

opposite directions so that there was no 

right or wrong way for the lead to settle 

out. 

Believe me, twelve ounces of lead with 

four well spaced gripping wires can 

hold out in some pretty ferocious flows. 

The one draw back here is that if you 

don't also use a long tubi-boom to 

dangle the trace away from the wires 

during casting, it can self tangle. 

This, paired up with the short pennel 

bolt rig presenting a double blacklug and squid cocktail streamlined by using elasticated thread is a 

pretty formidable piece of terminal kit. 

In terms of chronological timing, none of the above fits together as one continuous flow, but there is 

none the less a more general sort of pattern to it all, the next step on the journey being over to the North 

Sea. 

Fish availability must have been much of a muchness from the Humber right up the east coast into 

Scottish waters during the late 1970's and 80's. But you wouldn't have thought so reading the angling 

press. According to reports, there was only ever one venue, that being Whitby. 

It had the wrecks; it quickly built up a fleet of boats capable of ever lengthening forays offshore, and it 

had the angler catchment area, swelled by people journeying from all over the country to what would 

become the UK Mecca for catching cod. 

It certainly had the fish, and a lot of very big, occasionally even huge fish mixed in amongst them too. 

It also had tackle and tactics specifically tailored to suit its needs, which were either less or completely 

none effective when used elsewhere in the country away from the east coast. Big pirks or 'jiggers' were 

the order of the day, attached to the bottom of a string of muppets. 

Unlike the Gantocks, due to almost suicidal tackle loss rates over some of the wrecks, the pirks here 

were often home made from lead filled chrome tubes, used as much as sinkers as they were lures. 

102

Muppets too began to appear in a range of sizes and colours, which as with the redgills over the midchannel 

wrecks, could be deadly in one colour one day, then demanding of something totally different 

the next. 

It reminded me very much of the early days of wrecking out from Brixham and Plymouth, where endless 

lines of fish hungry anglers metaphorically queued to get on to the boats, and everyone thinking it could 

never end. But it did end, both down in the south west and later on in the North Sea. 

Over-fishing by wreck netters made net free wrecks ever harder to find, with the obvious knock on in 

terms of increased distance and reduced fishing time. Problems with cod population numbers more 

generally later compounded the problem. But it was Margaret Thatcher as much as anyone who knocked 

the last few nails into Whitby's coffin lid. 

Much of the boat angling trade throughout the Yorkshire region had come from miners clubs, and with 

them gone, so too was a very lucrative source of regular income leading to a shrinking charter fleet, and 

not only at Whitby. All the other less publicised but equally successful adjacent ports that had been 

more quietly going about their business declined equally badly too. 

Less anglers and very few fish pushed a lot charter boat operators to the wall. But fortunately, not all 

of them. A few clung on. And with catch expectations at an all time low, those hardy pioneers set about 

experimenting and exploring, ultimately laying the foundation upon which those same ports have since 

re-built their reputations and businesses. 

One of those pioneers was Paul Kilpatrick at Whitby. With things as they were, it was time for him and 

others like him to start looking at areas of fishing and tactics previously neglected. In particular, the 

inshore hard ground, both during the winter as well as the summer months. 

Over the summer months it was back to the old ways of drift fishing with worm, crab, mackerel, and 

squid, fished from short droppers above the lead, constantly feeling for bottom contact, but careful to 

avoid tackle hungry hangups, hence the hook positioning up the trace. 

103

In the main this produced cod and ling, but with increasing numbers of pollack too in certain areas. 

Winter time was slightly different. Then the boats would anchor much closer in for uptide fishing, which 

again proved very effective. So effective in fact that it is now an established part of the Yorkshire cod 

fishing scene. 

But it wasn't entirely a case of the wheel turning full circle from bait inshore to pirks and muppets over 

the wrecks then back to bait closer in. Paul Kilpatrick and the others didn't completely forsake the lures. 

The era of the shads was just about to open up. 

In a way, shads look a bit like the old style redgills. Soft rubber or plastic fish shaped bodies, but 

generally shorter and deeper with less reliance on the long swimming tail. That however is where the 

similarity ends. 

Many are now self weighted, though not nearly heavy enough to get them down into the feeding zone 

on their own in a good lick of Whitby tide, which is important. For unlike redgills, which as soon as 

they touched bottom were on their way back up using a slow retrieve looking to pick out fish which 

could be many feet clear of the reef or the wreck, at Whitby, shads when they touch bottom need to be 

fished at the bottom, because for the most part, that's where the cod will be feeding. 

Presentation differs too. Very long flying collar rigs present swimming lures at their best. A three way 

swivel on the end of the braid with a short weaker monofilament link from the bottom loop to a lead, 

and around four to six feet of fifty pounds bs monofilament to the shad is the Whitby way. 

This is then fished lift and drop with the reel out of gear and the thumb on the spool to let out a tiny bit 

more line if required on each down stroke to make sure the lead actually touches bottom every time, 

which it needs to do. 

Colour can be important too, though again, as with the redgills over the channel wrecks, this can vary 

day by day, and even within a day, depending on water clarity, surface conditions, and available light. 

So never be afraid to watch other people if they are having a good day and take note, and what better 

person to watch than the skipper himself, who in Paul Kirkpatrick's case is out on the cabin deck of 'Sea 

Otter 2' for every drift. 

Whenever he lost a shad to the wreck, 

I noticed he would invariably go back 

to the same pattern, which was a four 

inch rhubarb and custard. That, from 

a man who's out every available day 

fishing every available drop, and with 

a lot of good cod to his credit, has to 

count for something. 

There is another experience worth 

relating here, which in terms of 

timing, slots into the gap between the 

hey-day of muppets and jiggers and 

the shads. It's a little out of sequence, 

but I didn't want to break up the flow 

of the historical Whitby story. 

Actually, for me at least, it all started 

at Whitby anyway in the days when 

Dave Devine and I used to trail our 

Decent Whitby summer Cod 

104

own boat over there to fish the rough ground maybe ten or twelve miles offshore, where we took some 

quite memorable cod catches. 

On one particular occasion we needed a few extra pirks, so we called in at one of the towns tackle shops. 

But all they had in were straight pieces of lead filled chrome tube with a wire loop set half way up the 

side, to which was tied maybe three inches of heavy monofilament covered in coloured plastic sleeving, 

tipped off with a bare single 6/0 hook. 

Unsure what to do, but low on pirks, we bought a few anyway, which at various times we tried both as 

they were, and with a small muppet on the hook. 

On other occasions we even baited them and caught lots of fish on all three options. So much so that 

we started making our own, only later discovering that they were an updated variation on the traditional 

commercial lead cod ripper which had a long circular lead body of suitable weight with two small holes 

through it close to the bottom at right angles to each other. 

Bright green or orange corlene is threaded through these holes and knots are tied close to the lead to 

lock the corlene in position. Shiny tinned 10/0 hooks are then tied to the four corlene ends, allowing 

them to dangle as a group a couple of inches below the rippers body. These are then jigged like pirks. 

Some say they represent small darting 

sandeels which the cod grab at. Others 

say they simply foul hook the fish, 

hence the name 'ripper'. When you're 

commercial fishing, it doesn't matter 

either way. 

What I would add here is that I once 

accompanied Preston Sea Anglers on a 

trip to Hartlepool for a magazine 

article, and they had a box full of these 

cod rippers. 

Fearing lots of foul hooked fish, I 

thought I wouldn't get the feature. But 

Cod ripper 

I need not have worried. That day we 

had several hundred pounds of cod, 

many in double figures, pretty much all of which were legitimately hooked in and around the mouth. 

Currently (2015) the North Sea is once again full of cod. Not the monsters of years gone by, but plenty 

of doubles, and some better fish mixed in amongst them, all the way from the Humber up into Scottish 

waters. In fact, one of my best east coast trips of recent times was out from Amble fishing the reefs 

close in around Coquet Island. 

Over on the western side of the country from the Solway south through Wales, codling have also been 

showing everywhere, with lots of small fish winter and summer inshore over the reefs, and plenty of 

better fish out in the deeper water over the wrecks which I visited recently for a Sea Angler feature 

looking at the fishing in and out of the Mersey over the summer months aboard Kev McKies boat 

'Brigand'. 

In fact, one afternoon in January 2014, one of the gill netters working out of Fleetwood hauled his net 

within casting range of Andy Bradbury's charter boat 'Blue Mink' and filled up several boxes with big 

cod to just short of thirty pounds. 

105

So maybe there is, or at least there was still a chance for the north west generally, and the Fylde coast 

in particular, to return to those jumbo era days. Yet rod and line anglers have had none of these fish and 

wouldn't even have known about them at all if Andy hadn't seen them with his own eyes on his return 

to the marina. 

Shore fishing for cod too on my local patch from Fleetwood down into the Mersey has also picked up. 

But without doubt, the in place for very big cod just at the moment is Shetland. 

Whether or not some or all of this will change any time soon is one of angling life's imponderables. If 

it does, it probably won't be for the better if the European Union continues on with its current draft of 

the Common Fisheries Policy, despite EU fishery scientists repeatedly begging ministers to think again 

while there is still some hope of a rescue of sorts from the brink of the abyss while there are still a few 

commercially high value species left. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 5, 24, 43, 92, 111, 170, 171 and 181. 

POLLACK Pollachius pollachius 


In common with several of the more common cod family 

Ian Burrett, inshore Scottish Pollack 

members, pollack are fish with three dorsal fins and two 

anal fins, which at face value might sound like a recipe for 

identity confusion. Fortunately, in reality it turns out to be nothing of the sort. 

Only the coalfish, to which pollack are most closely related and in many ways mirror in terms of lifestyle, 

present any sort of identity confusion, and even then not very much. 

One obvious point of difference is the lower jaw of the pollack which very noticeably protrudes beyond 

the upper, whereas they are equal in the coalfish. 

106

Colouration and lateral line are two further major points of difference. Pollack can vary in colour to 

some extent according to the ground they are taken from. Over inshore kelp they can be more reddish, 

while those taken from deep water wrecks tend to be duller, and as ever, there are all shades in between. 

Either way, the back and upper flanks will be a much darker shade of brown than the mid flank region. 

More importantly, unlike most fish where colour change is gradual, the transition in pollack from one 

to the other is sudden and very obvious, eventually fading and lightening on the belly. 

Starting at the gill cover, the brown lateral line tracks along the point of colour change from dark to 

light until it passes the pectoral fin where it then curves down onto the lighter golden colouration of the 

flank, dissecting it into two almost equal halves all the way to the tail. 

Coalfish on the other hand are dark bottle green on the back and upper flanks which merges gradually 

into a dirty off white lower down the body, and have a straight white lateral. 

In addition to this, pollack, to me at least, look to be too short in the latter half of their body for the front 

half proportions, and always they disappointingly seem to weigh less than you might expect them to in 

comparison to other similar sized fish. 

Without doubt, one of the most versatile fish in home waters in terms of distribution, inshore-offshore 

availability, and the range of tactics and baits that can successfully be used to catch them. A true anglers 

fish. A very powerful hard fighting fish too. As such, how could anybody fail to be impressed by the 

pollack. 

I remember a fly fishing session we once did for them, more of which later. Salmon angling writer and 

guide Ally Gowans was convinced he'd hooked the daddy of them all, only to find the fish weighed 

maybe three pounds. Needless to say he went away suitably impressed, and with a very different opinion 

as to the comparative fighting qualities of his regular quarry. 

So with pollack as a species not being an especially difficult fish either to find or to catch, in addition 

to looking at the various boat and shore options, I'd also like to invest a fair chunk of time into exploring 

the various different approaches available, ranging from the seek and destroy string of feathers right 

through to the difficulties of fly fishing at sea, plus all options in between. 

Pollack are not bottom feeding fish. 

They can be if food availability 

dictates, and they can lurk amongst 

the rocks and kelp at or close to the 

bottom. But they can just as easily 

hunt well up in the water column, 

both inshore and offshore, and are 

more than happy to dart up from 

cover to pick off any suitable small 

fish or lure passing over-head. 

Pollack are not bottom feeding fish. 

They can be if food availability 

dictates, and they can lurk amongst 

the rocks and kelp at or close to the 

bottom. But they can just as easily 

Pollack safely in the landing net 

hunt well up in the water column, 

both inshore and offshore, and are 

more than happy to dart up from cover to pick off any suitable small fish or lure passing over-head. 

107

Out over the deep water wrecks for example, it's common practise to touch bottom with the lead in the 

run up to wreck showing on the sounder, then as the target begins to show, start winding, while at the 

same time counting the turns of the reel handle when fishing redgills, sidewinders and similar soft 

bodied swimming lures, so as to gauge the feeding zone on the day. 

This can be well up and sometimes even well off the wreck, as the pollack, attracted by their prey fish, 

and in particular mackerel, may well be 'riding' the pressure wave created as water pushed along by the 

tide is deflected upwards in the same way that rocks create boils in rivers as they disrupt the flow. 

That said, where you feel the first nips and tugs if they are playing with the lure, may not be a true 

reflection of where the fish first see it and give chase, as they will on occasions follow a lure for quite 

long distances. Sometimes even to within visual range from the boat, which on a calm day I've witnessed 

while reef pollack fishing around the Isles of Scilly. 

This is probably the ideal point at which to talk about strikes and takes when fishing with a flying collar 

rig, which tactically can be any one of several variants on winding up a long monofilament trace through 

the water column. I've read many articles on this topic across a very wide range of views and 

experiences, some of which at times seem to be at odds with each other. 

Some say traces in excess of twenty feet tied up from fluorocarbon are a must. Others suggest just plain 

old thirty pounds bs monofilament at lengths of between twelve and twenty feet. 

My feet are firmly planted in the latter category, and I would add that the shorter the trace the fish allow 

you to get away with on the day the better. I say this because long traces if not handled carefully can 

lead to self tangling problems on the drop down. 

Not so much on days with a good run of tide, or wind and tide working together taking the lure well 

clear of the wire stand off boom with it's lead attached. 

It's in slower conditions that you need to be more aware, flicking the lead away from the boat to create 

a better angle of drop, then moving the rod tip to one side to keep the end gear clear of the main line on 

the descent. 

Slower controlled drops also help and are much better than allowing the lead to go in to free fall. And 

it need not always be with lures. 

King rag nicked through the head, live sandeels, even mackerel belly strips can all be fished in the same 

way either inshore or off, over both wrecks or reefs where a nice slow steady retrieve and sufficient self 

control never to strike are a must. 

When they are ready, pollack will take a bait, turn, and kick for bottom in one fast continuous 

movement, hooking themselves in the process. So be sure and have the reel drag set right, both allowing 

and controlling the power dive under drag pressure which in turn will set the hook. 

You can use a similar, lighter, shortened version for fishing soft lures from snaggy deep water rock 

marks, though with the advent of light rock fishing (LRF), and more so for bigger fish, heavy rock 

fishing (HRF), self weighted soft lures are now more the fashion. 

With this in mind I talked at length to, and recorded a very interesting audio interview with Danny 

Parkins in which he talks primarily about targeting big ballan wrasse, but also of picking up bass and 

pollack from time to time. 

I suspect slow twitching self weighted lures across the bottom would not be as good an approach for 

pollack and to some extent bass as would be a lure travelling overhead silhouetted against the surface, 

something I base on my fly fishing experiences. 

108

Deep diving plugs too, providing the water isn't too deep, 

might be another good option, as would be a big lively 

ragworm, live prawn, or live sandeel, fished a few feet 

off the bottom under a sliding float bobbing along in the 

tide for that bit of extra movement. 

I've also seen shore caught pollack taken on toby type 

lures and various other heavy self weighted spinners, 

plus of course, feathers fished cast and retrieve. 

A more recent addition to the variety of potential 

approaches while fishing out in the boat are shads, either 

on the retrieve or fished sink and draw bouncing the 

bottom, and even large chrome pirks will on occasion 

also catch, though it has to be said that the flying collar 

approach with either soft swimming lures or natural baits 

takes some beating. 

But believe it or not, under the right conditions, it can be 

beaten, and comprehensively so on the right day, with a 

technique which while it is gaining in momentum, is still 

rarely used. Fly fishing. 

I was out with Ian Burrett and a party of Scottish salmon 

Allan Everington, Pollack on fly anglers headed up by Allan Everington aboard Ian's boat 

'Onyermarks'. We were fishing in some thirty feet of 

water in and around the various coves and pieces of reef just either side of West Tarbert Bay on the 

Mull of Galloway. A session planned as a fly fishing only demonstration for a YouTube video, followed 

up more recently with an audio interview with Allan on the topic. 

One of Ian's other boats was also out fishing not too far away using a variety of more traditional inshore 

pollack tactics, ranging from soft lures to slider floats, providing an unintentional control against which 

to compare the fly fishing results. 

Later on in Part 3, in the section detailing my need to break a world record as part of my bucket list, I 

go into a lot of fine detail regarding the fly tackle and tactics required for pollack and coalfish, so rather 

than rehash that now, let me refer you over to that section instead. 

What I will say here, is that despite the weight of the outfits, and in particular the weight of the larger 

lures which were tied in a range of sizes and colours to a basic sandeel pattern, fly fishing in saltwater 

from a boat is not as difficult as it might sound. 

For starters, you can snake out line length as the boat drifts, then use the same drift to help work the 

lures. You don't have to get right down to the bottom either. In fairly shallow clear water, pollack will 

readily come up to snatch a meal passing over head. 

In terms of direct comparison between the fly and the more traditional methods on the day, the fly won 

out by a very big margin indeed, with a number of IGFA world tippet record fish featuring in an overall 

catch in excess of fifty fish, all of which were returned to the water. 

Wherever there is heavy ground, reefs, or wrecks, from Lands End to John O' Groats both east and west 

you will find pollack. Maybe not always big pollack, but game fighters on suitably selected outfits none 

the less. So I'm not going to single any particular location out. 

109

Phill Williams, typical reef Pollack 

I've fished a great many of them, and in their different 

ways, enjoyed them all. But if it's big pollack you want, 

let's say twenty pounds plus, then the mid channel wrecks 

in the early months of the year when the biggest mature 

fish pile on weight before heading out into even deeper 

water to spawn is the place to be. 

Boats from a number of channel ports still get out there 

and find good fish, because unlike some species, pollack 

will migrate from wreck to wreck, and as such, providing 

there are suitable fish about to re-stock with, can do so 

very quickly. 

The other side of the coin however is that they might just 

as easily choose to disappear. Back in the early 1970's 

when all of what we take for granted on the pollack scene 

today was still unfolding, and when most wrecks were 

still absolutely stuffed with fish, the main man for big 

pollack and coalfish was Plymouth based skipper JJ 

McVicar aboard the 'June Lipet'. 

JJ broke the British coalfish record on his own rod twice 

in consecutive days, grabbed the pollack record, then 

added the angler fish record for good measure. 

Getting on in years now, I caught up with him at his 

home in Plymouth recently where we recorded an amazing interview talking about a quality of fishing 

the likes of which, sadly, we will never see again. 


COALFISH Pollachius virens 


In many ways, coalfish 

share a similar body layout 

and general habits to their 

close relative the pollack, 

having three dorsal fins, two 

anal fins, and a sleek 

streamlined torpedo like 

profile. 

Dave Lewis, Coalfish 

Of major importance in 

separating the two is the fact 

that coalfish have jaws of 

almost equal length and a 

straight white lateral line 

over a very dark brownish 

green to bottle green upper 

half which fades to greyish 

white below, whereas 

110

pollack have a protruding lower jaw, a dark brown lateral line which curves over the pectoral fin, and 

are brown on the back which suddenly gives way to golden brown on the flanks. 

In addition, coalfish appear to have no chin barbel, though one should be just about detectable. Pollack 

on the other hand have absolutely no trace of a chin barbel at all. 

Big coalfish in small numbers have always been present on the deep water mid channel wrecks, 

particularly over the late winter months when they fatten up ready for spawning. Some of the Welsh 

wrecks too, particularly those lying in over three hundred feet of water in St. Georges Channel off the 

Lleyn Peninsula, plus those out from Amlwch on Anglesey. 

Whitby and the ports either side of it over on the other side of the country have also produced their 

share. But its not until you head further north around the Scottish and Northern Irish coasts that you 

really start to find them in increasing numbers out over open ground, with the reefs off Shetland 

currently the most consistent big coalfish producer of them all. 

I'm not talking about isolated specimens of the type we used to see off Blackpool while winter cod 

fishing, or the shoals of small mackerel sized coalies they see around the east coast borders region. 

For good solid numbers of potentially decent sized coalfish, the best areas to target are the deeper lying 

reefs off Scotland's west and north coast where they can be fished for on the drift with shads, soft plastic 

lures, even feathers if that's what turns you on. 

In short, tactically speaking, it's pollack fishing with either a mixed or a different outcome, all of which 

I've detailed already under the pollack heading, so no point in repeating it again here. 

As a snapshot of how coalfish can be locally abundant, yet at the same time missing over what might 

seem like suitable ground just a short boat ride away, try a trip out from Cushendall on the Northern 

Irish coast. 

I was over there fishing with Hamish Currie aboard his RIB 'Predator II' during a week when conditions 

were so bad that even the ferries out of Cairnryan had to miss a few crossings. 

It was wild. But, it was all coming from the west, which over on the east coast of the country meant we 

could at least get some shelter tucked in close fishing on the drift over heavy ground with strips of 

mackerel belly on long traces under the cliffs just to the north, where as expected, we caught some nice 

pollack. 

But only pollack. Not a single 

coalfish mixed in amongst them. 

Yet on another day when the wind 

subsided and we were able to get 

off a short distance to the salmon 

cages further out in the bay, we 

caught nothing but coalfish, some 

going well up into double figures. 

Coalfish top, Pollack below 

So why the separation, a question 

to which I have no definitive 

answer. But, like many people, I 

do have an opinion, mine being 

that although they can mix 

together in suitable areas of 

depth and habitat overlap, they 

111

also show specific preferences that can keep them apart. The laws of nature dictate that this has to be 

the case. 

We are talking here of two very similar related fish species hunting and feeding in a seemingly identical 

manner, and evolution simply doesn't allow for that. 

Ultimately, for whatever small reason, one species will prove more competitive than the other and 

displace it, which means that we either loose the evicted species altogether, or it adapts to exploit a 

slightly different niche not already completely occupied by something else and survives, and it would 

appear that this is what has happened here. 

Preferred water depth and latitude is what generally separates these two species, with some small degree 

of overlap, allowing both to prosper, with a few adaptive physical changes or differences along the way. 

By and large then, mature coalfish are an offshore deep water species. Catching small specimens inshore 

and from the shore is one thing. Finding the bigger fish from the shore is quite another matter. But it is 

occasionally done, the best of which I've managed to track down weighing in at just ounces under twenty 

five pounds from Filey Brigg in Yorkshire, which I'll wager was a bit of a shock to its captor. A bit of 

a handful too. 

Back at the start of my fishing, a coalfish of that size would even have beaten the boat record. That now 

stands at 37½ pounds out from Plymouth over one of the mid channel wrecks. 

I noticed too that the Scottish shore record was taken from Loch Long on the Clyde, reminding me of 

how good the Gantocks and some of the adjacent marks could be back in the 1970's for monster coalfish 

as 'by-catch' mixed in amongst the cod from the deep water on the pirks. 

Now unfortunately all of that is long gone leaving the Clyde a virtual barren wilderness. 


HADDOCK Melanogrammus aeglefinus 


112 

Very obviously a cod family 

member with its shape and body 

layout. A fish with three dorsal 

fins and two anal fins, plus a tiny 

chin barbel from what is a very 

noticeably shortened lower jaw. 

Using the cod for direct 

comparison, the haddock's first 

dorsal fin is quite tall, the first few 

rays of which are elongated giving 

it a noticeably pointed look. 

There are other pertinent points, 

but these tend to be academic 

considering the haddock's quite 

unmistakable markings. On each 

Haddock markings 

flank above the pectoral fin is a 

brown blotch similar to that 

found on the John Dory, which again is said to be the apostle's thumb print.

The upper flanks and back have been variously described as brownish to greenish grey. However, when 

freshly caught, which is the way anglers get to see them, haddock often show a very noticeable purplish 

sheen spreading down onto the lighter middle flank region, with the whole of the upper body at times 

sparsely covered with tiny black dots. 

It's also said from an angling perspective that haddock have soft mouths. Certainly there is a tendency 

towards loosing lightly hooked fish at the surface if they are not quickly netted. The fact that pound for 

pound they also fight particularly well won't help a light hook hold either. A hook firmly embedded 

inside the mouth is not too bad. But just nicked in the lip is another matter. 

I once did an article for one of the magazines entitled 'haddiction', which besides being a good attention 

grabber I thought, pretty much summed up my fishing for quite a few years during the 1970's. 

It all started with Dave Agnew fishing out on Loch Ryan, where while we weren't specifically targeting 

haddock, we would catch them on a regular basis while general bottom fishing at anchor out from Lady 

Bay on a mix of blowlug and cockle baits. 

It was there that I came to appreciate both their fighting as well as their eating qualities. At the same 

time, I was also doing quite a bit of fishing over on the other coast out from Hartlepool with Tom 

Williams aboard 'Famous', where again while general bottom fishing, only this time on the drift with 

worm, squid and shellfish baits, we would pick a few up here and there. 

In those days you could pretty much rely on seeing haddock anywhere from Bridlington northwards out 

over the deeper water of the North Sea where the ground was fairly clean. 

These days unfortunately, you can do trip after trip after trip with small baits and probably won't see 

even a single one. That's the way North Sea haddock fishing unfortunately now is, with much of the 

rest of our home waters potential either going or already having gone the same way. 

Again around the early to mid 1970's, I also discovered 

the Isle of Arran out in the entrance to the Clyde. In 

fact, I became very friendly with Neil McLean who ran 

the local creamery down at Kilmory and had a boat at 

Lamlash which he used for pleasure fishing as well as 

taking visitors out. 

Neil was a Scottish international boat squad member 

at the time. He also held the cuckoo ray record taken 

in the deep water out from Lamlash. But it was for the 

quality of its haddock fishing that both his boat and the 

island made its reputation, and deservedly so, 

particularly over the winter months. 

We had them there in the summer too mixed in 

amongst the cod, whiting, spurdogs and rays. But if 

you wanted either to specialise, or to target the better 

fish, then winter time was most definitely best. So we 

would make regular runs up to Ardrossan going over 

on the first ferry and coming back on the last one, with 

good haddock to over six pounds. Unfortunately, as 

ever, that didn't last long before they too were all gone. 

Those that entered the Clyde lochs, Loch Fyne, and 

Northern Irish waters just across the way where we had 

quite a few good ones fishing the Causeway Bank with 

Dave Devine, Haddock triple hit 

113

John Bradley out from Portrush didn't last long either. So with the North Sea already in decline, as far 

as we were concerned, that was the end of that. Or so we thought. 

Fishery scientists tell us that haddock are a widespread species found offshore throughout home waters, 

though supposedly less numerous along the English Channel coast. Yet that's where some of the biggest 

home waters haddock ever caught have come from. 

They don't, or until recently, they didn't seem to get the numbers of fish down there in the south west. 

But when it came to big haddock going up into double figures, the western approaches was the place to 

be. 

Not so much deliberately fishing for them as putting mackerel strips down on baited feathers or similar 

out over deep water while targeting anything that might come along. I've done it myself while blue 

shark fishing out from Looe. 

Better to fish at the bottom rather than hard on it when drifting to help eliminate potential hangups, 

besides which, the haddock, and pretty much everything else down there don't seem to mind. Then that 

too stopped making the headlines, leaving us to switch from haddiction to cold turkey. 

It would take a chance conversation with Scottish sea angler Steve Souter back in 1997 to change all of 

that. Steve suggested I contact the harbour master up at Kinlochbervie on Scotland's north west coast 

who would take anglers out fishing specifically for haddock on his days off. 

I don't recall the exact sequence of events, but that didn't 

work out in terms of arrangements, and somehow I ended 

up in touch with Englishman Peter Rawlinson who lived 

in a little touring caravan on the slipway at Kylesku and 

who also took out angling parties. 

It was pretty much the same grounds just off Stoer Head 

at the entrance to Loch a' Chairn Bhain, but a whole lot 

less travelling than from Kinlochbervie, which equates to 

increased fishing time. 

We arrived late afternoon on the day prior to fishing and 

decided to meet the boat in, where mixed in amongst the 

haddock were also several torsk caught from an area 

around a wreck which we unfortunately wouldn't be 

fishing, which was a shame. 

The following morning it was out to Stoer Head where 

we feathered up a load of fresh mackerel for bait close in, 

then moved out into the deeper water over clean ground 

haddock drifting, where it was every egg a bird. 

Phill Williams, Haddock brace Kylescu 

Each day we caught dozens of the things with the 

mackerel strips on 2/0 hooks to short droppers far and 

away out-fishing every other type of bait or rig 

combined. 

Nothing big. Maybe four pounds maximum. But great to be re-acquainted with a fish I hadn't seen in 

many a long time, and one which feared I might perhaps never see again. 

I'm not sure about the current state of play over on the east coast. The commercials say there are plenty 

of cod and haddock about now, but then again, they would say that to deflect criticism and to focus 

minds on their relentless quest for quota relaxation. 

114

From my own experience, certainly from the English North Sea ports, little seems to have changed. It's 

true that there are good numbers of cod and ling out there now. But with only a single small haddock 

caught by us over several visits, I'm not holding my breath on that one. On the other hand, in south west 

Scotland and down in the western approaches there are very real signs of an up-turn. 

Run south along the coast after exiting Loch Ryan and you come to the Mull of Galloway, passing Port 

Logan en route. Using Port Logan as an alternative launching site to Luce Bay, 'Onyermarks' skipper 

Ian Burrett has been noticing ever increasing numbers of haddock close in on small baits and rigs, to 

the point that these are now a very good deliberate proposition. 

Add to this a thriving rod and line haddock fishery out from Penzance, and it could well be that the 

species, in pockets at least, has turned the corner. Let's hope so, because haddock are a very attractive 

fish for anglers to catch on a number of different levels. 

WHITING Merlangius merlangus 


115 

A slender fish in terms of basic body 

layout, not that dissimilar to the cod 

to which it is related, having three 

rounded dorsal and two anal fins, 

with the start of the first anal fin 

lying on a line taken from the mid 

point along the first dorsal fin above 

it. 

Another feature to look for is a tiny, 

almost inconspicuous chin barbel, 

which might actually be totally 

absent in the very largest specimens. 

The upper jaw is noticeably longer 

than the lower, with both containing 

quite an array of very sharp needle 

like teeth. In fact, often a key indicator of someone having had a good whiting session are many itchy 

cuts and scratches to those fingers used for disgorging as they scrape these teeth. 

Colouration on the upper flanks and back varies between sandy green and bluish green, with winter 

specimens often having a purplish hue when freshly caught. The lateral line is brown, and there is a 

conspicuous dark spot at the upper base of the pectoral fin. 

In terms of distribution nationally, expect them anywhere and everywhere if the ground is clean, or at 

most lightly broken. This is reflected in the home waters national boat and shore record locations, which 

at the time of writing include Plymouth, Orfordness, Swansea, Girvan, Gourock and Kenmare Bay over 

on the Irish side. 

For my money, whiting are arguably one of, if not the single most important fish on the inshore and 

onshore angling scene. Cod, bass, plaice and all the rest may well be what we have on our wish lists. 

But increasingly these days, they are becoming treats. 

Whiting on the other hand are the bread and butter that helps sustain the general day to day fishing, 

making them a staple component for many anglers whether they target them or not, and for many charter 

skippers too if the truth be known. For while we might not always consciously be aware of this fact

when we catch them, we most certainly would be if they were suddenly to vanish, particularly on the 

winter inshore boat scene and from the beaches. 

Presumably then, a very familiar fish to most if not all sea anglers, for which reason I don't intend to 

spend too much time detailing how to catch them in all the regular ways. Most baits, especially 

lugworms and mackerel strips presented on hooks in the size 1 to 2/0 range at or on the bottom over 

every type of sea bed from clean sand through to light mixed rough should catch them. 

What I would like to do though is explore in a little more detail some of the peripheral stuff surrounding 

the species which, despite them being so widespread and obliging, tends not to get too much of an 

airing. 

Depending on where you fish, whiting are for the most part a back-end and winter species. It's not 

common to find them too close in to the shore over the summer months, though they can usually be 

caught pretty much to order around north and west Wales. 

Elsewhere, the summer whiting I've had have usually been good ones between two and four pounds, 

with even bigger specimens always on the cards, which in all cases have come from the south coast of 

Devon and Cornwall. 

To be more precise, deep water, and usually well offshore. In fact, my first taster came between fifteen 

and twenty miles out in a good forty fathoms of water on the drift while shark fishing out from Looe. 

Shark fishing is good when there is plenty of action. Less so on a quiet day. Obviously what you do 

then to fill in the blanks is try fishing for other things. 

One alternative is garfish in the rubby dubby slick which I always enjoy doing. But on other days, I've 

sent baited mackerel feathers down to the bottom, which for me and others have brought up quite a 

wide variety of fish including megrims, big haddock, and even good sized pollack if you happen to be 

crossing a reef, or better still, a wreck. 

More often than not though, if the ground is clean, much of the interest will come from big whiting, and 

you don't have to be fishing that far offshore either, providing the water is deep. 

I remember once fishing a trip out of Gillan Creek at the mouth of the Helford River. It was a holiday 

trip, so most of those on-board were none anglers, the plan being to drift a small wreck in fairly deep 

water not too far away from the shore. 

I don't know what the wreck was, 

but I do know it was lying on sand, 

because in the drift up to it, the 

holiday anglers fishing baited 

feathers were bagging up on big 

whiting to over four pounds. Then 

suddenly, that would switch to big 

goggle eyed pouting as we hit the 

broken scattered wreckage. 

Charlie Pitchers, Mersey Whiting 

There were a few other bits and 

pieces too. But that's pretty much 

the gist of it. Good fishing though 

by any standards. In fact, shark 

man Frank Vinnicombe who lives 

just a few miles up the coast at 

Mylor, once showed me a 

116

photograph of a whiting he'd caught commercially in the same area some years ago that topped ten 

pounds. 

And so it goes on all the way eastwards into Devon waters, with Plymouth holding the current record, 

and not for the first time, taken over the aptly named whiting grounds off Rame Head where they catch 

some real beauties during the colder months. 

Inshore, shallow water whiting don't take too kindly to heavy weather. Not so much from the boats, 

though even there it can have a numerical effect if there is too much suspended material in the water. 

From the shore, it's a combination of the wave buffeting within casting range, plus the particulate 

material this throws up that seems to put them off. 

Fine settled conditions, particularly after dark are what make for a good beach or pier whiting session, 

all of which fits in very nicely with the urban myth that whiting are drawn inshore by cold frosty 

conditions. 

Often they are. But this has little if anything to do with water temperature. In winter, frosty nights occur 

when the sky is clear, allowing the heat of the day to escape into space. It's always slightly warmer 

when there is some cloud cover, though it might not necessarily feel that way if there is also wind chill 

to be factored in. 

Clear skies mean high pressure which in turn means calm settled conditions and frost. Just the ticket for 

a species that doesn't like either a battering in heavy surf or suspended material clogging up its gills. 

You're always going to find some exceptions to this observation, because it isn't a binding rule. But it's 

calm conditions rather than cold frosty conditions which brings the whiting in close. The two just 

happen to work hand in glove from time to time. 

Another area I'd like to explore a little more here, is timing within the tide, and indeed the sizes of tides 

generally which seem to suit whiting the best. This is more of an inshore boat fishing observation, 

though too much run will also affect both the whiting's feeding and the shore anglers ability to keep the 

baits out there in the zone. 

I personally find that too much run tends to put the whiting down. You will still catch them, but not 

nearly so well as when the run eases away on a big spring tide either side of the mid two hour period 

Obviously, on middle range, and 

more so small tides, the reverse 

may to some extent be true. For 

while whiting don't like too much 

run, in common with most fish, 

they still need some movement in 

the water to induce them to feed, 

and on a neap tide with less water 

to be shifted by the gravitational 

pull of the moon, the middle two 

hours may well be the only time 

when there is sufficient flow. 

Whiting Blackpool North Pier Jetty 

Local geography can play a major 

role here too. Take the River 

Mersey yet again as an example. 

Tides in the north west of 

England generally range 

between seven and ten metres. 

117

Fish the Mersey on anything greater than say 8.2 metres and you'll struggle to hold bottom. It quite 

literally screams through. 

So even on the smallest tides, the whiting there tend to feed most heavily as the tide dies away. Yet just 

a few miles up the coast at Blackpool, it's not worth turning out on anything less that the same 8.2 

metres, as you'll be faced with hardly any run and even fewer fish. 

Bearing in mind what I've just said about whiting not liking too much run but requiring some movement 

to stimulate feeding, quite a few years ago we did some experimentation with small slider floats set to 

present our baits within a few inches of the bottom, the idea being to use these when the run had virtually 

gone, but with just about sufficient of it left to trot the float away from the boat to give the bait some 

movement. 

In addition to that, I also took along my small push net to get some shrimps which were kept alive in a 

flowtroll floating live bait bucket which I'd brought back from America. Whiting love live shrimps, but 

if you put them down on the bottom, they will instinctively burrow out of sight. So just off the bottom 

is perfect. 

The other draw back with shrimps is that to present them live, they need to be nicked on to a small fine 

wire hook around three to four segments up from the tail, which unfortunately leaves them vulnerable 

to being ripped off. So you have to be quick. 

You could of course thread the hook down the centre of the body of the shrimp as you would a worm, 

but then it's offered dead which reduces its appeal. 

Float fishing presents them perfectly and shows up every little touch. Definitely a very exciting way to 

fish when conditions are right. I've also used it under similar circumstances for black bream and for 

tope, when everyone else using standard drop down tactics has been waiting for the tide to kick in again 

and re-start their day. 

For my final observation, let me say that I'm of that age where I remember regularly seeing boat anglers 

fishing with wire three boomed paternosters, and pier fisherman with bells clipped to the ends of the 

rods as bite indicators. But you know, just because an idea or an approach is antiquated, doesn't 

necessarily mean it's also out of fashion with the fish. 

Most traces, in fact most basic 

tackle items, are no more than 

updates and variations on a few 

basic themes discovered and 

implemented back in the 1960's 

and 70's when I was first starting 

out, one of the most useful of 

which is still the wire paternoster. 

I must admit to not having seen a 

pat for many years. Then one day 

while out with Tony Parry aboard 

his charter boat 'Jensen II' fishing 

the Mersey, he came out of the 

wheel-house at slack water with 

one he'd made and said here, put 

this on. Complete with size four 

hooks to probably thirty pounds 

Tony Parry, Whiting full house 

118

s monofilament to help eliminate self tangling, all it needed was bait and it was ready to go. 

For what we were doing, which was fishing for whiting and dabs over the slack until the tide brought 

the cod back onto the feed, it was ideal. By placing the baits at rather than on the bottom, it introduced 

an extra visual stimuli just at the point where many fish would be starting to switch off in their feeding. 

Of course, you can also do this with droppers strung out above the lead. But then, only the bottom bait 

is where it needs to be. The three boomed wire spreader on the other hand cleverly puts all three baits 

in the feeding zone at the same time. 

Old fashioned, certainly. Looking like a Christmas tree, perhaps. But the presents it's might have 

hanging from it's branches can more than compensate for the antiquated retro look, which has also 

brought up cod and even thornbacks, while others fishing more 'modern' terminal gear have been left 

sitting out an otherwise quiet time of things. 

BLUE WHITING Micromesistius poutassou 


Despite once being one of the most 

abundant species of fish in 

northern European waters, and 

still commercially landed in vast 

quantities, blue whiting or 

poutassou as they are also called, 

are a very unlikely fish for anglers 

even to see, let alone catch. 

In the main this is down to their 

life style choice which is very 

much centred on deep water, 

usually way beyond angling reach, 

a fact hinted at by the large size of 

their eyes. 

At a glance, a fish not unlike our inshore whiting Merlangius merlangus with its sharp teeth and general 

body layout. The major distinguishing feature here is the very wide spacing between the dorsal fins, 

and in particular between the second and third dorsal fins, which in the case of true whiting all pretty 

much touch each other. 

The first two dorsal fins are also quite noticeably angular and pointed. The chin barbel, which whiting 

have a tiny one of if you look closely enough, is absent here. Colouration is a deep slatey blue on the 

upper flanks and back, giving way to silvery beneath. 

There are other anatomical differences. But the likelihood of ever having to deploy them is minimal in 

the extreme. That said, one particular day while feathering in reasonably deep water on the outer edge 

of St. Agnes in the Scillies, we suddenly brought up several strings of the things, then just as quickly, 

they were gone. 

Later during that visit, I again saw a few in a trawl out off the bottom end of St. Mary's. Scottish anglers 

also pick up the very occasional specimen in some of the deeper western sea lochs, particularly Loch 

Fyne. Otherwise, a fish more at home in waters beyond a hundred and fifty fathoms. 

119

POUTING Trisopterus luscus 


Pouting bottom, Poor Cod top 

Another of those cod family members with three dorsal and two anal fins. In this case, the fins are so 

close to each other that they appear to slightly overlap. The eye is quite large, the snout blunt, and there 

is a prominent chin barbel below its shorter lower jaw. 

A deep bodied, often 'dirty' looking fish due to its dark bronze brown colouration on the back and upper 

flanks, and grubby white below, with broad darker vertical bars, though this won't always be the case 

as they can also be much lighter and un-marked with a pinkish-purplish sheen. 

Quite a straight forward fish to pin a name to, especially when weighing in at a pound and more. The 

only similar fish which can cause problems in the smaller size bracket is the poor cod, though misidentification 

usually works the other way round, with poor cod being labelled as small pouting. 

A true pouting will have the start of its anal fin situated underneath the mid point of the first dorsal fin, 

whereas in the poor cod, it's pretty much at the end of the first dorsal. 

Both species have a dark spot at the upper base of their pectoral fins. In the pouting this spot is at least 

as big as the pupil of the eye, while that of the poor cod is noticeably smaller. 

Or you could just handle the fish, which can be a dead give away. Invariably, poor cod leave lots of tiny 

pearly-silvery scales stuck to your hand, whereas pouting don't. 

Other than anglers fishing species competitions and big conger addicts, I can think of few people who 

would deliberately target pouting. 

A fish frequently caught by boat anglers, but hardly an angler's fish. At worst, a relentless bait robber; 

for most a nominal distraction or perhaps a day saver when there is little else about, and for wreck 

120

fishermen, presented as a flapper, arguably the best big conger bait there is, and certainly one which 

'matches the hatch'. 

Generally speaking, a fish with an offshore preference, particularly the biggest specimens. That said, 

the Channel Islands have produced shore specimens in excess of four pounds, which is one hell of a 

pouting by any standards. 

Anywhere where there is rough ground or some sort of broken cover such as around a wreck, you should 

find shoals of pouting willing to take pretty much anything you can throw at them, providing the size 

of the bait and the hook is right. 

Pestered is probably a good word to use here, because that's what pouting do. Even the biggest 

specimens favouring the deepest water are not exactly welcome. 

I remember a time when red bream were abundant enough to deliberately target on and around wrecks 

with mackerel strips on 2/0 hooks tied to short droppers. An almost guaranteed recipe for pouting. The 

same was true over heavy ground when mixed reef fishing, particularly for black bream. 

There was even a time when for several years, we had them inshore on the broken ground off Rossall 

on my home patch over the winter cod season, tugging, ragging, and stealing big cod baits like a plague 

of locusts. 

Now, thankfully, for whatever reason, they are gone. A fish then that is inevitable, more so from the 

boat than the shore, with arguably little to be said in its favour. 

POOR COD Trisopterus minutus 


121

A pouting like fish, which because of its small size is rarely going to be greater than half a pound in 

weight, and usually a lot smaller than that, invariably gets thrown back without a second glance ending 

up as seagull fodder, because as with pouting, poor cod tend to blow their swim bladders when hauled 

up too quickly from even moderate depths. 

A slightly less deep bodied fish than the pouting and usually a 'cleaner' looking coppery brown colour. 

Species competition anglers are very much more aware of them these days because they represent an 

extra match point. 

For the vast majority of people however, fishing over rough broken ground from boats or deep water 

rock marks along the shore, they are just another small pout, and even then, not that many people get to 

see them due to baits and hook sizes generally being too big for anything other that a very determined 

or suicidal poor cod to get down. 

How frequently they are caught is difficult to say, as it's not the kind of catch people are likely to gossip 

about. For those who might be interested, I've done a compare and contrast identification features 

review under the pouting heading above, the potted version of which is, if it's a poor cod, you may well 

end up with small pearly white scales stuck to your hand after disgorging. 

My son Ian held the record for many years with a ten ounce fish caught off Cleveleys, which I always 

expected would be beaten if people would just take the trouble to look. What I didn't expect was to see 

the record climb past a pound, something the Scottish boat and shore records have both managed to do 

from opposite sides of the country. 

HAKE Merluccius merluccius 


Hake, and in particular those 

caught and landed commercially 

which have been dead for a 

while, can be very scruffy 

looking fish. Their fins become 

ragged and their colouration 

begins to turn a dirty shade of 

grey. Yet in life, or fresh from 

the water, the opposite is true. 

Then they look every bit the 

sleek efficient predator that they 

are. 

Quite an elongate fish with two 

dorsal fins, the first of which is 

narrow and tall, whereas the 

second is less tall, elongate, and of fairly uniform depth other than a slight rise in height just before the 

tail. 

There is a single anal fin, the origin of which can be overlapped by the tip of the long pectoral fins. The 

lateral line is straight, the lower jaw has no chin barbel, and the mouth large armed with rows of needle 

sharp hinged teeth 

Fresh Hake have a beautiful metallic look about them. Colouration is an unmarked deep slatey grey, 

lightening in tone somewhat on the flanks and still further along the ventral region. The interior of the 

122

mouth is noticeably dark. There can also be a darker border to the back edges of the dorsal and anal 

fins. 

Though I have still to catch one, there was a time when I had a bit of an obsession with fishing for hake. 

By collecting all available rod and line catch data, which was much easier back in the 1970's than it is 

today when we had a truly representative news hungry weekly angling press, it very quickly became 

apparent that ports dotted around one particular patch of sea produced more rod caught hake, and by 

some considerable margin, than everywhere else in home waters put together. This prompted further 

investigation which very soon hinted at the reason why. 

The area in question stretches from the Isle of Man up through the North Channel which separates 

Northern Ireland from south west Scotland including the Clyde, and by implication rather than hard 

statistical support, on up into the Atlantic past the Sound of Jura, Islay, and the entrance to the Firth of 

Lorne, where the water is still exceptionally deep, but where sea angling, and therefore angling records 

generally become sparse to say the least. 

In particular, ports either side of Beauforts Dyke, which is a thirty mile long by two mile wide trench 

with powerful tides and water depths between one hundred and one hundred and fifty fathoms, making 

it the deepest area within British coastal waters. 

Hake are for the most part extreme deep water fish. Over much of the year they live out in water between 

one hundred and three hundred fathoms, though over the summer months they can move a little closer 

to the shore. But there's much more to it than that. 

Chance angling encounters aside made close in to the shore, which it has to be said are rare, it's only 

when you get out deep and there is even deeper water close by that hake become more than the 

occasional news-worthy accident. 

A friend of mine Mick Duff caught a few out from Kilkee while fishing for big skate. The fact that he 

also picked up several very large six gilled sharks at the same spots tells it's own story in terms of deep 

water. 

Sean Palmer picked up a few out in the deep water way off Dingle where he also gets bluemouth, which 

again tells us much about the adjacent water depth. Yet at the same time, it tells us nothing about the 

true feeding and life style of the hake, because encounters on static baits fished on the bottom, while 

they obviously can occur, do not 

reflect the regular feeding strategy 

of the species, which is that of a 

mid water to surface feeder after 

dark, following the food chain up 

in the water column. 

All of this is driven by phytoplankton, 

the tiniest of vegetative 

planktonic organisms which rely 

on sunlight for photosynthesis to 

provide for their energy needs, 

which rise to the surface each 

night chasing the last rays from the 

sun as it dips down below the 

horizon. 

123

Following and feeding on the phyto-plankton come the zoo-plankton which are tiny carnivorous 

animals, then other slightly larger animals all the way along the chain to small fish and ultimately larger 

predators. 

As I've said, I have yet to catch a hake. I have tried a few after dark sessions and planned even more 

around Beauforts Dyke only to loose them to the weather. On top of that, the tide through the North 

Channel can be horrendous, which only adds to the overall degree of difficulty. 

However, in support of the theory, though not with the same species, there is a fish called the escolar 

which leads a very similar life style to the hake around the Canary Islands which I have fished for and 

caught in exactly the same way. 

The boat was drifting over around a thousand fathoms of water in total darkness. We started deep 

gradually positioning our whole mackerel baits closer to the surface by increments as the night wore 

on, catching some very good escolars to fifty five pounds. 

Not exactly the same, but similar enough. So that's what I would do if I got the opportunity again in 

hake territory. A twenty pound class outfit fishing a heavy mono dropper say six feet in length above 

the lead, with a 6/0 hook and mackerel flapper, or perhaps a smaller cut bait, dropped straight down to 

depth with the reel left on ratchet. 

Beauforts Dyke is definitely worth a shot. But with more opportunity of getting out fishing slightly to 

the north and east in the Sound of Jura and Firth of Lorne, either of those might actually prove an even 

better bet on account of their relative shelter and close proximity to the shore, plus of course, depths in 

places down to around a hundred fathoms. 

Alternatively, as you progress up the Firth of Lorne towards the entrance to Loch Linnhe, tucked into 

the right hand corner just past Oban, if you pass under the Connel Bridge, you enter Loch Etive which 

has produced not only more hake, but more big hake to rod and line than any other venue I know. 

Why this should be so is difficult to explain. If you've ever been to Connel and watched the water 

entering and exiting Loch Etive through the very constricted entrance, you would wonder how any fish 

would ever manage to get in to the place. 

I've watched boats literally stood still at full power trying to get the better of the outflow. Yet the stats 

speak for themselves. Lots of spurdogs, cod, pollack and thornbacks too, though not common skate so 

far as I am aware, despite them being abundant all around the outer entrance. So that might be worth a 

look too. 

Otherwise, hake are more commercially important down in the south west of Britain and Ireland where 

I saw plenty of them in the trawls within just a couple of miles of the shore, particularly around the Isles 

of Scilly, and on the markets at Newlyn and the like. 

Rod and line records however reflect much of what has already been said, particularly in connection to 

Beauforts Dyke, with Loch Etive having produced the biggest ever at just short of twenty six pounds, 

with a fish of similar weight from Belfast Lough just the other side of the North Channel and Beauforts 

Dyke. 

Milford Haven produced the best Wales has to offer from the boats, and amazingly Port Talbot the best 

from the shore with a fish of three pounds six ounces. 

Tied in to this, I recall Dave Lewis telling me about a session he once had when he caught several small 

ones years ago in the same session somewhere around that neck of the woods. 

124

LING Molva molva 


125 

A full and important member of 

the cod family, but one with an 

elongate body and short very 

noticeably rounded first dorsal fin, 

followed immediately by a long 

second dorsal fin extending almost 

all the way to its equally noticeable 

rounded tail. 

Along the bottom of the fish there 

is also one long anal fin, which 

while it too ends just in front of the 

tail, starts further back than the 

second dorsal fin above it. 

The pelvic fins which are rather 

Dave Lumley ‘Famous’, Hartlepool Ling 

short do not extend further than 

the pectorals, and there is a very 

prominent chin barbel, but no barbels on the upper jaw which protrudes slightly beyond the lower jaw. 

Colouration is usually some shade of drab sandy green, though smaller immature fish tend to be more 

golden with a lighter mottled patterning. 

Mature ling have a prominent light banded edging to their dorsal, anal and tail fins, beneath which is a 

noticeably darker band. The only other fish coming anywhere near fitting this description is the torsk, 

which can be immediately discounted by the fact that it has only the one continuous dorsal fin and is 

slightly less elongate. 

Over the years, I've caught ling, lots of ling in fact, everywhere from north to south, both east and west. 

Anywhere there are depths in excess off eighty to one hundred feet over hard, broken, or reefy ground, 

and especially over wrecks, has the potential to attract and hold them, with, I think it's fair to say, 

certainly from angling observations, some correlation between increasing water depth and potential 

size. 

I've caught or have seen them caught from both Orkney and Shetland, the latter having recently 

produced specimens to almost seventy pounds; the west coast of Scotland; numerous venues along 

Ireland's west and south coast, the North Sea, Anglesey, and in particular Amlwch; south Devon and 

Cornwall, and the Channel Islands. 

I've even seen the odd small specimen from the wrecks off Lancashire and the heavy ground out to the 

west of Walney Island in Cumbria. But if you want big fish, Shetland is the current hot spot, whereas if 

you want numbers of fish with some occasionally topping twenty pounds, the Yorkshire coast through 

to the Scottish border is the place to target. But, it hasn't always been that way. 

My earliest recollections of catching ling are of fishing out from Looe in Cornwall with baited feathers 

and dropper rigs over the Eddystone and adjacent reefs for mixed bags of fish, though always, red bream 

were very much central to our thinking. We'd get ling into double figures, and sometimes good numbers 

of them. But never any really big specimens. 

That didn't happen for me until I started wreck fishing out of Plymouth aboard Dave Elworthy's 

'Anjonika', Geordie Dicksons 'Artilleryman', and later with Dougal Lane out of St. Peterport at 

Guernsey aboard 'Arum', 'Midnight Moon', and finally 'Midnight express'.

In retrospect, wonderful days. Particularly the Guernsey based trips aboard 'Arum' out fishing the same 

mid channel wrecks as some of the Plymouth and Brixham boats. We'd often see Geordie tied up there 

in the marina. Long trips from the south coast, but well worth the time, cost, and trouble back then. 

An era when to stand any chance of catching conger by anchoring over the slack water, you first had to 

give a wreck several hard fishing visits simply to thin out ling in the twenty to thirty pound bracket to 

be in with even a sniff of the biggest eels. 

To some people those ling were quite literally a pest. I bet they wish they could get similarly pestered 

again now. 

Occasionally you might pick one up on a redgill, especially in the early stages of slowly retrieving the 

lure just after it had touched bottom. We would also pick them up on pirks, particularly baited pirks, 

aimed at cod. 

But if you really wanted them, a 

simple short single dropper rig 

made up of eighty to a hundred 

pound bs monofilament to beat 

the teeth, and a 10/0 hook to take 

a good sized mackerel bait, would 

out-fish any other approach 

hands down. 

Open ground Ling fishing, Hartlepool 

So prolific were the ling back 

then that if one came adrift on the 

way up, you could quickly send 

the gear back down again hoping 

there might be some bait still left 

on the hook, and if there was, 

imediately hook up a 

replacement for it. 

In fact, there were days on which if the wind was light and the tide was slack enough, and if you was 

quick about it, when you could squeeze in another drop after the first fish, and hook up again before 

drifting off the wreck. 

Hard work, but there if you wanted it. Then, progressively but noticeably, by the mid to late 1980's, the 

shoals of big ling were all but gone. 

Angling over the wrecks certainly played some part here, particularly as ling can't get back down again 

even if you did want to put them back. 

But commercial fishing, and an ever decreasing number of virgin or little known wrecks made a far 

bigger contribution. So much so, that my last run out to the mid Channel wrecks from Jersey saw us 

come back with maybe two or at best three moderately sized ling, and we were happy even to get those. 

Following on from all of this was the realisation that wreck fishing out from Whitby, and subsequently 

quite a number of other ports in that general area of the North Sea, could be just as productive as the 

mid Channel wrecks previously had been. Only this time, monster cod and plenty of them were the 

target, with some exceptional bonus ling thrown in for good measure on baited pirks or muppets. 

Ling weren't the primary target. None the less, anglers had them to over fifty pounds. Then, as with 

English Channel, over exploitation by everyone involved, anglers and commercials alike, saw that 

prospect also go into fairly spectacular melt down. 

126

Mac McAllister, Whitby Ling 

Now, thankfully, Whitby and its neighbours have all bounced back. So too have the fish stocks, but to 

nothing like the level prior to the crash. 

These days, bait fishing open ground and drifting the inshore wrecks is a more likely prospect than 

heading many miles from port for just a few hours over the once prolific distant targets. 

And ling are now a much more highly thought of fish as a result, particularly as the summer progresses, 

and ever increasing numbers of them come within regular angling range. 

In that regard, Hartlepool is my favourite location, drifting patches of hard ground not too many miles 

from the shore. Tactically speaking, strong and simple are still the best approach, though I tend to use 

a string of heavy mono rigged 'fat boy' hokkai's in either pink or fluorescent green, baited with mackerel 

or squid. 

Jigged up and down they will catch cod. Then, when your arms get tired and you need a rest, trundled 

along the bottom they will pick up ling. But best done so using braided line for better upward transfer 

of information regarding hang-ups, which might, if you are lucky, be avoided. You can still pick ling 

up when jigging or when fishing with shads, but not nearly so well as on a bottom bouncing bait. 

A fish also taken, and to good size occasionally from deep water shore marks with venues scattered as 

far and wide as Plymouth, South Wales and Scrabster all there in the frame. 

It's just a pity they blow their swim bladder so readily due to water pressure changes from depth on the 

way up, because for me at least, I don't find them that good for eating, and commercial prices paid to 

127

charter boat skippers for fish left on the boat are not that brilliant either. Far better to put them back if 

we could. 

The Americans have worked out how to do this sort of thing with some of their pressure blown species 

such as amberjacks, which tagged recaptures have shown does at least provide some measure of 

survivability. 

So perhaps there's a Ph. D project here begging for some academic angler to explore the survivability 

chances of this and other species too, including ballan wrasse and pollack, and how best to deal with 

fish that have suffered the bends. 

TORSK Brosme brosme 


Don Matthews, Norway Torsk 

Imagine a ling with a shorter stumpier body than normal, 

and just one single long continuous dorsal fin. In fact, the 

only member of the cod family to have just a single dorsal 

fin. In a nutshell, that's the torsk. 

It still has the chin barbel and the lighter, almost white 

edging to its fringing fins that are so characteristic of the 

ling, the ling also having a separate short rounded first 

dorsal fin ahead of the long continuous run. 

Even the colouration is not that dissimilar, though it leans 

more toward bronze brown in the torsk and a lighter 

greenish brown for the ling. A fish with a much more 

northerly distribution and deeper water preference than 

the ling, which while this takes in some Scottish and 

western Irish waters, even there it is never common. 

The furthest south I personally have come across torsk is 

out from Kylesku in north west Scotland. As I arrived 

there the afternoon before I was scheduled to fish a 

couple of days for haddock, I met the boat in that evening 

to see how they'd gone on. They had taken a lot of 

haddock, but had also spent a bit of time fishing around 

a wreck where they had picked up several torsk. 

Another place I've seen them brought in by anglers on 

fish baits is Shetland, a fact reflected in the record lists. They also catch a few in the Pentland Firth. But 

if you want to catch them virtually to order, then go up into the Arctic. 

We fished 198 miles north of the Arctic circle in Lyngen Fjord where you was virtually guaranteed 

torsk if you allowed a fish bait to touch bottom. To put it bluntly, they were a nuisance. We even had a 

few on the pirks, with some good ones amongst them going up to 23½ pounds. 

128

GREATER FORKBEARD Phycis blennoides 


A semi elongate, rather dumpy 

looking fish, with a short pointed 

first dorsal fin in which the third 

ray is noticeably elongated. A 

second dorsal fin of uniform 

height follows on immediately. 

But it's the pelvic fins that really 

give the game away, comprising of 

just a single very long branched 

ray extending well past the start of 

the anal fin. 

By comparison to the rest of the 

fish, the tail appears to be quite 

small. The snout is blunt with the 

lower lip shorter than the upper, and there is a chin barbel present. Colouration is a drab brownish grey 

giving way to a dirty grey ventrally. 

Mature fish have a black edging to their dorsal, anal, and tail fins. Live specimens can have a purple 

hue which fades very quickly after death. If handled roughly, the large scales soon start to dislodge. An 

active predator with a large mouth, so no reason why one wouldn't take a bait, if one was dropped on 

to its nose. 

In over fifty years of rod and line fishing here, there, and everywhere, around the British Isles and 

beyond, plus time spent at sea observing on commercial boats, only once have I ever come across the 

greater forkbeard. 

Few other people I've spoken to have seen one either. So, very much a chance encounter about which 

you can do very little to improve your odds, other than keep on turning out playing the percentages 

game. 

One day, maybe, but most probably not, mainly on account of its preference for very deep water along 

western Atlantic facing coasts, from the far north of Scotland down to the western approaches to the 

English Channel, a fact reflected in the records, which list fish from Cape Wrath at the top of Scotland 

down to Falmouth in Cornwall. 

They also list Roker near Sunderland on the North Sea coast, which is supposedly not the best area to 

be thinking greater forkbeard. Ironically, that encounter I had which I mentioned earlier came from just 

down the coast from Roker at Hartlepool on board a trawler working quite close in to the shore. 

TADPOLE FISH Raniceps raninus 


The tadpole fish, or lesser forkbeard as this fish is also known, looks like a cross between a greater 

forkbeard and a rockling. The head, eye, and mouth, are comparatively large, while the rest of the fish 

from the gill cover back is very typically rockling-like, being elongate with a minute barely detectable 

first dorsal fin, in this case reduced to a single ray, followed by a long fairly uniform second dorsal fin 

reaching almost to the tail, with not quite as long of an anal fin on the underside of the body. 

129

Where it differs from the rocklings 

is in having no barbels or 'beards' 

on the upper lip. Just a single short 

chin barbel common to many 

members of the cod family. 

Colouration is a dirty blackish 

brown to reddish brown on the back 

and flanks, becoming lighter 

ventrally. 

A small fish, said to be solitary but 

widespread, a description to some 

extent borne out by the statistics. 

Rod and line catches range from the 

Clyde sea lochs to Northern 

Ireland, and from south west Wales 

over to Tyne and Wear, none of 

which surprises me, as there is a lot of moderately deep lying rough ground in all those areas which 

wider catch records seem to suggest is favoured. Certainly around Tyne and Wear, where reports are 

not that infrequent. 

Not a big fish, with specimens usually hovering just either side of the pound mark, but one with both a 

mouth and an appetite big enough to regularly put both fish and worm baits in the frame, the limiting 

factor here being locating them, which for a solitary animal is never going to be easy. 

The North Sea is probably where the smart money should go. The suspicion is that they live in and 

around the foundations there, taking pretty much any hook bait that comes along, and in the company 

of fish like yarrell's blenny and viviparous blenny, always on LRF gear with a 6 pounds lbs flurocarbon 

trace and hooks in the size 12 to 18 range, despite the tadpole fishes cavernous mouth. 

THREE BEARDED ROCKLING Gaidropsarus vulgaris 


Andy Copeland, Three Bearded Rockling 

130 

Rich pink to brick red base 

colouration patterned with a good 

scattering of large and small brown 

spots make the three bearded 

rockling a particularly eye catching 

and strikingly obvious fish. That 

alone should make identification a 

formality. 

Having two barbels or 'beards' on 

top of the snout, plus a chin barbel, 

will add further weight to pinning 

the right name to it. Only the shore 

rockling has the same arrangement 

of barbels, but lacks the red 

colouration and markings.

In common with all the rocklings, this is an elongate fish with not much in the way of a first dorsal fin, 

which in this case starts off with one long ray followed by a series of very short rays. 

The second dorsal fin is pretty uniform in height extending back almost to the tail, with a long anal fin 

on the underside. There are other helpful identifying features, but in light of what has been said, these 

should not be necessary. 

Rocklings generally have comparatively large mouths, and equally large appetites when it comes to 

taking anglers baits. The main reason why more are not caught is probably down to numerical 

availability. 

Three bearded rockling in particular would be more commonly caught if there were more of them about 

on account of their size potential, which can exceed three pounds, plus their willingness to take fish 

baits. 

I've seen them caught around Anglesey, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and over in Ireland which is where 

my best specimen came from. We were boat fishing over some particularly heavy ground quite close in 

one evening on into the dark for conger out from Courtmacsherry. A specimen of around one and a half 

pounds managed to get my bait down, which is typical of the others I have seen caught elsewhere. 

Heavy terrain of moderate depth seems to suit them best, anywhere from the Shetlands to the Channel 

Islands, east and west. Another of those fish which you can do little to improve your chances with, but 

which should hopefully come along when you're least expecting it, particularly if you scale things down 

to a 1/0 hook and small mackerel strip. 

FOUR BEARDED ROCKLING Enchelyopus cimbrius 


Another easy fish to pin the right 

name on as this is the only rockling 

species to have four barbels or 

'beards', with three on top of the 

snout, plus the obligatory chin 

barbel. 

Typically elongate, as all the 

rocklings are, with not much in the 

way of a first dorsal fin, which in 

this case starts off with a very long first ray followed on by a series of very short rays ending just ahead 

of the long almost uniform second dorsal fin which reaches almost to the tail. Below this on the 

underside the anal fin is not quite so long. 

This is an unmarked fish varying in colour according to habitat, ranging between sandy brown to almost 

black on the back and upper flanks, lightening along the lower flanks, and with a bluish tinge ventrally 

between the pelvic and anal fins. 

More of a northerly deep water species than the other recorded rocklings, for which reason it should 

come as no surprise that the Inner Clyde and its deep water sea lochs probably see more than most other 

locations, though still with the potential for one to turn up anywhere in home waters. 

I personally have never even seen one, and I don't particularly expect to either, though in rockling terms, 

it is potentially a big fish capable of weights of a pound and more, with a liking for what anglers tend 

to put on their hooks. 

131

FIVE BEARDED ROCKLING Ciliata mustela 


The only rod caught rockling with five barbels or 'beards', having four on the upper lip or snout, plus 

the usual chin barbel. Also the commonest in angling terms, as well as being the most widespread. As 

with its close family members, a small fish with an elongate body. 

Again, the first dorsal fin comprises a long first ray followed by a series of very much shorter rays, then 

a long continuous second dorsal fin with the anal fin below not quite so extensive. 

Not that knowing the fin arrangements is of any real necessity as the five barbels should have long since 

confirmed its identity. Expect to see no patterning. Just a plain copper to greenish brown colouration 

giving way to off white below. 

Said to be an extremely common little fish in the rocky coastal shallows throughout all home waters, 

which is probably true, but not fully reflected in angling terms due to its generally small size potential 

compared to the sizes of hooks and baits we tend to use. 

Over the years I've caught literally dozens of the things, but because by and large these have been from 

the shore, either along the Lancashire coast or in the River Mersey, my observations might have a bit 

of an unfair bias to them. 

I have had an odd one from the boat, which could be limited due to the generally larger hooks and baits 

I tend to use when I'm afloat. Most of my fish have been beach caught, specifically when using using 

small scratching rigs baited with lugworm in areas of sand or stones, and always over the winter months. 

That may not be true of other parts of the country though. So again, something which should eventually 

come along in the normal course of events, particularly if hook and baits sizes are suitably small enough. 

132

SHORE ROCKLING Gaidropsarus mediterraneus 


As with the other rocklings, an 

elongate fish with one long 

continuous anal fin and two 

dorsal fins, the first being a single 

ray followed by a series of very 

much shorter rays. 

A fish with three barbels or 

'beards', of which two are on the 

snout and the third on the chin, all 

of which means there is only one 

other fish, the three bearded 

rockling to potentially confuse it 

with, and only then with some 

difficulty. 

The shore rockling is usually some shade of deep brown and is un-patterned, whereas the three bearded 

rockling is pink or red with lots of brown leopard like spots all over its body. 

Personally, I have never seen one, with the photograph used here coming from shore match angler and 

species hunter Andy Copeland, who uses LRF along his native north east coast and elsewhere to come 

up with all manner of small unusual species, several of which have provided illustrations for this book. 

Said to be a fish primarily of the southern and western coastal and inshore waters of England, Wales 

and Ireland, recorded specimens have come from locations as widely scattered as Loch Long on the 

Clyde, Milford Haven, and the Weymouth area, at least one of which has exceeded one and a half 

pounds. 

THE FLATFISHES 

Before getting too deeply into the nitty gritty of the individual flatfish species, I feel it's important here 

to say a little bit first about general flatfish biology, which, as will become clear, has implications for 

catching them on rod and line too, because feeding habits, and therefore angling approach, very much 

revolve around the two distinct biological divisions brought about by their physical layout. 

The eggs of flatfish and their early stage fry are pelagic. This means they float and live in the upper to 

surface water layers where the planktonic soup is richest, and therefore best able to support the early 

feeding of a great many species of fish. In that respect, certainly at this stage in their lives, flatfish and 

many round fish species are not that dissimilar. 

They differ little in certain other respects too, particularly just after hatching, when flatfish fry are 

exactly the same as round fish fry, with round slender bodies, and their eyes situated either side of the 

head. 

It's only after the yolk sac has been absorbed that physical differences begin to appear, starting with a 

progressive deepening of the body shape when the tail shows very early signs of forming, and both the 

dorsal and anal fin rays begin to develop, leading to very noticeable signs of flattening. The fin rays 

also grow longer to the extent of actually pushing up into a median fold of flesh which will eventually 

become the fringing fins. 

133

As this happens, one of the eyes begins to migrate across the head to join the other, making the 

developing fry look more like the shape of fish it is about to become. Which eye, and to which side of 

the head, depends on the species and to which of the two groups, Bothidae or Pleuronectidae, it belongs. 

This is the process known as metamorphosis, which using the plaice as an example, is usually completed 

inside of forty days, with a body length not greater than an inch. 

Flatfishes such as plaice and turbot actually lie on a pre-elected side of their body, unlike skates and 

rays which have flattened down onto their stomachs, with their mouth and anus on the un-pigmented 

under-side. 

True flatfishes are genetically pre-programmed to settle down on one or other side, though this can 

sometimes go wrong, with left to right handed ratios in some Pacific species being quoted as high as 

50%. Either way, both the mouth and the anus are sited on the peripheral edge of the body. 

Plaice for example lie on their left side, whereas the turbot lies on its right. Whichever side the eyes end 

up on should determine which side will be pigmented and which side will be white. The side of the 

body chosen to lie on, known as the 'blind side', also determines how the internal organs arrange 

themselves. 

Pigmentation however isn't always confined to the eyed or top side, with some species more prone to 

varying degrees of blind side pigmentation than others. In our corner of the north Atlantic for example, 

it's not uncommon to see flounders either partially or even fully pigmented on the blind side. That said, 

they are rarely fully patterned on both sides. 

When complete ambicolouration 

occurs, there are 

often physical defects too, such 

as in a fourteen pound turbot we 

caught off Guernsey which had 

developed a fleshy hook 

between the eyes and the origin 

of the dorsal fin, and with its 

migrated eye not properly 

positioned next to its partner on 

top. Yet despite this, the fish had 

grown on well and appeared 

healthy enough. 

Ambi-coloured flatfish. Note ‘hook’ above eye 

Another colour variation 

suffered very occasionally by all 

species of flatfish is albinism, 

which is a genetic condition in 

which the entire body lacks 

pigmentation. 

Going back to reverse handedness where individual fish settle out on the 'wrong side' of the body 

compared to the majority of their kin, from my experience in home waters, this is not too uncommon in 

flounders. 

I've yet to come across anyone who has caught a reversed flounder on rod and line. But back in the 

1980's I did several trips out of Fleetwood aboard the trawler 'Biddy' skippered by Ben Bee, who would 

trawl flounders to sell as pot bait from along the Lune slope when there was nothing much else about 

to catch. 

134

I used to tag along to collect diseased flatfish of which there many for research purposes, and never a 

trip went by without at least half a dozed 'left handers' coming aboard. 

It got to the point where I even started weighing and measuring them, and ultimately comparing the 

data against similar stats for 'right handers' which was interesting. 

The results suggest that not only was being wrong sided of no apparent detriment to these flounders in 

terms of life expectancy, but the reversed fish were also typically heavier than the conforming 

specimens, and therefore from an evolutionary point of view, arguably better adapted. 

I should however make the point 

that with such a small sample size 

it's impossible to make bold 

statements and back them up 

statistically, so my findings 

remain preliminary. 

To summarise then, if you place 

any home waters flatfish you 

catch on a flat surface looking 

down on the fish with its mouth to 

your right, if the eyes are to the 

bottom of the mouth, the fish is 

lying on its right side and will be 

either a turbot, brill, topknot, or 

megrim, all of which are 

predominantly predators of small 

fish. 

Left and right handed Flounders 

If however in the same orientation, the eyes are above the mouth, the fish is then lying on its left side 

and will be either a plaice, flounder, dab, lemon sole, witch, long rough dab, or a halibut, in which all 

but the halibut have a much wider diet of crustaceans, molluscs, worms, and occasionally some small 

fish. 

Halibut as we all know are major predators of fish, which are taken either at the bottom or up in to open 

water. 

Open water hunting such as by the halibut however takes a great deal of effort which needs to be 

compensated for nutritionally, because unlike round bodied fish with swim bladders, as part of their 

early stage metamorphosis, flatfish become negatively buoyant to facilitate life spent down on the 

seabed. 

It takes effort and energy resource to lift yourself up clear of the bottom to feed, a lesson which shouldn't 

be lost on anglers when tying up flattie rigs. 

The sole Solea solea also lies on its left side, but belongs to a separate family altogether. 

135

PLAICE Pleuronectes platessa 


136

As with the more familiar flounder and dab, one of those flatfishes to have settled out on the sea bed on 

the left side of the body, with the eyes, pigmentation, and patterning on the right. 

A fish which literally everyone knows, even none anglers. Or so you might think, though on more than 

an odd occasion I've come across people with a dab, or more especially a flounder with a few orange 

flecks, wishfully thinking they have caught a plaice. 

All you need do is brush the fish from tail to head with the finger tips, which if its feels rough against 

the grain all over means it's a dab, or run the finger along the base of either the dorsal fin, anal fin, or 

along the lateral line, which again, if it feels prickly, rules out the plaice and dab as it will then be a 

flounder. 

A true plaice will have a series of distinct bony lumps extending from behind the eye to the lateral line, 

with the entire remainder of its upper body feeling perfectly smooth to the touch. And let's not forget 

those characteristic big red spots over their plain brown background. 

Despite it's undoubted commercial importance, which usually goes hand in glove with numerical 

decline, amazingly, and against all the odds, plaice have to some extent been one of the success stories 

of recent times. 

Usually when a highly marketable species enters into a spiral of decline, there is no going back. Only 

when the combined cost of diesel, boat up-keep, and man hours add up to more than the value of what's 

in the cod-end of the net do commercial species get any measure of respite, by which time it's often 

already too late. But apparently not so here. 

This doesn't mean we won't still see year on year fluctuations, because that's part of the natural cycle 

for most fish species. Just so long as it is natural. So while the plaice might see a bit of a downward blip 

in one season or in one area, it's the bigger picture that counts. 

In that regard, what I'm experiencing, coupled to what I'm hearing for the moment least, things are 

sounding tentatively positive in numerical terms, though there is still a long road ahead to get back 

anywhere close to the plaice scene of the late 1970's through to the mid 1980's when I first started 

fishing for them. 

For me, a time of personal graduation to wearing the skippers wellies, when after years of tuition from 

Scots Davy Agnew and Neil McLean, plus a couple of seasons on the Fylde jumbo cod with future 

charter skipper Keith Philbin, I bought my own boat. 

Around the same time I also 

began working with fellow small 

boat angler Mick Mairs from 

Preston who had a sixteen foot 

Pebble which he trailed up to 

Walney Island whenever the 

weather was fit. Mick and his dad 

would camp at the top of the shore 

near Biggar village and launch 

from the tiny ram-shackle slip 

onto the beach at Earnse Bay to 

fish either in and around the 

Duddon with its many shallow 

sandy banks, or down off Biggar 

over the rough for summer cod. 

137

The plaice fishing there back then from May through to around September was exceptional. The slipway 

actually marked the approximate boundary between the rough and the sand, with a maze of drying banks 

and gullies stretching north right the way across to Haverigg and into the Duddon Estuary. 

Our ritual was to arrive at low water and start digging blowlug, stopping only when we had at least 

three hundred worms, which was back breaking work. The boat would then go in, launched by car from 

the beach on a making tide, which was always a dodgy thing to do. We never came unstuck, but we 

certainly had our moments. 

The person driving the car wouldn't actually stop at the waters edge. The trailer would be unhitched 

while the car was still inching along so that the wheels didn't sink, and would immediately go back to 

the top of the slip for safety, leaving the trailer to be hand-balled back using a tow ball launching trolley 

to make it into four wheel unit. 

On the water, my boat partner Steve Lill would head up along the coast leaving me to layer the lug on 

three or four sheets of newspaper, maybe twenty at a go. These were stacked on top of each other in a 

bucket, with any damaged worms separated off for immediate use. A great way of treating blowlug. It 

cools, shelters, and hardens them up, all at the same time. 

We later tried using frozen blacklug left over from our winter cod campaign which also worked quite 

well. Not so much in terms of numbers of fish, but for some reason with the better fish. 

On odd occasions we even tried twice frozen blacklug. Now that really did sort some of the better fish 

out. Probably because it was a bigger bait in the first place eliminating unwanted attention from small 

dabs and smaller plaice, giving the better fish more of a chance. 

This is probably as good a point as any to make a very clear distinction between two contrasting 

approaches to catching plaice, depending on where it is in the country you live. The choices are drift 

fishing and anchoring, and the determining factor is how the plaice in any given location distribute 

themselves. 

Where they are spread out widely over a large geographical area, then drift fishing is fine. But when 

they are clumped up in discrete pockets, anchoring is a much better approach. There are however other 

considerations, such as rate of drift and water clarity. 

Up here in the north west, we find them both clumped up and in areas with a mix of boulders, mussel 

banks, and sand, which makes drift fishing with bottom trailing baits potentially problematic both in 

terms of sticking with the fish, and loosing tackle. So for us, anchor fishing it is. 

Back then it was with a wire three boomed paternoster with droppers measured just to touch bottom, 

armed with 1/0 hooks, because plaice have quite small mouths. That's how it was in the 1970's, though 

I don't know why I'm apologising for the pats in light of the numbers of fish they caught. 

Bearing in mind that we dug bait for the first couple of hours, had to launch and motor out, and by the 

top of the tide we would be scratching about for any bait scraps we could find, on one particular session 

we finished up with 530 flatties, the majority of which were plaice with dozens going between two and 

three pounds, which while that might not sound big, actually seeing them in the flesh, they are a fabulous 

fish by any standards. 

Over time, we tried all sorts of other rigs. Long two hook traces with the lead attached directly to the 

bottom of the boom were the flavour of the day for a while, as were one up and two down scratching 

rigs, all of which caught plenty of fish. So long as the baits were on the bottom and the rig wasn't causing 

problems through self tangling, it both didn't and still doesn't matter that much. 

Other considerations and observations carry far more weight, and one in particular which needed to be 

taken on-board was patience, because without it you could spend an entire trip looking for numbers of 

138

fish, little realising that they were 

already there at some of the earlier 

marks tried, if only you hadn't 

kept motoring away from them. 

As in a chain reaction, early on, 

the first few plaice in the vicinity 

would start tugging at the baits, 

sending out feeding signals, which 

in turn would draw in a few more 

fish, until eventually they were 

everywhere. Plaice are very 

inquisitive fish and just can't help 

themselves when something 

interesting is happening. 

Andy Bradbury & Bob Fitchie Fleetwood 

When the second wave moved in, 

the time between bites and 

associated activity decreased, with the knock on effect of drawing in yet more fish. And so it would go 

on until as the tide and the bait were petering out. Plaice would be literally queuing up for their turn at 

getting caught. 

I know it sounds fanciful, but that's the way it was. I was literally fed up with eating plaice. Obviously 

we didn't keep them all, but still we kept quite a few. 

These days however I tend only to keep fish that are deeply hooked, releasing all lip hooked fish 

regardless of size, because plaice are greedy fish which with their small mouths can be difficult to 

disgorge. That way at least, the ones with the best survival potential are going back. 

Nowadays the tendency is to fish with a single fine wire hook on a yard long flowing trace, making it 

maybe an extra foot or so longer if I fancy adding a short dropper and a second bait. In part that's in 

response to there being far less fish about since the demise of the Duddon days. It's been many years in 

fact since I last fished up there. 

Plaice at most locations up here became very scarce for quite a long time, only making a real comeback 

over the past several years, so what the state of play is around my old haunts is something I can't 

comment on. Maybe I should go back and take a look. 

What I can say is that like the thornback rays in our area which were similarly prolific, slipped into 

decline, then started creeping back, when they did return, for some unknown reason, it wasn't 

necessarily always to their old haunts, and the same has also happened up here with the plaice. 

Why that should be is difficult to say, because unlike say the Skerries Bank off Dartmouth which can 

physically change slightly on an almost daily basis due to the tide, our marks are pretty stable. 

Why the plaice should suddenly decide to switch from areas they had previously favoured to areas they 

had previously ignored is a difficult mystery to solve. 

Morecambe always had them, and now they are better than ever there. Fleetwood too, though the marks 

out in the bay seem less productive, whereas the Wyre Channel and the lower bay in and around 

Heysham now fish exceptionally well. 

Cleveleys is the enigma here. We always picked up odd ones close in from Bispham to Rossall, though 

in fairness, we were probably looking for other things at the time. Now, since their reappearance several 

years ago, there have been days when we've had fifty and more fish there. 

139

Charlie Pitchers & Dave Devine, Cleveleys Plaice 

Nothing like the standard we set all those years ago up around Walney Island. But those days are gone, 

and by any new standards, fifty Plaice is an excellent session, particularly from an area we didn't much 

see them in previously. 

Contrasting with all of this is the drift fishing scene. But first a few more observations, which to an 

extent overlap drift fishing and anchoring. In particular, I'd like to look at conditions above and below 

the surface. 

People tend to judge conditions below the waves by what is affecting them personally as they fish above 

them. I've had early season plaice recently in some pretty grim conditions. Snow, biting easterly or 

northerly winds, and after having had to scrape the car windscreen to get to where I'm intending to fish 

from. 

Currently I fish my earliest sessions out from Fleetwood in March and April, because besides the fish 

being there, on an ebbing tide as the mussel banks expose, in all but a very brisk northerly wind, it can 

still be fishable in a stiff breeze, protected by the banks which almost form a lagoon into which all fish 

in the area must drop back into as the tide recedes. 

Obviously, prolonged warm or cold air conditions will eventually affect water temperatures, particularly 

where it's shallow. But not so much on a day to day basis. Much of what fish do is governed by a 

combination of gradual temperature change coupled to increasing or decreasing day length, the latter 

being detected by photo-receptors which in turn trigger hormonal changes such as the urge to spawn. 

So don't automatically be put off by poor weather on the day. 

That said, there are occasions when conditions above the waves can have a very immediate and real 

effect on what happens below, and never was this better demonstrated with plaice than on a day I spent 

working on a feature for Sea Angler Magazine aboard Andy Bradbury's Fleetwood based 'Blue Mink'. 

140

Though it was still very early in the season, the sun was 

shining, which plaice like, and there wasn't a breath of 

wind, which plaice don't like. In the mirror calm 

conditions, Andy said we would struggle, and we did with 

just a few flounders and dabs. 

By the last hour, I'd given up and packed the camera gear 

away. Then suddenly from nowhere, the slightest of 

breezes popped up putting a tiny ripple on the water which 

had Andy rubbing his hands in anticipation of a last 

minute rescue. In that last hour, more than thirty plaice hit 

the deck. 

The other area of cross-over or otherwise, depending on 

your opinion, because for me the jury is still out, is bling. 

I said earlier that plaice are inquisitive fish, and so they 

are. So anything you can do to stimulate or exploit this can 

only be a good thing. 

I remember drift fishing the Causeway Bank off Portrush 

in Northern Ireland, plus another geographically large 

plaice holding area suitable for drift fishing out from 

nearby Portballintrae, where bling and attractors were 

very much the order of the day. 

Jon Patten, 7 ½ pound Plaice 

The locals who fished the area regularly, and who you 

should always keep an eye for ideas, favoured a large wobbling spoon like the ABU Rauto with a short 

hook length of maybe six inches or so, loaded with various combinations of coloured beads. 

In addition to that, their ragworm baits would also be tipped off with a tiny sliver of mackerel belly, as 

much for its visual effect acting as a flag as its scent or taste. You could still catch without the bling, 

but would definitely catch more with it. That however doesn't mean to say it will work every time and 

everywhere. 

Off the Antrim coast we always fished on the drift, which would help work moving attractors. The same 

in not true of heavy metal bladed attractors at anchor, even in quite a lick of tide. Lighter plastic spoons 

may well stand a better chance, or coloured rotating spoons fixed to a stand-off boom of the type 

Knotless Tackle used to produce. Otherwise it's combinations of beads and sequins, of which there are 

many varieties and colours to choose from. 

Different light conditions bring different success rates. Personally, I like black and green, which for my 

money will out-fish everything else, with the exception of the light absorbing and therefore luminous 

Gemini Genie in pale green with red spots. 

I'm not sure about their effectiveness in coloured water, or even on some brighter or clearer water days 

when plain baits sometimes seem to catch as much. 

The one thing you can most certainly say about bling though is that even if it doesn't attract, it usually 

doesn't detract either, so on balance it's probably better to have it just in case it could improve prospects 

on the day. 

141

Another drift fishing tactic popular down on the 

south coast is plaice hopping, which is not that 

dissimilar to using the paternoster I was 

apologising for earlier, except that it has just the 

two booms acting as a spreader, and the wider the 

reach the better. 

The monofilament droppers need be no more than 

twelve inches in length, with a light plastic spoon 

fixed mid point, either by a trapped bead or using 

a swivel. Bait it according to local preference, 

tipped off with either a tiny sliver of mackerel 

belly or squid, again to act as a flag. 

At anchor, proving there isn't too much run, you 

can also cast this out as far down tide as possible, 

then lift and twitch is back slowly. Alternatively, 

fished on the drift, keep lifting it a few inches then 

dropping it back to the bottom taking in the slack 

line in the hope of catching a fish’s eye. Brightly 

coloured lead lead weights can also be used to add 

to the spectacle. 

Even from the shore bling comes in useful at 

times. Everything that has already been said Charlie Pitchers, Fleetwood Plaice 

applies just as much from the beach, the jetty, or 

deep water rock marks looking out on to sand as it does from the boat, and the deeper the water, the 

easier it is to make good use of attractors. Even the hopping technique of twitching the baits back in 

slowly. 

All good tactics for numbers of fish. But if it's quality you want, and I'm thinking here of fish in the six 

pounds and upwards bracket, despite the fact that a few turn up each year off Bognor, Weymouth, and 

out over the Skerries, then really you are better looking at areas where commercial fishing pressure is 

at it lowest. 

That's what happened when Harry Gardiner took the first ever double figure home waters plaice from 

Longa Sound near Gairloch up in the Scottish Highlands back in 1974. 


DAB Limanda limanda 


Like the plaice and flounder which it superficially resembles, the dab lays on the seabed on the left side 

of its body with its eyes and pigmentation on the right. By far the commonest home waters flatfish, and 

by far the easiest species to identify. 

Simply rub the finger tips from tail to head against the grain of the scales and it will feel rough over 

every bit of its upper surface. 

No bony knobs from the back of the eyes to the lateral line or rough prickles at the base of the dorsal 

and anal fins. Just a drab brown flatfish with a light scattering on faint orange flecks, and a strongly 

curved lateral line over its pectoral fin. 

142

A fish with a distribution potentially taking in every 

corner of the British Isles where the ground in sandy 

through to mixed, from the shoreline to as far out to sea 

as anglers might care to venture. 

Another one of boat anglings true bread and butter 

species. In fact, a genuine potential day saver at times, 

particularly on the charter fishing scene throughout west 

Wales right up into Cumbria, and at many locations 

elsewhere I suspect too. Remember, not everybody gets 

to fish for big fish all of the time. 

There are days in the winter for example out codding and 

it's just not happening, when rather than suffering a 

blank or simply giving up, as good sea conditions are 

generally limited and therefore not to be wasted, I'll tie 

on a wire two boomed spreader or three boom 

paternoster armed with size one hooks, cut the blacklug 

up into portions, and happily spend a few hours pulling 

out dabs which can always be relied upon off Cleveleys 

and Rossall, despite the fact that this is largely a mixed 

to heavy ground area. 

Phill Williams, Dabs 

ground doesn't have to be especially clean. 

Maybe there are patches of sand there too, though 

judging by the numbers of dabs which we pick up pretty 

much everywhere in the area, I get the feeling that the 

We also deliberately devote time to them over the winter months on the smaller tides when fishing the 

Mersey as the tide slackens off and the cod temporarily drop off the radar. Small baits, paternosters, 

and two down with one up scratching rigs get a couple of hours to earn their keep before switching back 

to the big baits and bolt pennel rigs as the new tide picks up. 

Just two examples of putting the reliability of the dab to good use. Love them or feeling indifferent on 

the subject, probably more so for charter boat skippers than anglers, life would become very much 

harder were they to disappear, which despite them now starting to turn up on the fish stalls of supermarkets 

such as Morrison's, probably isn't likely to happen in the short term at least, as they are, so far 

as I can tell, not a widespread commercially targeted fish, and we all should be thankful for that. 

When we used to fish for plaice off Walney Island with fresh blowlug, you could virtually guarantee 

that a good sprinkling of dabs would also put in a show. Not as greedy as plaice in swallowing the 

hooks, and easier to disgorge, most would go back. 

Another point where they differ from plaice is the way they react to being hooked. Plaice always seem 

to come to the boat coloured side up, diving or trying to stay as deep as they can until you lift them 

from the water. 

Despite my singing their praises, dabs unfortunately seem to give up the moment they feel the hook, 

hitting surface well away from the boat and often white side up. But still I love 'em. 

We even pick up a few on tiny shrimp rigs during the summer when the lead touches bottom while 

feathering for mackerel. Add bait to the hooks and they become a much more available prospect, even 

willing to stray up off the bottom a short way. 

143

Last winter I was given a new design of scratching rig 

for dabs and whiting to try out on the Mersey by 

'Jensen II' skipper Tony Parry. One which allows you 

to adapt to changing conditions and the changing 

moods of the fish. 

It's a forty two inch length of one hundred pound bs 

monofilament, with a swivel at one end, a Gemini 

Genie Bent Link G3002/2 clip at the other, and three 

further link clips at fourteen inch intervals trapped by 

micro beads either side stopped by a mono crimp. 

By doing this you can then clip on the twelve inch 

long hook lengths which have an attachment swivel, 

plus the lead, in any number of combinations ranging 

from three up to three down, and all variations in 

between. You can even vary the droppers with 

different hook sizes and bling combinations without 

having to tie on a new trace every time you want 

something different. Simple, but very effective. 

One other tactical difference between dabs and plaice 

is that dabs are much better approached from a boat 

fishing at anchor. They will take slow moving baits, 

and can be taken by a technique I've already gone into Steve Quinn, Mersey Dab brace 

detail with for the plaice known as plaice hopping, but 

could just as easily be dab hopping if it works for them, which to an extent it does. But I personally 

would back myself for a better session if the baits were static on the bottom. 

As for the addition of bling, again, for me at least, the jury is out. Some days snoods festooned with 

beads and sequins seem to score best, while on other days they don't. Or is it just that the people catching 

most fish on those occasions and under the prevailing circumstance would have done so regardless 

either way. Who can say. 

If I happen to have beads and sequins on a rig I pick out for dabbing, then there they stay. If I haven't, 

who cares. As I've said elsewhere, in some ways it pays always to add bling to flattie rigs, because even 

when it doesn't attract, it never seems to detract either, so better to have some there just in case it does 

turn out to be a bling day. 

The only other point I would make with regard to having success with dabs, is to try them on tiny 

mackerel belly strips. Start with it on just one hook, because on some occasions they seem less interested 

than on others. But if it is what they want on the day, they can really go for it big time. 

Old manky bait too, including fork chopped blowlug or damaged worms that are on the turn can also 

catch well. So not the fussiest of feeders, which can be a God send, certainly on the charter fishing 

scene. 

Turning to the shore now, again, they can be part of the staple diet, depending of course on where it is 

you fish. From the beach working out over clean ground it's going to be simple dropper rigs. Piers, 

harbour walls, and deep water rock marks allow tactics a bit more akin to the boat such as scratching 

rigs, bling, and slowly twitching the baits back in to give them movement. 

As I've said, I don't mind catching dabs from the boat when the going is slow for other stuff, but from 

the shore, and the beach in particular, I will positively target them with 1/0 fine wire hooks, worms 

144

aits, and a tiny sliver of squid or mackerel for that extra bit of taste, and to help stop small fish ragging 

away and dislodging soft worm baits. 

As with the boats, expect fish in the six to twelve ounce range, with anything bigger coming along as a 

bonus. But you certainly wouldn't expect one particular dab that a friend of mine Ken Robinson hauled 

in while fishing a night session from his local beach at Blythe. A fish which turned the scales to a 

staggering two pounds seven ounces. Unfortunately, that was back in the days of black and white 

photography. But what a fish. 

FLOUNDER Platichthys flesus 


As widespread, obliging, and easy to pin the 

correct name on as either of its two close relatives 

the plaice and the dab, flounder identification is as 

simple as touching the fish with the finger tips 

along the base of the dorsal fin, anal fin, and along 

the lateral line between the tail and the gill cover. 

If when you brush it from tail to head you detect a 

prickly feel along those areas and nowhere else, 

then it's a flounder. Dabs feel rough all over when 

rubbed from tail to head, whereas plaice feel 

smooth all over except for a series of visible bony 

bumps running from the back of the eyes to the 

edge of the gill cover. 

Colour-wise, flounder can be far more variable 

than the other two species, ranging from light 

through to dark brown and even greenish brown, 

with a scattering of small faint orange flecks. 

Fortunately, the lines of prickles along the base of 

the fins on their own are enough to be certain 

without the colour and markings. 

If you still need something extra to clinch the 

identification, simply turn the fish over and look at its underside, which will be a dull opaque white, 

unlike that of the other two flatfish species which though also white, give the impression that you can 

see a little way in beyond the skin. A fish which lays on the left side of its body with its eyes and 

markings on the right. 

If dabs are one of boat anglings bread and butter species, then surely the same must be true of the 

flounder on the shore angling scene. I regularly make a very concerted effort to catch flounders from 

the shore over the late autumn and winter months, which in my book only adds to their value. 

A good, obliging, reliable fall back for when everything else has already been taken off the shelf. Day's 

when it's blowing a gale and not only can you not get the boat out, but you can hardly stand up on the 

beach either let alone hope to fish it. Then it's time to be heading up into an estuary near you looking 

for shelter and a species you can invariably rely upon to pull your string. 

That's what I tend to use flounder fishing for. So reliable is it in fact that on days when all the odds are 

stacked against you even getting a result there, it's often still possible to snatch victory from the jaws of 

145

seemingly certain defeat, which for me has always meant a run up to Arnside on the River Kent estuary 

in Cumbria, which I'm going to use here as my representative model on estuary flounder fishing from 

the shore. 

At some venues around the country it possibly might matter whether you fish the ebb or the flood tide. 

At Arnside that doesn't seem to be the case. So long as the tide isn't too big or the flow from the river 

feeding the estuary too great, the prospects are usually good. 

Personally, I prefer the low water period when the mud banks dry out forcing the water into its most 

confined state. This also concentrates whatever fish there are available into the smallest possible area, 

which in theory at least should help make them more catchable. 

What I don't like about low water there is the threat of quick sands, which are a very real danger at 

Arnside, particularly when the tide starts to make, which at the bigger end of the cycle comes in as a 

tidal bore. 

You wouldn't want to get stuck thigh deep in the mud under those circumstances. I've seen it happen, 

for which reason I always stick to those parts of the estuary with patches of stones protruding from the 

mud to be assured of some firm ground. 

To make the point about reliability here, I'd like to quote a couple of stand-out visits, which in their 

different ways, on paper at least, were doomed to disaster, yet still came up trumps. 

The first was a session which really was a bit too late in the year to be fishing for flounders, but which 

due to circumstances, Charlie Pitchers and I decided to do anyway, mainly because there was absolutely 

nothing else on offer other than staying at home. 

It was January, by which time mature flounders often have things on their mind other than food as they 

start to make their way out of the estuaries to their offshore spring spawning areas. So if only for that 

reason we weren't expecting much, in addition to which, in the build up to the trip, there had been a lot 

of snow followed by an even bigger dose of rain. 

Again, not exactly the best estuary flounder 

ingredients on either count. A sudden slug of cold 

snow melt is never good for anything. Having that 

happen in near flood conditions will usually only 

exacerbate a potentially already poor situation. 

I remember us reaching Milnthorpe where we turn to 

follow the river to Arnside village and seeing the 

water bank high flooding over into the surrounding 

fields. So not only was it extra cold, but salinity levels 

in the estuary would also be well down. 

Freshwater anglers fishing worm baits for chub or 

whatever many miles inland often catch small 

flounders, so obviously, they can tolerate not only low 

salinity, but no salinity. 

What they can't do is adjust their physiology quickly 

to adapt and be in a position to cope with sudden 

change, and as such, when you get a bank high slug 

of freshwater coming down, estuarine fish have to fall 

back downstream to a salinity concentration they can 

deal with, which if it happens in January, could just 

Phill Williams, Arnside 

146

e enough to push them right out with no chance of a return until the back end months come around 

again. 

So it's late in the season, we've got snow melt in the river, and it's bank high. Why waste any more 

diesel completing the journey. A question we most certainly asked ourselves that day. 

Having travelled so far, and with the village just a few miles down the road, plus nothing better to do, 

we carried on anyway, and finished up having one of the best flounder sessions I can remember in a 

long while with thirty one big fat fish. Explain that one away. 

Running that visit a close second was one icy Sunday when Graeme Pullen was due up at my place 

early afternoon for a non angling related visit, but because he couldn't sleep the night before, he had got 

up extra early and was at my door around 9 am with all his video gear in the car, asking if we might be 

able to squeeze in a spot of flounder fishing for his Totally Awesome Fishing show. 

The only problem was that the tides were big, plus we would be fishing it down at peak flow, which 

made Arnside not exactly the number one venue on the list. So I phoned Charlie who I'd shared quite a 

good Arnside flounder session with on the smaller tides the previous week, and despite the odds being 

stacked against, as Graeme had come so far, reluctantly we decided to give a go. 

Tide size aside, conditions looked good. A fine bright day with nothing in the way of rain over the 

previous few days. On the other hand, the water was screaming though washing our grip leads back into 

the margins before they even had half a chance of digging in. 

In a nutshell, it looked un-fishable. So having mentally given up, I then wandered off downstream where 

I found a little bay which was being by-passed by the main flow, forming a sort of branch-off lagoon. 

I could see the flow skirting past maybe fifty yards off, so I flicked my two dropper rig out to the edge 

of the run, and bingo, had a small fish within minutes. I immediately got on the phone to Charlie and 

Graeme who joined me a short time later. 

Obviously, not wanting to tough it out in the 

main flow, the flounders had tucked themselves 

into this slack eddy in their hundreds, which as 

with the example of the low water channels, was 

having a concentrating effect which we were 

then able to tap in to. We only had a couple of 

hours at best to get a result and get Graeme back 

for a bite to eat and out on the road again 

heading for Hampshire. 

That short spell brought in well over twenty big 

fat flounders, often two at a time, and in 

Charlie's case because he had a three hook 

dropper rig on, occasionally three at a time, all 

falling to frozen blacklug tipped off with squid 

which was the only bait we could muster due to 

the extreme short notice of the trip. 

Charlie Pitchers, two double hits 

Needless to say, Graeme was ecstatic. As for 

Charlie and I, we were just relieved. A case this 

time of thinking where the fish might be holed 

up, looking for them, and finding them, unlike 

the previous example of analysing all the 

147

available evidence which suggested a disaster waiting to happen, only to have it all over turned for 

reasons as yet to be explained. 

The general theory of snow melt, low salinity and too much run all still hold true. But sometimes you 

just have to go and try things anyway, and occasionally, the gamble can pay off. 

Moving out of the estuaries onto the beaches now, flounders become less of a proposition as the 

freshwater influence ceases to be a factor. I don't think it's the freshwater per se so much as a particular 

beaches proximity to an estuary. Over in Ireland it's common place to catch flounders on the bass surf 

beaches, more so than it is over here. 

Nothing changes in terms of tactics. It's still a case of dropper rigs with 1/0 to 2/0 hooks. Bait on the 

other hand is another matter altogether, with peeler crab the number one hook filler when the main 

spring and autumn moults are under-way. Frozen crab is also useful when for whatever reason live 

peelers are not available. 

Crab if you have access to it is excellent. But so too are a number of other offerings, including white 

rag, red rag, and probably best of all, creeper rag or 'maddies' which are the tiny things found in heavy 

estuarine muds which you need half a dozen of just to fill a hook. These can be lethal where flounders 

are concerned. 

Mackerel strip is also a bait which can have its day, for which reason it can pay to tip off worms baits 

with a tiny sliver, or even a piece of squid which serves the triple role of adding to the overall edible 

attraction of the bait, acting as a visual flag to grab a bit of extra attention, and helping keep worm baits 

in place, particularly when small fish unable to get the hook inside their mouth start pulling and tugging 

at them, ragging and ripping them from the hook. 

Strange as it might sound, me being primarily a small boat angler, I rarely fish for flounders from the 

boat, and I just as rarely pick them up accidentally as a result. The only time I expect to see a few is 

when I'm fishing for early plaice inside the River Wyre estuary at Fleetwood. Otherwise, they are a 

rarity. 

In other parts of the country, 

particularly where there are large 

natural harbours based on 

estuaries, small boat fishing for 

flounders is a much anticipated 

event. Never having trailed down 

to the south coast and tried it, I can 

only throw in what I've heard 

about or read on the topic. 

Devon and Cornwall seem to be 

the front runners in all of this, with 

the Fowey and Teign right at the 

head of the list, both having 

produced flounders in excess of 

five pounds, and in the case of the 

Teign, also from the shore. 

John Greenfield & Mick Duff, Mersey Flounders 

Back-end and winter is the time 

to be in there, drift fishing with a 

bottom trailing rig such as a six foot flowing trace to an attractor spoon ahead of maybe six inches of 

bling laden monofilament hook length. 

148

Hooks obviously can be bigger where big fish are expected, but as with all aspects of fishing, the size 

of a fish’s mouth or its overall body weight are not the only factors to consider. 

Hooks also need to be suitable for, and proportionate to, the bait being used, which if its sandeel, need 

not be bigger that a standard J-pattern 2/0, whereas for crab, a wider gape is often a better proposition 

to load the stuff onto without masking the point. 

You don't need to use bling or spoons, but catch statistics certainly suggest that these can help. I've even 

taken them on and had repeated follows right up to the boat using fast moving ragworm baited spinners 

aimed at thin lipped grey mullet in Christchurch Harbour on a number of occasions. 

LEMON SOLE Microstomus kitt 


As with the more familiar plaice, dab and flounder, a small and in this case often attractive looking fish 

which has settled out on the sea bed on the left side of its body with its eyes and pigmentation on the 

right side. Quite a readily recognisable fish too meaning that rod caught specimens do tend to get 

reported, which could be quite literally from anywhere in home waters at depths generally in excess of 

twenty fathoms. 

Both the head and the mouth are noticeably small. Above the pectoral fin, the lateral line is strongly 

curved like that of the dab, but unlike the dab, which has a rough feel to its scales when rubbed from 

tail to head, lemon sole feel extremely smooth and slippery. A strikingly marked fish with a light brown 

base colour topped off by a collage of deeper brown, dull yellow, and even green blotches. 

Small polychaete worms are its main prey, which it hunts in a very intriguing way. Divers report that 

on finding a patch of ground where tube worms have withdrawn their cases in response to being 

alarmed, the fish will raise itself up into an almost 'standing' position on its tail and wait. Then, as the 

149

worm re-emerges from the sand thinking the danger has past, it strikes, either sucking it from its tube, 

or biting off that bit which it has hold of. 

Despite the rather misleading name, this fish isn't in any way related to the sole other than by being flat. 

It is in fact quite closely allied to the plaice which it resembles in general body shape rather than the 

true sole which is narrow and long. A fish which ichthyologist Alwyne Wheeler in his book 'The Fishes 

of the British Isles and North-West Europe' describes as not taking angler's baits. 

In this instance, that is most definitely not the case, as both the record list and my own personal 

experience shows, as this is a fish I have actually witnessed caught by an angler many years ago on 

Loch Long. Granted, it won't be a regular occurrence. But not an impossible one either. 

Limited catch stats could just as easily be due to the fact that out in the deeper water it prefers, small 

worm baits on tiny hooks are hardly the norm, so what might be a willing fish in theory, is actually 

being restricted by angling practise. 

On the plus side, most of those that do take a bait tend to be of good size, which for a fish of such high 

commercial value and renowned eating qualities is always a bonus. 

WITCH Glytocephalus cynoglossus 


150 

A long narrow bodied fish, 

probably nearer to the basic shape 

of a dover sole than it is to that of 

the lemon sole to which it's 

related, but with a 'proper flatfish' 

head and a centrally placed very 

small mouth. The eyes, like those 

of the plaice and flounder are 

located on the right side of the 

body, are noticeably large to 

enhance vision in the darker 

depths the witch favours. The 

lateral line is virtually straight. 

Colouration is a rather drab greyish brown with the scales having a dry roughish feel when brushed 

against the grain tail to head. The end of the pectoral fin on the fish’s upper side is darker than the rest 

of the fin. However, it's most striking identification feature, which can readily be seen on close 

examination, is a series of small cavities on the underside of the head. 

What limited experience I have of this species comes from commercially caught specimens taken off 

Hartlepool where we had a couple come aboard. That area of the North Sea supposedly marks the 

southerly extent of its distribution over on that side of the country. 

All of Scotland, the west coast of Ireland, and the extreme south west of Britain make up the remainder 

of its regular range, usually well out beyond angling reach. 

In his book 'The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe' ichthyologist and one time advisor 

to the British Record Fish Committee the late Alwyne Wheeler, describes the witch as a species that is 

not caught on rod and line.

He also uses this description for the lemon sole, which I know from personal experience can be caught. 

But for the witch, my money is on him being right. The dilemma then comes from the fact that the very 

same record fish committee he advised and served for so long actually lists a rod caught inclusion for a 

witch taken from the shore at Colwyn Bay in 1967. 

It could well be that there have been others, providing substance to the old saying that 'stranger things 

happen at sea'. But they don't get much stranger than that one, taken from of all places the beach. 

We're talking here of an offshore fish that is so specialized in its feeding that it's tiny mouth has become 

adapted for almost exclusively sucking small polychaete worms from their burrows and for nipping off 

the ends of those which it can't dislodge. 

To further complicate things, witch are quite a sparse fish even out in the deeper water where they are 

said to be most commonly found, if common be the right word, with depths of thirty to a hundred and 

fifty fathoms, and occasionally in excess of eight hundred fathoms over muddy sand being favoured. 

So to have one take a baited hook, and to do it from the shore in an area not exactly noted for having 

them, while not impossible, is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Not a name then I expect myself or 

anyone else to be putting a tick against any time soon. 

HALIBUT Hippoglossus hippoglossus 


Halibut resemble a flounder, but on a grandiose scale. 

Colouration on the pigmented side is also flounder like, 

comprising shades of deep olive green to greenish brown 

with the underside pearly white. That however is where 

any flounder similarities end. 

Halibut have a huge mouth extending back to at least the 

centre of the nearest eye. They also have a strongly 

curved lateral line just above the pectoral fin, and a 

concave free edge to the tail. 

Size alone will as likely as not rule out misidentification, 

unless of course a very small specimen is 

caught. They are after-all the largest flatfish in the world, 

with potential weights in excess of six hundred pounds. 

Seasoned big fish hunters however regard halibut of 

three hundred pounds as the absolute limit of physical 

capability for even the strongest angler, which says 

much for the fighting potential of this giant predator. 

John Wilson, Norway Halibut 

If only they enjoyed a more widespread concentrated 

distribution. Contrary to what some anglers think, they 

are thankfully not exclusively an Arctic fish. But they 

are a northerly species, with the top half of the home 

waters scene being blessed with a few. 

I am fortunate enough, though unfortunately also old enough as a result, to remember the birth of halibut 

fishing on rod and line and the subsequent boom in interest this generated, leading to a spate of catches 

around the north of Scotland. 

151

As I recall, the first one was taken accidentally back in the 1960's out from Wick, prompting a few early 

pioneers to start deliberately fishing for them with large pirks from Scrabster and Thurso in the Pentland 

Firth, and more especially, around the southern islands of the Orkney's, in particular Hoy just across the 

way. 

A wild unforgiving area even in good conditions. But generous in other ways, as a steady, though not 

numerically significant stream of big halibut started to reward those willing to put the effort in. 

Flipping all of that on its head, the largest halibut I ever saw caught was a 167 pounder which picked 

up a static bait intended for common skate up around Dury Voe in Shetland back in 1974. And while a 

few more specimens continued to make the news, it wasn't long after that when things started to go 

quiet and eventually slip off the radar. 

The odd one still gets caught in Scottish waters, though invariably by accident rather than intention. 

The last one I heard of was in 1997. A fish of a hundred and eighty pounds taken from the tide race off 

the Point of Stoer up on the west coast. 

Not every halibut however gets caught in Scotland, and nor do they all date back to the 1990's and 

beyond. 

I've mentioned already that I have spent time out 

from Hartlepool aboard the fly shooter 'Adaptable', 

which involved the towing of a net attached to very 

long warps with are formed into big arcs by sailing 

in a huge circle. The basic idea is that as the boat 

sails away from the net in the middle of the circle, 

the warps are drawn closer together herding the fish 

up into a lane which the net then drags along 

sweeping them all up. 

We were out there catching amongst other things 

greater forkbeards, witches, and long rough dabs, 

and on a couple of hauls, small halibut also found 

themselves on the deck. So I decided to follow this 

up, and it turns out that the commercial boats pick 

them up fairly regularly within just a few miles of 

the shore all through the summer, with the angling 

boats also seeing an odd one or two while lure 

fishing for cod 

The story however doesn't end there, because in 

2014 I went over to Whitby to do a feature for Sea 

Angler Magazine aboard Paul Kilpatrick's 'Sea 

Barry Kemper, Whitby Halibut 53 pounds Otter 2', and Paul provided me with a picture of a 

halibut one of his clients, Barry Kemper, had 

boated just a few weeks earlier, which tipped the scales at fifty three pounds, and was far from being 

the first either Paul or Whitby had seen in recent years. 

In fact, they now actually expect to catch a few each year. Not to the point where you would go out and 

deliberately target them, otherwise you might be there trying all season. But there are most definitely 

things which can be done to improve the chances of contacting one. 

152

I spent some time chatting to Paul on the subject, and even made a short audio recording with him where 

the halibut potential was brought up. It seems that while a few are expected and caught every year, more 

still are hooked and lost by anglers not expecting such a hard running powerful encounter. 

I say this, because as Paul commented, unless the reel drag is set to protect the line from the kind of hit 

a halibut is likely to deliver, you won't have time to adjust it in play, and the thing will usually be gone 

along with the lure. Even with the small to middle range fish. So in the months between April and June, 

which is when most of the North Sea halibut seem to be hooked up, it pays to be aware of this fact. 

They are there all summer, but are less likely to be picked up from around June onwards, because as 

the season progresses and the herring are about in good numbers, that extra abundance of natural food 

tends to reduce the chances of an encounter, besides which, with the shads working at or close to the 

bottom for cod, and the herring swimming further up in the water column, the chances of halibut and 

shad coming across each other are also appreciably less. 

I've not caught halibut in home waters. But I do have a 

tick against it's name from a visit to Kappangen on 

Lyngen Fjord in northern Norway. As a group, we 

picked up a few to maybe twelve pounds, mainly on 

shads or similar lures, and always well up off the bottom. 

But in all honesty, we weren't deliberately fishing for 

them. 

Had we wanted halibut, I dare say we could have had 

more, and had we really wanted to dedicate ourselves to 

the species, then there are better venues than Lyngen 

both for numbers and for size. 

For my part, I stuck with the cod on the pirks as I wanted 

a fifty pounder, which unfortunately I didn't get. On the 

last afternoon however, Dave Lewis, myself and Dave 

Devine took one of the aluminium self-drive boats out 

and detoured in to a small side loch, call it what you will, 

where in previous years Dave Lewis had picked up small 

halibut on bait. So as I wanted that bucket list tick, that's 

what we did, and it was objective achieved on the very 

first drift. 

Okay, so it wasn't much better than a big flounder, but 

Small - but a halibut none the less I make no apology for that. For me the pressure is now 

off. Maybe one day I will develop full blown halibut 

fever, and if I do, Norway will most definitely be at the top of my list, though I've also seen them in 

southern Iceland. But don't rule out Whitby. It's very much nearer, more accessible, and from what I've 

seen, very underrated too. 


LONG ROUGH DAB Hippoglossoides platessoides 


A small fish which lies on the left side of its body and therefore has its eyes and pigmentation on the 

right hand side. The body outline is proportionately long and narrow, with a reasonably straight lateral 

153

line which just curves up slightly above the pectoral fin on a background colouration which can vary 

between greyish and reddish brown without patterning. 

As with the true dab, the skin 

feels dry and rough to the touch 

when brushed from tail to head. 

But don't be misled by the name 

implication here. Dab sized it 

may be, but dab like it most 

certainly isn't. The clue here is in 

the generic part of its scientific 

name which is Hippoglossoides, 

placing it as a close relative of the 

halibut, a fact visually confirmed 

by the size of the mouth and the 

eyes in comparison to the rest of 

the body. 

Dab top, Long Rough Dab below 

An active predator, albeit on a 

down sized scale of small fish 

and quite a wide range of bottom 

invertebrates out in moderately deep water, mainly around the northern half of the country, and in 

particular Scottish waters from where it has been recorded on rod and line from both the boat and the 

shore. Particularly in and around the Clyde with its deep water sea lochs and at one time regular angling 

attention. 

No doubt it could quite readily be caught elsewhere, and very probably is on occasions, but is then overlooked 

on account of its small size. 

A fish I feel sure is fairly readily catchable on small baits and hooks, given the appropriate deliberate 

effort and knowledge of how to identify it should one come along. I've seen them in reasonable numbers 

on a few occasions while commercial fishing well within sight of land out from Hartlepool. 

TURBOT Scophthalmus maximus 


Turbot lie on the right side of their 

body with their eyes and 

pigmentation on their left side. If 

the head end is pointing to your 

right when viewed from above, the 

eyes of the fish will be below the 

turbots very large mouth, which 

hints at its life-style as an ambush 

predator of small fish. 

Often a beautifully marked fish 

with a blend of small darker spots 

over a sandy background, 

extending even onto the eyes and 

the tail. This, coupled to the dorsal 

154

fin extending right around to the head to help break up the body outline, offers excellent camouflage 

over sand and shell grit. The body is extremely broad giving a well-rounded outline. 

Turbot lack scales as such, these having become fused to form small hard wart-like tubercles over the 

upper surface which are smaller and more tightly packed on the gill covers and other parts of the head. 

A rub of the hand across the back feeling for these tubercles will soon determine whether a fish is a 

turbot or not, these being a key feature that the similar looking brill lacks. The lateral line is also very 

strongly curved over the pectoral fin. 

Colouration is often adapted to suit a particular patch of sea bed. Said to be a shallow water fish found 

where there is sand, shell grit, and even light gravel pretty much all around the British Isles, with the 

North Sea in particular quoted as a fertile area for commercial fishing at least. 

Individually, the odd turbot could conceivably turn up anywhere. Collectively, offshore banks and sandwaves 

both attract and concentrate them in better numbers, especially if there is a good resident 

population of sandeels on which to feed. 

The first time I ever laid eyes on a turbot was while fishing out on Loch Ryan with 'Mr. Cool', the late 

great Davy Agnew from nearby Kirkcolm. Nothing flustered him. Nothing that was until this particular 

day. 

We were catching plenty of thornbacks rays at the time, and if I'm honest, I suspect that's what he 

thought was coming up. Then it hit the surface. All fourteen and a half pounds of it. A beautiful big 

Turbot. 

Cool was the first thing to go out of the window. In the end, having already fluffed it once with the gaff, 

Davy next hit his own line and parted it. 

Not realising it's potential to make a bid for freedom, the fish was momentarily dazed, just for long 

enough to give Davy the chance to gaff it at the 

third attempt and lift it in to the boat, after which 

he was beaming from ear to ear. 

A fabulous fish, particularly for me as a 

newcomer to boat fishing. But more importantly, 

that whole episode drove home just how 

important that fish was to Davy, a hardened super 

cool veteran, after which I decided that I had to 

have one for myself, which eventually I did. But 

it sure as hell was a long time in coming. 

I would have to wait probably a good ten years in 

fact, in part because even in those days, turbot 

were not nearly so common as they once were. 

Also because if you really want to catch one, as 

with any fish, you have to go to where they are 

most abundant, and by that time I was heavily 

into fishing my home patch from a dinghy I'd 

bought which was a GRP version of Davy's 

clinker MacKay Viking. Cod and tope were the 

only show in town at that particular time. But 

even then, turbot were not that far away. 

Jon Patten, Shambles Turbot 

155

Restrictions on travelling distances over the water due to engine size back then were a real limiting 

factor. We had a 9.9 hp Johnson on the transom, but faster boats such as the CJR with engines up to 

thirty hp were just starting to appear, allowing people the freedom to explore more widely. 

This was the late 1970's on into the early 1980's. A time when Fleetwood was a bustling charter port 

famous for the quality of its thornback ray fishing, particularly on the smaller tides in and around 

Morecambe Bay, which can be a hard place to fish when the tides gets up around nine metres and 

beyond. 

One mark in particular drew quite a bit of attention. Not only from the Fleetwood charter fleet and Fylde 

Coast dinghies journeying across, but also from the Barrow boats coming out of the Walney Channel, 

plus a few dinghies from Morecambe, that being the ground around a particular buoy known as 

Lightening Knoll. 

This was an excellent thornback holding area which would be fished at anchor with mackerel or squid 

on flowing traces. Not exactly the tactic most likely to catch turbot. None the less, over the years, quite 

a number of bonus turbot to over fifteen pounds were accidentally picked up, and always in that one 

particular area. 

With hind-sight, you can't help but wonder what might have been achieved had anyone bothered to drift 

fish for them. It's also worth noting that if the you read the brill account below, the trawling line I refer 

to in that which produced a turbot and some of the biggest brill I have ever seen, passed right alongside 

Lightening Knoll. Amazingly a surprise 13½ pound turbot was also taken from the now collapsed 

and sadly no longer with us Blackpool North Pier jetty. 

I had my first decent sized turbot fishing the offshore banks out from Guernsey. Over the years I've 

observed that some of the banks in that area appear to be better suited either to flatfish or to bass than 

others. I'm not sure why that is, but the skippers concerned seemed to know what to expect and where, 

obviously based on a lifetime of personal experience. 

Some days bass would dominate, while on others, presumably either different banks or particular 

regions of the same bank, big flatties would be the order of the day. Mixed in amongst these occasionally 

would be an odd brill. But you couldn't really predict or set your stall out for them, which you could do 

more so with the turbot. 

The thing is that when you're fishing for 

any one of big three main bank targets – 

bass, turbot or brill, tactically speaking, 

you're fishing for any and all of them. 

A long flowing trace of twelve to twenty 

feet armed with a 4/0 hook baited with a 

live sandeel and weighted by a flat 

circular watch lead to help prevent it 

wandering laterally is the way to go about 

it, though I recall one trip where the 

skipper said that anyone specifically 

wanting turbot should fish either a dead 

sandeel or a long thin strip of mackerel 

belly. 

Watch leads 

Maybe it's because turbot have more 

chance of missing a live sandeel than the 

faster moving bass, I don't know, though that's what they're on the banks to feed on in the first place. 

156

Whatever the reason, it did actually produce more turbot, particularly on top of the bank where there 

would be scour holes and gullies ripped out by the tide where a big flattie could tuck down into out of 

the run waiting for a meal to be delivered over head. 

In complete contrast to this is a session I fished off the coast of South Wales. The inshore banks created 

by a combination of local geography and tide dotted along the run between Cardiff and possibly Milford 

Haven, certainly Worms Head, used to be loaded with small turbot up to maybe two or three pounds. 

In fact, it was while fishing out from Tenby with of all people Clive Gammon that I caught my first 

ever turbot. As ever in these parts, a small fish of maybe three pounds at best which had somehow 

managed to gorge down a tope bait. 

Nobody it seems ever bothered with camera's back then. Not even the greats like Gammon, who would 

have missed out on numerous golden opportunities. So unfortunately, there is no evidence of that day. 

But the static bait theme fits in very nicely with a string of other experiences fishing that same general 

area. 

I used to launch my own boat from the beach at Port Eynon to fish for plaice, but would always either 

tip the worm baits off with a small strip of mackerel, or dispense with the worm altogether on one hook, 

and again, small turbot were not that uncommon. 

My best memory of the area however is of a weekend spent fishing out of Oxwich next door which I've 

covered in full detail when looking at small eyed ray fishing previously. 

In a nutshell, Swansea charter skipper Paul Radford gave us a chart plus some lat-long readings (GPS 

wasn't available in those days) for the top of the Helwick Bank as a starting point to explore from. 

Thinking rays, we put the anchor down. 

I was already tackled up with a short flowing trace, and 

before the other two had even got a line in the water, I'd 

had two turbot and a small eyed ray out, which by the 

end of the day had collectively risen to twenty six turbot 

and sixty four small eyes. Nothing else. And from what 

I'm hearing, nothing much at all on these banks today. 

Sticking with Wales, though further up to the north now, 

an odd one used to turn up when fishing for rays out 

from Aberystwyth and Aberdovey. I never managed it, 

but we heard accounts. 

My next personal Welsh turbot encounter was while 

fishing out of 'Ron's place' tucked inside the southern 

entrance to the Menai Strait when he was still alive. We 

had some great trips there with Ron putting us in from 

his private slip with his battered old tractor. 

Always it was straight out to the bar which was formed 

by suspended particulate material suddenly settling out 

as The Strait widens and looses its ferocity in upper 

Caernarfon Bay. A dodgy place to be at times, particular 

once you've crossed the bar itself and a south westerly 

breeze gets up. 

Dave Devine, Caernarfon Turbot 

Not exactly a bank in the precise definition of the word, 

but an area of clean ground with many of the angling related characteristics of a small bank. 

157

Bass on the drift fishing live sandeel was usually our primary aim. Unfortunately, these could be patchy 

and un-predictable at times, so it paid always to have a plan B, which on the day I'm thinking of here 

was to try for tope. 

We had plenty of fresh mackerel onboard which we'd picked up further out in the bay, so we put the 

anchor down where the slope of the bar merged in to the bay itself. And to help things along, we decided 

to try a spot of 'bagging', which is a ground baiting technique we'd used for sharks over in Gambia some 

time earlier. 

This involves tying a big lead to the end of your reel line, dropping it into a plastic super market bag, 

then tying a piece of line around the outside of the bag just above the lead to trap it in one corner. You 

then fill the bag with chopped up pieces of mackerel and lower it to the sea bed using water pressure on 

the drop to keep it folded around its contents. 

Jigged up and down a few times at the bottom, the bag then inverts, placing its contents on the sea bed 

both for scent and to be slowly dispersed by the tide. Fish supposedly then follow the trail uptide to find 

your baits, which on this particular day included two very nice turbot I had in successive drops, both of 

which were full of mackerel chunks. 

One final boat trip I'd like to mention briefly is a week long stay on Lundy Island which myself and 

Graeme Pullen did some years ago. I don't think it's possible to fish there these days, but back then the 

Landmark Trust were looking to exploit the fishing, and had myself and Graeme go over for a look. 

Unfortunately, the weather was awful and the tide rips at either end of the island were wild. But we 

went out none the less when the islands launch was available, one day getting around the top corner to 

fish a small bank that had formed there. 

Typically we were catching blonde and small eyed rays. Then I hooked something which felt both 

different and obviously quite a bit smaller which I jokingly announced was a turbot. In all honesty, I 

had no idea what was on the end. I was just kidding along. 

So when a turbot of around five pounds hit the surface, you can imagine how impressed the others were 

at my abilities to identify fish by the way they reacted to being hooked. 

Well, if they were willing to believe that then why not let them, though the truth of the matter is that it 

could just as easily have been anything. So there it is, my guilty secret exposed, or one of them at least. 

The idea behind relating this particular selection of turbot encounters is to demonstrate the different 

ways in which they can be caught. But without doubt the best way is with ground coverage on the drift, 

particularly in areas where turbot are known to hang out in numbers. 

More importantly however, with the exception of my first turbot out from Tenby, what these catches 

also very clearly demonstrate is that regardless of tactics, there is a common theme here linking in all 

the other venues, that being particulate accumulations dropping out of suspension in response to reduced 

tidal activity in areas where local geography temporarily accentuates tidal run. 

In other words, banks made up from fine sand, coarse sand, shell grit, or even gravel. That is where 

turbot are most likely to be caught deliberately when fishing out in a boat. 

158

From the shore it's slightly different. One 

thing anyone reading this book will very 

quickly become aware of, is that while I do 

shore fish and have caught some outstanding 

fish from dry land, it isn't my first choice 

activity by a long shot. 

Most definitely, it's something I do out of 

necessity when conditions are not conducive 

to offshore fishing, or when I'm out with 

someone else who is a shore specialist, both 

to kindle my interest and to advise. So I'm 

not the best person to talk about shore 

fishing with any measure of authority, and 

certainly not shore fishing for turbot. 

Magilligan Strand Northern Ireland 

That said, I do have shore caught turbot 

experiences and observations to draw on 

which might be worth throwing into the pot. 

Shore venues I've seen turbot come from 

include the surf beaches of north Cornwall 

in the Newquay area and south Cornwall 

such as Whitsands Bay. Also over in 

Northern Ireland along Magilligan Strand, 

plus some of the surf bass beaches in the 

south and west of Ireland. 

The linking theme from the shore obviously is surf beaches, along with the summer and autumn months. 

Moreover, open Atlantic influenced surf beaches if possible, as in the case certainly of the Newquay 

area where sandeels come right in close and bury themselves. 

I also know for a fact that clean ground areas which can be reached from rock platforms, particularly 

along Cornwall and Devon's north coast can also turn up a few. 

In all cases, certainly from my experience, these have tended to be small fish, generally around a pound 

or so going up to maybe three pounds maximum. Obviously, as with any fish species, bigger specimens 

do occasionally also put in a show, but not often. 

Generally as their size increases, so too does the turbots tendency to move further offshore, with the 

biggest fish most likely to come from where the biggest concentrations of food can be found such as 

those offshore banks, though let's not forget the sand build ups around wrecks that have settled out over 

clean ground. 

As an anchored boat starts to swing off a wreck when the tide picks up dragging conger baits alongside 

the iron work, that's when some of the biggest turbot of them all can end up getting caught. 

BRILL Scophthalmus rhombus 


Brill settle out on the seabed on the right side of their body with their eyes and pigmentation on their 

left side. In other words, if the head end is on your right when looking from above, the eyes of the fish 

159

will be below the mouth. The same is true of the turbot which is really the only other fish with which 

brill might be confused. 

Both have wide rounded body 

shapes, though that of the brill is 

noticeably less wide than the 

turbot, which is helpful if you 

have both at hand to compare, but 

pretty meaningless for just one 

isolated fish. No problem though, 

as nature comes to the rescue in 

other ways. 

The upper surface of the turbot is 

covered in small, well-spaced, 

hard 'warts' known as tubercles. 

These may not be immediately 

picked up by the eye, but are 

readily detected by the hand. Brill have no such 'warts' and will feel completely smooth. 

For completeness, the first few dorsal rays at the head end are partly free of their connecting membranes 

and branched, and there are no patterned markings on the tail. 

Colouration is variable according to habitat, with anything from quite a drab brown to beautifully 

mottled brown and yellow with a scattering of small white flecks. Much of my experience is with the 

latter which can make them very pleasing fish to the eye. 

Never a common fish, and nothing like as abundant as its close relative the turbot, which these days 

unfortunately is itself becoming something of rarity or specialist catch, brill and turbot fishing is 

identical in all but the final outcome. 

Every brill I've either caught or seen caught has come on a day when we had turbot too. Never in 

isolation. Particularly around the Channel Islands where there are many offshore banks laden with 

sandeels, which turbot, brill and bass love in equal measure. But they won't be there hunting for them 

in equal measure, with bass the most abundant of the trio and brill the least. 

All my personal brill encounters have been around Jersey, Guernsey and Aldernay, drifting the banks 

with a long flowing trace of maybe twelve feet of thirty pounds bs monofilament with a 4/0 hook, a live 

sandeel, and a watch lead to take it down. It doesn't have to be a watch lead, but there are some pretty 

compelling arguments as to which it should be. 

For those unfamiliar with the watch lead, this is a circular lead like a polo mint with studs on it. The 

reason why it brings something to the bank fishing, whether it be for bass, turbot or brill, especially on 

a crowded charter boat, is that it helps prevent tangles. But to do so most effectively, it needs everyone 

to be using them. 

Bank geography is the underlying problem here, with numerous slopes, scour holes, and gullies sculpted 

by the tide. Bomb leads are more subject to gravity than a watch lead and can roll sideways into other 

peoples gear. Watch leads can also move down a side slope, but do so much more slowly by virtue of 

lying flat on the bottom. 

Whatever your ultimate lead choice, make sure it's big enough to keep the bait down, and avoid the 

round ball leads you might see some bank anglers using if you want to stay out of trouble. 

160

161 

And if you are not holding your rod all 

the time, then tether it to the rails or risk 

losing it, as the sudden weight of a fish 

stopping the trailing end gear in its 

tracks can only have one outcome, 

which I've witnessed on a number of 

occasions over the years. 

The Channel Islands are probably the 

best populated home of the brill, but they 

are far from the only one. Anywhere that 

produces turbot, and there are a good 

many offshore banks around numerous 

charter boat locations throughout 

Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, not to 

mention dotted around the Isle of Wight, 

has the potential to throw up an odd brill, 

which while it might be done reasonably 

regularly, shouldn't be expected on a 

daily basis. 

It might take several or even more trips 

to track one down, or you might get 

lucky and connect with one on your very 

first drop. Angling can be like that. Just 

Dougal Lane, Guernsey 

keep the faith, which is to fish with the 

best approach and bait possible, which 

I've already outlined, and be prepared if necessary to invest the time. 

But don't ever be surprised to hear of or to see brill caught in other ways that are not supposedly 

conducive to catching them, or from areas where they are not necessarily expected to be, such as on a 

static bait fished from a short trace at anchor out over fairly featureless shallow lying clean ground. It 

occasionally happens. 

As a rough guide, what you do tend to find with brill is that the further north you travel the scarcer and 

smaller they seem to become. There is however one very glaring exception to this hypothesis, that being 

the British record standing at sixteen pounds caught way back in 1950 out from the Isle of Man. 

Knowing the area with its many banks and sand-waves I shouldn't be surprised. But I am surprised in a 

way, because apart from lots of sandeels, which you would think must attract larger predators, in my 

experience, these banks seem to attract little else. 

Great as a one shop stop for feathering bait, but then neglected as that bait is taken back inshore to use 

for pollack. So something of an angling enigma at times. 

Looking at the record lists, other venues that have produced boat caught brill include Northern Ireland's 

Causeway Coast which I've fished with long mackerel belly strips on the drift over the Causeway Bank 

out from Portrush for Turbot; Pembroke on the Welsh scene, and Girvan north of the border. 

From the shore it's Guernsey again, so no surprise there; Holyhead, which has plenty of tide and a few 

bits of banks, plus Killintrinnan on Scotland's Mull of Galloway, which is a noted flatfish area, 

particularly for plaice all the way from Corsewall down through Dally Bay to Portpatrick. So again, not 

that surprising. What was surprising to me has been a couple of encounters with brill I've made on my 

local patch along Lancashire's Fylde Coast.

Not rod and line encounters unfortunately. I've only ever heard of one rod caught specimen up here, 

which given the very rough or flat featureless nature of the ground, that isn't surprising. But, as I said 

earlier, an odd one can turn up anywhere, which is what I've seen happen over the years when I've been 

push netting shrimps for bait. 

Generally, small palm of your hand sized fish at best, but obviously with a bigger parent stock 

somewhere out there. And one day we 'kind of' found out where that somewhere was. 

I was out aboard the Fleetwood trawler 'Biddy' collecting research specimens with Ben Bee who was 

catching flounders for pot bait, which while they barely covered the cost of the diesel, meant he didn't 

have to stay at home on his own. 

Unfortunately, this particular day even that was hard going. So Ben decided to make a tow across from 

Lune Buoy to the south end of Walney, which when he hauled, dropped almost twenty nice brill between 

maybe five and ten pounds on the deck, plus a lone turbot. To say that he was gob smacked would be 

no under-statement. The big unanswered question is, where on the transit line did those fish come from, 

which when you tow for between three and four hours you can never truly know. 

So rod and line brill fishing is the same as turbot fishing, 

which while this is true, it can't be entirely true, as 

having two almost identical species living identical 

lifestyles at the same location is not allowed under the 

rules of evolution. Either there will be some difference, 

however small, or one will eventually out compete the 

other and displace it. 

Obviously then, as we still have both species, there must 

be differences with some degree of overlap, which in 

angling terms seems to be deep water offshore banks 

with plenty of sandeels, and equally plenty of tide. 

Away from the banks over more general ground, 

identifying just exactly what the attracting features are 

is another matter, because not that many brill are taken 

from open ground these days, commercial netters 

having presumably swept most of them up. 

Phill Williams PB Brill, Jersey 

One stand out fact and difference is that brill appear to 

be more southerly and offshore in their distribution than 

turbot. Equally, it could also have something to do with 

substrate preference, with brill preferring finer 

particulates such as sand or mud, as opposed to turbot 

which are happier with coarse sand, shell grit, and even 

gravel, with the presence of rich pickings out over some 

banks sufficient to override any natural preferences. 

On the other hand, it could just be that brill are nothing like as common as turbot, with all the 

aforementioned other factors also having some measure of a role to play. Even rarer are brill from the 

shore from where no one would should realistically think of targeting the species. 

162

MEGRIM Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis 


Another of those flatfish to have 

settled out on the seabed on the 

right side of its body with the eyes 

and pigmentation on the left side. 

Again, with the megrim's head 

pointing to your right, the eyes 

will be below the mouth. 

even then it prefers west facing open Atlantic coasts. 

And what a size of mouth it is 

compared to the size of its owner, 

designed to make short work of 

any small fish that might happen 

to stray within range. Having 

large eyes also gives some clue to 

its deep water preference, where 

In shape it is nothing like as wide bodied as either the turbot or even the brill. In fact, the body is 

noticeably quite narrow and oval, with the dorsal fin almost reaching to the end of the snout. Colouration 

varies from yellowish to pale brown, with a scattering of indistinct small dark flecks. 

In life the fish looks semi-transparent when held up and viewed against the light, but when dead, it can 

quickly appear scruffy looking as the fins soon become ragged and tattered and the scales are dislodged. 

None the less, still one of the finest eating fish in the sea. 

Megrim are never going to be easy fish to catch, mainly on account of their life style as a highly 

predatory deep water species which doesn't often stray within angling range. Even if it did, given the 

way most people tend to fish over clean open ground, I'm not sure how much of a difference being a bit 

more available would make anyway. 

The approach we use for turbot and brill over offshore banks of trailing a live sandeel or fish strip along 

the bottom on a long trace might help improve catch rates. But that isn't how we normally fish over 

deep lying open clean ground. 

In a lot of instances, we tend not even to fish at the bottom at all as this is blue shark territory, which is 

why I like to get baits down there when waiting for a shark run to come along. 

Megrim will take a mackerel strip trundling past the end of its nose, but are just as inclined, if not more 

so, to grab at a small pirk, jigged baited feathers, or even a small jigged shad, which in part explains 

their angling scarcity. 

They are active predators of small fish. But really, it's the water depth being fished that is the main 

limiting factor here. Having even deeper water close by also helps improve the odds, all of which 

restricts the number of genuine opportunities available. 

You occasionally hear of an odd one caught closer to shore, and even from the shore, such as from some 

of the deeper water rock marks. These however are the exception rather than the rule. Gairloch in 

western Scotland and Holyhead, both of which have deep water close by, have been known to throw up 

the odd one. 

Like everyone else, my experiences with megrim, particularly on rod and line, are extremely limited. I 

remember us once getting one out off Northern Ireland's Causeway coast which very much fits the 

163

distributional criteria. Anglers also pick them up 

occasionally in deep water off the south and west 

coast of Ireland. 

There are however places where Irish megrim 

can 'almost' be caught to order, such as to the 

seaward side of the island of Inishbofin off the 

Connemara coast, at Broad Haven to the north of 

Belmullet, and aboard 'Rosguill' out of Mulroy 

Bay near Downings, where Michael McVeigh's 

customers find quite a few. 

Megrim, Downings Ireland 

The location where I personally have seen most, 

and I'm talking here of a couple of dozen or so in 

the same day, was while trawling within just a 

few miles of the Isles of Scilly where we also 

picked up a number of other deep water species 

including hake and boar fish, and not too far 

from that spot where on a different occasion we 

caught quite a few blue whiting on baited 

feathers. 

So a proven deep water species area fitting all the criteria of depth within range over clean ground, with 

exceptionally deep open Atlantic water in the immediate vicinity. 

COMMON TOPKNOT Zeugopterus punctatus 


As flatfishes go, the topknot is 

something of a misnomer. With a 

body shape which on the face of 

things looks best suited to clean 

ground, this particular flatfish 

species prefers to live amongst 

rocks and under boulders in 

shallow areas of permanent water 

where it feeds on small fishes and 

anything else it can catch. 

Topknot may well reasonably 

regularly take a bait. Perhaps more 

so than anglers realize, for it is both 

able and willing to flex its body to 

grip around boulders and even get 

underneath them, which could 

understandably lead to thoughts of a tackle hang up followed by a break out. 

Never a big fish, with say a pound maximum being its upper size limit. Also a strikingly odd looking 

fish, which should help make identification a formality. The mouth and eyes are large and the body 

shape deeply elliptical. The dorsal fin extends onto the head almost to the lip, and both it and the anal 

fin under lap the tail, with the anal and pelvic fins being fused together by a connecting membrane. 

164

Colouration is brown with some darker mottling, an even darker blotch in the centre of the body, and 

dark bars radiating outwards from each eye. The upper pigmented side of the body feels distinctly rough 

due to this fishes ctenoid (toothed edged) scales, and like the turbot, brill and megrim, with its head 

facing to your right, the eyes will be below the mouth. 

Though never common, probably not as rare a fish as sightings and angling catches might suggest. 

Anywhere where the bottom is suitably bouldery offering recesses to slide either between or under is a 

potential holding area. 

With catches reported from Peterhead right up on Scotland's north east coast all the way through to the 

Channel Islands, one could turn up anywhere, though it's more likely to be along the western side of the 

country, and around all of Ireland. 

Personally, I've only come across them on a handful of occasions. The first time was when a young lad 

of about eight years old fishing down the side of the wall in Portrush harbour brought one up, and the 

second by somebody fishing in St. Peterport Harbour. 

It was also around Guernsey at low water on some of the bigger tides that we would find an odd one 

while turning over boulders looking for bait. A very strange life style for an equally strange looking 

little fish. 

All of that said, amazingly, the topknot pictured here was taken on a soft lure fished out over a wreck 

out in Liverpool Bay aboard Kev McKies Liverpool based boat 'Brigand'. So it just goes to show that 

whatever the supposed knowledge has to say about fish, you should always be prepared to expect the 

unexpected, which in part is why fishing is such a captivating pursuit. 

SOLE Solea solea 


Not directly related to either of the previous two flatfish families Pleuronectidae (plaice, dab etc.) or 

Bothidae (turbot, brill etc.), as well as being a species in its own right, the term sole also refers to a 

family of similar looking fishes, a couple more of which could very easily turn up in home waters. 

165

On the other hand, as sole are not that regularly caught on rod and line for reasons to be explained, 

perhaps the chances of one of the others putting in a show might not be that great after all. Time will 

tell. Otherwise, a long narrow bodied fish, which like the plaice and dab lies on the left side of its body, 

having a rough almost dry feel to its skin when rubbed against the grain from tail to head. 

The dorsal fin actually runs onto the head almost reaching the snout which is blunt and round, with a 

tiny curved mouth set into it. Colouration is a deep greyish brown with darker blotches which tend to 

fade after death, plus a conspicuous dark spot on the upper side pectoral fin. 

Despite being widespread and common, sole are not a fish most anglers are ever going to catch, simply 

because most people don't fish for them. Putting baits in the water where sole are known to hang out 

just simply isn't enough. 

There will always be the odd accidental encounter. In fact I had one myself very recently. The first sole 

I've caught while dinghy fishing on my local patch in over forty years of catching other small flatfish 

there. So if you want them then you need to deliberately fish for them, and frankly, you stand a much 

better chance of doing that successfully from the shore. 

Much of this has to do with the type of places where sole like to hang out and feed, which are often so 

close in as to make boat fishing more trouble than it's worth, though casting back to the shore from a 

kayak might be worth a go. 

By day, sole tend to bury themselves in the bottom sediments showing little interest in food. You will 

get exceptions to every rule like that one I had in bright sunny conditions off Cleveleys in 2014. But 

look at the hundreds of hours of fishing time I've also put in there which didn't produce a sole. 

Nocturnal feeding then is the first point to take onboard. The second is terminal presentation. Offerings 

must be very firmly pinned to the bottom, which means short droppers and a good grip lead. 

Baits must also be manageable, both in terms of size and the hooks they are presented on. Hooks in the 

size four to six range stand the best chance, with a nice portion of worm threaded up over the shank on 

to the snood. Forget bling. At night this counts for nothing. 

The final point here is don't over cast. A short thirty to forty yard lob is all it takes, which is probably 

easiest done with a fixed spool reel. Patience is the one big remaining ingredient, both for the bites, and 

when reacting to them when they do come along. 

Sole have small mouths and are slow methodical feeders, so don't be in any great hurry to set the hook. 

Give a bite time to develop properly to be sure the hook is well inside the fish’s mouth before attempting 

to drive the point home. 

Sole are potentially found all around the British Isles, which isn't the same as saying they can be caught 

all around the British Isles. Potential is one thing. You have to seek out and identify sole territory to be 

in with a genuine shot. 

Using my own patch up here in the north west as a working example, the River Mersey turns up a few, 

often at the base of the walls. But I would be more inclined to fish the outer beaches say from Crosby 

through to Ainsdale, which is a shallow fine sandy area sandwiched between the Mersey and the Ribble 

Estuaries. There I've seen literally dozens of soles come up in the shrimp trawls towed by the shankers, 

who drive tractors or purpose built wagons in to a few feet of water to work their nets. 

The Thames estuary, the Humber, and the upper Bristol Channel all typify good sole country. But I 

have to say that when it comes to widespread consistency, the south coast from the Isle of Wight 

eastwards through Sussex on into Kent offers some of the very best and most consistent opportunities. 

Particularly when fishing from sandy or shingle beaches after dark, grabbing the last couple of hours of 

the flooding tide in calm settled conditions any time between May and November. 

166

Dan Burrows, Fleetwood 

Because of my small boat fishing inclinations, I don't 

often get to deliberately fish for Sole. But sometimes 

it happens when I'm away somewhere on holiday, or 

when I get an invite to give it a go at a location I'm not 

otherwise familiar with. 

That's how I got my first ever sole from the shore. A 

friend of mine, Brian Needs from Romsey, who digs 

bait for a living along the Solent, set up a sole session 

one calm July evening. 

I'm not saying exactly where it was because in all 

honesty I don't know. He picked me up just before 

dark and drove me down some God forsaken track, 

after which we abandoned the car and headed off on 

foot. I remember crossing a golf course where there 

were fire flies all over the place, eventually ending up 

on top of a shingle bank over-looking the shore. 

Coming from Lancashire where the distance between 

high and low water can be vast, I remember thinking 

how weird it was that the tide hardly moved in or out. 

Obviously, as Brian digs predominately ragworms 

for a living, that's what we had for bait. 

The rigs were pretty much as described earlier with 

small hooks on short droppers lobbed out a short distance in front of us for a couple of hours up to 

around midnight, and bingo. We finished up with half a dozen soles. It could even have been more. A 

clear example of targeting and succeeding, which for this particular fish is without doubt what it takes. 

THE BASSES 

Many people, experienced anglers amongst them, will be surprised to hear that the bass is in fact the 

named head figure of a family of species occurring in our corner of northern Europe, and not simply an 

individual fish which seemingly everyone except for politicians regularly gets hot under the collar 

about. 

There are in fact three other family members in the home waters record lists, with a fourth, the speckled 

bass Dicentrarchus punctatus known to have been caught in UK waters but not claimed, plus at least 

one American striped bass which somehow managed to cross the Atlantic only to end up taking an 

anglers bait off Dover in Kent. 

I have actually caught speckled bass around Gibraltar on float fished bread intended for mullet, and 

expect to hear more about them around the Channel Islands and along the south coast over the coming 

years. 

As for the others, comber and wreckfish have been caught on quite a number of occasions, with 

wreckfish often forming huge shoals, particularly along open oceanic coasts, where when located they 

can be caught in their dozens. Conversely, the dusky perch is recorded on rod and line at our latitude 

just the once. 

167

BASS Dicentrarchus labrax 


In my opinion, one of the major reasons why the bass is such an iconic species with anglers is its 

physical appearance. Looking every inch the sleek, fast moving predator it is, you cannot fail to be 

impressed by its silvery metallic, rough, large scaled body armour, the spiny first dorsal fin which is 

separate from the second dorsal fin, and its huge power generating tail. 

A fish which requires great care in the handling if it's not to draw blood using these and other anglerunfriendly 

features too, particularly around the head and gill cover, with its sharp serrated edges. 

In terms of colour, washed over the metallic silver which underpins everything here, the back can be 

quite dark, varying in individual fish from almost black through to greyish blue, which quickly fades or 

merges into the silver above the lateral line. 

On the head this will often extend down around the eye and follow the outline of both the pre-operculum 

and operculum (first and second gill cover), sometimes forming a spot or blotch on the gill cover edge. 

There can also be a hint of yellow on the otherwise white underparts. 

In terms of tactical approach, the bass is without equal in being arguably the most versatile fish in our 

home waters, which very likely lies at the heart of its being described as 'the anglers fish'. A quarry 

which in theory at least can be caught regardless of how you choose to fish. 

A definition which on the one hand has widened over recent times as fly fishing and new approaches to 

lure fishing have come in to play, while on the other, it has also narrowed, as population numbers have 

become so critically low that even the dinosaurial head burying fisheries ministers of the European 

Union are now seriously starting to look at taking last gasp protective action. 

168

Where there are still a few bass left, they can be caught on everything from plugs, surface poppers, 

shads, and soft plastics, through to crab from the shore when the major moults are under-way, 

lugworms, and live-baits further offshore. All have the potential to catch well on their day. But if I had 

to single out just one, particularly from the shore, it would have to be soft plastic lures. 

Not a technique I regularly use myself as I'm primarily a boat angler, more of which later. However, 

chatting to Irish bass guide John Quinlan with the voice recorder running really brought home the degree 

of difference these lures can make in a variety of shapes and colours, some with paddle tails and others 

not, but always fished with the hook tip buried inside the lure to avoid snags, and presented on a jig 

head or belly weighted for casting. 

Fished this way, this huge range of patterns offer the ability to safely fish the kinds of shallow, snaggy 

areas bass will frequent, but which were previously ruled out of bounds using other tactics. What's 

more, they can also be twitched back in so slowly as to be barely moving, persuading fish which may 

well not be feeding to hit them anyway. 

In terms of terrain preference, bass enter harbours and estuaries, move in close along surf beaches, 

frequent offshore banks and reefs, and will visit wrecks. In short, there isn't anywhere under the right 

conditions where they won't go, and as I've said, few baits, lures or tactics they can't be tempted by. 

So much so that it would take a complete book to work through everything useful there is to know on 

the subject of catching them, which is way beyond the scope of what I am I aiming to do here. 

That being the case, rather than deal with some baits or tactics while leaving out others, my only angling 

references will be to personal experiences, with the key piece of advice of not trying to be a generalist 

and soak up everything. 

Either choose a tactic that suits you, or allow local circumstances to dictate one for you, and initially at 

least, work on mastering that. And to help in that regard, there is a vast wealth of information already 

out there on each, including a number of audio 

interviews I have done with bass specialists on a 

wide range of topics, which as ever I will reference 

at the end of this discussion. 

The main thing these days is not to build your hopes 

up too high. This is a species in crisis. That said, the 

American striped bass was even further down the 

road to extinction not so long ago, and look at the 

situation there now. In a generation, they've turned 

it around into a world class recreational fishery. So 

with the will it can be done. 

Unfortunately, the American striped bass example, 

which while it has some home waters parallels, is 

very different to that facing the European bass. 

Similar in the fact that like the European Union, the 

USA has a federal system of states each making 

some of their own laws, but different in that the 

European federation is a collection of separate 

countries with different economies, electorates, and 

national identities, in which the largest and strongest 

member states, despite them saying otherwise, have 

a disproportionately bigger say in what happens. 

Mike Turner tagged Bass, Walney Island 

169

One thing the EU most certainly is not is a collection of equals, and therefore political bullying is rife, 

such as by the French not wanting the minimum size limit for bass to go up from thirty six cm, at which 

stage bass have yet to reproduce, to forty two cm when some of them might have replaced themselves, 

because believe it or not, a thirty six cm bass supposedly fits better on a dinner plate. 

Forget the science. It's house wife and restaurateur driven, which could very easily be satisfied by 

hatchery reared fish, were it not for the fact that there is a premium paid for wild fish, and more 

especially in posh nosh gaffs, for large wild fish, where customers prefer a bigger, meatier, bone-free 

lump on their plate. 

For these reasons and more, commercial exploitation is never going to go away until the economics of 

cost in pursuit of catching bass is out-weighed by the income they deliver. The law of diminishing 

returns. 

Adding further insult to injury here is the blame culture of finger pointing by the EU at anglers, holding 

us responsible for the bulk of the species decline by imposing a three fish per day bag limit from April 

2015. 

I have no problem at all with bag limits as part of a package of measures aimed at rehabilitating the 

species, providing they are universally applied. But to single out rod and line fishing is ludicrous. 

Like most anglers, I would not want to take three bass per trip anyway, and would be happy if I could 

occasionally catch three in a session these days. So in that sense it doesn't affect me, and I dare say 

many other anglers. Yet now incredibly, I find myself opposing bag limits, simply because of the 

implication they carry in terms of blame. 

Being a recreational fishing representative on the Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority (IFCA), as 

you might expect, I get bombarded by arguments and counter arguments on the current bass situation 

quite literally on a daily basis. It comes from being on so many interested parties block email lists. So 

I think to an extent I do have my finger on the pulse. 

Equally, I also have my own opinions, which I can say without fear of contradiction will ruffle a few 

feathers amongst the angling community. But before I give them, let me first say that they have been 

well thought through, so at least give them a fair hearing, even if you disagree. 

The first thing I want to say in connection with this is that I feel I have done as much as the next man 

to champion the cause of the bass, which is something I will continue to do, even though it invariably 

feels like swimming against the tide. 

At the time of first daft writing here, and flying in the face of all the scientific wisdom, bass could still 

legally be taken at thirty six cm in length, despite the fact that forty two cm probably represents a fish 

about to spawn for the first time, with forty five cm a more responsible figure to ensure all have done 

so at least once. 

To its credit, the Irish government has just announced a proposal for fifty cm. Yet despite the fact that 

the various regional IFCA's have the legal right to unilaterally change size limits, providing they are 

raised and not lowered, and let's face it, why would anyone with even half a brain want to lower them, 

still nothing is done. 

Certainly not by my regional IFCA, other than to complain about work loads, though by the time I was 

proof reading the final draft here, realising the species was now finally looking over the edge of the 

abyss, the EU through a majority vote, finally but reluctantly agreed to up the minimum size limit to 42 

cm. Not only that, this time it would apply to everybody. 

Meanwhile, in the face of dire warnings from the International Council for Exploitation of the Seas 

(ICES) in 2014 saying that unless there was an eighty percent reduction in bass landings to allow some 

170

ecruitment in the face of imminent stock collapse, having investigated the problem, the EU's technical 

committee for fisheries concluded that 25% of mortality was down to anglers which was the driver for 

the three fish recreational bag limit, then as previously mentioned, applied no penalties at all to those 

responsible for the other 75%, the commercial sector 

Prior to the 42 cm size limit 

coming in, I contacted my IFCA 

CEO requesting information on 

how to take the first steps on the 

long arduous road towards 

drafting a by-law proposal to 

protect bass within the North 

West IFCA's six mile coastal 

jurisdiction, which is sandwiched 

between the Scottish and Welsh 

borders. 

I knew in advance that when or if 

it was ever presented to the 

assembly for approval it would be 

defeated. But that didn't matter. 

Four double figure Bass, Guernsey 

At least it would put the topic 

onto the agenda, forcing the 

commercials to think about it, and hear another point of view before black balling the suggestion. 

I didn't even get the courtesy of a reply. So I personally approached the director of enforcement to sound 

him out with regard to a forty two cm minimum landing size; a two fish bag limit applicable to all as 

most of the commercially caught bass along the Lancashire Coast are rod caught, and for a slot limit 

where all big bass which have ducked and weaved their way through to proven spawning ability are put 

back, and he looked at me as if I was trying to steal the food from commercial fishermen's plates. 

The answer I received was that any suggestion of change would be vigorously and emphatically blocked 

every inch of the way, citing amongst other things, a lack of resources to enforce it. 

Putting the bag and slot limits aside, I politely pointed out that as his fishery officers were already 

legally obliged to enforce the thirty six cm minimum size limit, which it still was at the time, how much 

more man power would it take to stretch a tape measure out an additional eight cm. But I might as well 

have been talking to him in Latin. It was water off a ducks back. Well now at last we are going to find 

out. 

The obvious answer to man power deficiencies, and to the current plight of the bass, would be to make 

it a recreational species only, which in the current climate is never going to happen. Alternatively, exit 

the EU and reclaim control over our own legislative powers, because as it stands, despite claims to the 

contrary, the UK government continues to insist that its hands are tied. 

Ireland on the other hand, which is also a member of the European Union, has had a two fish bag limit 

for years; operates a minimum landing size in excess of what is required to allow all bass to spawn at 

least once, and has made fishing for the species recreational only, yet still retains its EU membership. 

In terms of catching bass, I've had mixed results over the years from a number of locations, both boat 

and shore, and using a wide variety of tactics and baits. Numerically speaking however, one specific 

type of mark, and two approaches to fishing it, have probably accounted for a good 90% of all my 

success. 

171

I love to fish on and around offshore banks. When I charter boat fish for bass, it's almost exclusively on 

the drift with live-baits, whereas from my own boat on our local patch, a good proportion of the fishing 

will be at anchor with lugworm. 

We do occasionally fish squid or dead sandeel, and we have in the past also fished with lures such as 

redgills and large hokkai's. But usually it's fresh black lugworm on a simple flowing trace. We've tried 

all sorts of other baits over the years with the results always bringing us back to the worm. 

The tide quite literally screams over these shallow bank tops, so a flowing trace that it able to gather up 

any loose weed hitting and being forced down the line it is a must. This leaves the bait clear as the weed 

gathers up at the lead, sometimes to the point that you can barely get it back in to clear it if you leave it 

out for too long. 

So it's no relaxing alternative to lure or live-bait fishing on the drift. In fact, it's very much a constantly 

hard working day, with bass in the small to middle range as a result. And when they hit with all that 

tide running through it will be both fast and hard. So hard in fact that we've had rods vanish over the 

stern without any prior warning, so these need to be tethered or held. 

What we did find was that circle hooks work well for these hard running high speed takes. Because of 

their ability not to deep hook or take hold until they actually start to exit the fish’s mouth at the scissor, 

fast moving fish have a greater tendency to hook themselves in a spot where disgorging is easy, all of 

which happens long before you've even had time to grab the rod and react. Their one big draw back is 

getting worms over that in-pointing hook tip. 

We also at times fish the exit and entrance points to narrow gullies between closely adjacent banks, 

which bass will often use as motorways for getting around the area rather than running the bank tops 

through the tide at peak flow, and these too can be quite productive at times. 

When it comes to charter boat fishing offshore 

banks, though I've done it in Wales, Devon, and 

Cornwall, the bulk of my experiences, and most 

certainly all my better fish have come from around 

the Channel Islands fishing out of St. Peterport on 

Guernsey. 

I've probably fished all the main banks around 

Guernsey, Aldernay, Sark and Jersey. Most of the 

time it has been with Dougal Lane fishing live 

sandeel on a long flying collar type rig with a watch 

lead to minimise lateral drifting and tangling other 

people’s lines. 

There was one occasion though when we got an 

invite to join a group of local anglers on a different 

boat, chartered specifically for a bass tagging 

project. This took us to within sight of Cherbourg, 

where numerous double figure fish were tagged and 

released. The average size of the many bass caught 

there must have been between seven and nine 

pounds, some of which were taken on small 

mackerel live- baits. 

Charlie Pitchers, Rossall 8 lbs 2 oz 

Typically, when fishing with Dougal Lane, we would see between forty and sixty bass per trip, also 

typically between seven and nine pounds, plus turbot, brill, and an occasional pollack. 

172

As ever, there was always the danger of a rod vanishing over the rails. So if you needed to take a leak 

or grab a bite to eat, rods needed to be tied down. Not so much because the takes were violent in the 

way described earlier when fishing at anchor with bait. More a case of the drifting boat putting distance 

between itself and a hooked fish, which when all the stretch had gone out of the monofilament line can 

only have one end result. 

This obviously would also set the hook when holding the rod, so no need to strike. The rod tip would 

gradually arch over and you are in business. 

So, easy fishing in many respects with some fantastic catch stats coming out of it all. But difficult at 

times too, particularly in less than favourable conditions, and especially when drifting on to the bank 

from deeper water where some of the rolling swells marking the edge would test even the hardiest 

constitution. 

Despite all that, being honest, as a predominantly boat angling enthusiast, bass have never played any 

sort of major role in my fishing over the years. Obviously, like everyone else, I like to catch them and 

will fish for them whenever I get the opportunity. 

Currently, due completely to the way they are managed, or more accurately mis-managed, for me, and 

I suspect many other people too if the truth be known, bass are a species which these days bring more 

disappointment than pleasure. For while they are held up as the iconic sea anglers fish, that's probably 

more symbolic than real, with the vast majority of boat and shore anglers spending a great deal more of 

their time and money fishing for, and most certainly catching, species other than bass. 

So if bass did, heaven forbid, ever completely vanish from our coastal waters, you have to ask the 

question, would anglers actually miss them as much as those beating the conservation drum on our 

behalf suggest would be the case. 

I suspect probably not. That's not a defeatist statement so much as a piece of hard to swallow truth based 

on the reality of the situation we currently find ourselves in as part of a centralised federal political 

system, the majority of which either doesn't have bass because they never did, or don't have them 

anymore because they've picked their own coastal waters clean. And now, in conjunction with our home 

grown commercial fleet, EU boats want to move in and do the same to our stocks, until economic as 

opposed to political or conservation arguments force them out of the game. 

To illustrate the depth of angler apathy outside of a vocal minority willing to plead their case at any and 

every opportunity, the rest of the angling world slowly stumbles along accepting of whatever does or 

increasingly doesn't come their way. 

Back in the 1980's I ran a very well publicised sponsored marathon with the proceeds going to bass 

conservation. Magazine readers were put in the picture as to the need for organised group action and 

finances to take the fight to those who could possibly do something about the situation, and I got a grand 

total of two sponsors. 

So when the commercial sector finally leaves the species alone, chances are there will not be a selfsustaining 

bass population left for the recreational sector, which probably won't mean jack shit to most 

people, as we are already on the road to becoming accustomed to not catching them anyway, with the 

promise of things like Light Rock Fishing (LRF), which is the art of stalking tiny pouting, wrasse and 

other insignificant species with no commercial value, looming as a replacement in the wings. 

Until then, the plunder continues until things get to the state of Canada's Grand Banks, where it was 

said that once you could walk across the water on the backs of cod, and now research vessels struggle 

to find even a single fish. 

173

Mick Duff, River Mersey 

What I'd like to do now, for 

reasons of historical record as 

much as anything else, is quote 

from a response to a report by the 

EU's Technical Committee for 

Fisheries, which was asked to 

look at the impact of different 

fisheries of bass based on 

surveys from various EU 

member countries, which as 

mentioned previously, 

concluded that recreational 

fishermen were responsible for 

approximately 25% of all bass 

mortality across the EU, 

including the Irish Sea, Celtic 

Sea, Bristol Channel, English 

Channel and North Sea. 

This was deemed to be 

significant enough to be included in an any measures necessary proposal to reduce total fishing mortality 

and increase the biomass towards the Common Fishery Policy objective of reaching Maximum 

Sustainable Yield (MSY). That response in the form of a list of questions and answers given below 

came from The Angling Trust, which is a self appointed body purporting to speak on behalf of 

anglers....... 

Are recreational catches really responsible for 25% of the catch. 

There is not enough robust scientific data to be able to prove or disprove this with any accuracy. 

Recreational catches are an estimate taken from surveys of recreational anglers carried out in France, 

the UK and the Netherlands. However, we can say that official catch data from commercial landings 

are notoriously understated with a combination of illegal unreported landings and legal landings sold 

directly from boats that are not recorded. 

The issue of understated commercial landings is well documented in various scientifically published 

documents and ‘true’ commercial landings may be double or treble official landings. Consequently, the 

proportion of fishing mortality attributable to recreational fishing is significantly less than the alleged 

25%. Once more accurate data on both true commercial landings and recreational fisheries becomes 

available we will seek to ensure that the impact of recreational fishing is reviewed. It is important to 

note that forty years ago, before commercial bass fishing had developed, bass were mainly a recreational 

species and recreational catches were responsible for most fishing mortality – but that this was perfectly 

sustainable. As commercial fishing for bass developed, the proportion of total fishing mortality 

attributable to recreational fishing has substantially declined. 

That recreational fisheries should play some part in any attempt at restoring bass stocks is not in 

question, but recreational anglers should not be accused of having significantly contributed to 

overfishing when compared to the exponential increase in commercial bass fishing over the last four 

decades. The problem is added to by those, intentionally and unintentionally, accusing recreational 

anglers of selling their catches when by definition recreational anglers do not sell their fish. These 

catches are being sold by unlicensed commercial rod and line fishermen. 

How will the bag limit be enforced. 

174

The EU is relying on existing enforcement at national level by Member States. In England this means 

enforcement of the bag limit will be carried out by the Inshore Fishery and Conservation Authorities 

(IFCA's) from the shore out to six nautical miles. Beyond six miles enforcement will be carried out by 

the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). In the UK it is currently legal to sell fish caught from 

the shore or from un-powered vessels where no license is available. There are therefore potential 

enforcement issues around whether bass retained above the three-fish-per-day limit can be proven to 

have been caught commercially and are therefore legally retainable. We have raised this issue with 

DEFRA and await a response. 

Who does the bag limit apply to. 

Recreational fisheries are defined by this legislation as “non-commercial fishing activities exploiting 

marine living aquatic resources such as for recreation, tourism or sport”. The bag limit applies to all 

recreational catches, from the shore and from boats, using rod and line, nets, spearguns or other fishing 

gears where the catch is retained for personal consumption and not sold. 

Is it permanent. 

The bag limit has been introduced through an amendment to the 2015 TAC and quota regulations which 

set fishing opportunities for the year ahead. These are usually agreed by the Council of Ministers in 

December and expire on December 31st the following year. The bag limit will therefore have to be reagreed 

and included in the TAC and quota regulations for 2016 unless another, perhaps more 

appropriate, piece of legislation can be found to maintain it. 

Does the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) apply to recreational fishing. 

The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy in 2013 was very careful to exclude reference to 

recreational fisheries apart from one reference where, 

“Recreational fisheries can have a significant impact on fish resources and Member States should, 

therefore, ensure that they are conducted in a manner that is compatible with the objectives of the CFP”. 

The CFP also gives the Commission general powers to address any kind of negative impact on a stock, 

be it overfishing, pollution, predation or other. On this basis, the European Commission took legal 

advice and was confident that it had the authority to introduce measures to reduce fishing mortality 

from recreational fishing. 

What about other measures for commercial fishing. 

In January the UK, following pressure from anglers, was successful in getting the EU to agree to the 

use of emergency measures closing the Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel, English Channel and 

southern North Sea to pelagic trawling (including the use of ‘pair’ trawls) from January 2015 to April 

30th 2015. This was due to a threat to the reproductive capacity of the stock as pelagic trawlers at this 

time of year actively target aggregating, spawning adult bass and are responsible for approximately 

30% of total fishing mortality for bass. This was the first time Article 12 of the reformed Common 

Fisheries Policy had been used and only the fifth or sixth time emergency measures have ever been used 

by the EU. 

The closure of the pelagic fishery was a very big step to take but came on the condition that 

proportionate measures would also apply to other fisheries in a non-discriminatory way. These other 

fisheries included recreational and ‘mixed’ fisheries. Member States were able to agree on a bag limit 

for recreational fisheries more easily than on measures for the other commercial or ‘mixed’ fisheries 

where a main concern was that discards might increase as a consequence of new management measures 

for commercial fisheries. 

175

Informal proposals then came to light suggesting monthly vessel limits for commercial fisheries and 

the possibility of a new minimum legal size of forty two cm for recreational fishing only. The Angling 

Trust lobbied hard with arguments for any new MLS to apply to all fisheries and argued that the 

proposals put forward for catch limits would leave up to 90% of the UK’s inshore fleet untouched by 

restrictions, despite contributing the most to fishing mortality out of any of the UK’s bass fisheries. 

The Angling Trust, BASS, and members of the European Anglers Alliance met for a second time with 

the Commission in Brussels to discuss the proposals being put forward for the mixed fisheries. We were 

subsequently successful in submitting evidence from the UK showing that many more of the UK’s bass 

fisheries were actually targeted fisheries and should therefore be subject to controls on bass fishing 

without increasing discards. 

As a result of this, and due to more evidence that has come to light, the proposals for restrictions on 

other commercial fisheries are now expected to be: 

Monthly vessel limits by fishing method (weights to be confirmed) 

A new MLS of 42 cm for all fisheries (including recreational catches). 

Seasonal closures to be determined by fishing method. 

These will be introduced through a combination of amendments to the 2015 TAC and quota regulation 

and the use of Article 45 of the technical conservation regulation 850/98 which allows the Commission 

to use its implementing powers to take immediate action – something the Angling Trust and partners 

have been calling on the Commission to do since discussions began at the start of the year. 

If agreed, this will be a very significant shift towards the package of measures being more balanced and 

the commercial fishing sector playing a more balanced role in reducing total bass fishing mortality. We 

are pushing for these measures to be implemented at the earliest opportunity and consider that we have 

had a significant amount of influence over making sure that commercial fisheries take more 

responsibility for restoring the stock. 

Why was the bag limit introduced before measures for other commercial fisheries were known. 

As previously mentioned, agreement was reached by the EU Council on a three fish bag limit for 

recreational catches quite early on. Agreement on measures for ‘mixed’ commercial fisheries has been 

much more difficult. The Angling Trust, supported by the government, called on the introduction of the 

bag limit to be postponed until the measures for other commercial fisheries were known, in order for us 

to judge whether the package of measures was balanced. However, there was intense political pressure 

on the UK, having instigated the emergency measures which closed the pelagic fishery, not to delay the 

introduction of further measures to support it. As a result the bag limit was introduced as an ‘in year’ 

amendment, along with amendments to other fisheries, of the 2015 TAC and Quota regulations. 

What happens next year. 

The use of emergency measures for a second time should not be ruled out. However, they will be 

difficult to justify given that the situation is known and therefore should not constitute an emergency. 

The status of bass will decline in 2015 and the pelagic fishery will still pose a threat to the reproductive 

capacity of the stock. If emergency measures are not used the Commission and Member States will 

have to explore other avenues to maintain the closure. The Angling Trust has called on the Government 

to make sure the closure becomes permanent so that this unsustainable fishery is not allowed to reopen. 

Other measures introduced using the TAC and quota regulations will need to be re-agreed annually. 

Other measures which are amendments to the EU technical conservation regulation will be open ended 

and roll-over into 2016. 

Will these measures be enough to restore Bass. 

176

The total reduction in fishing mortality that the three elements of the 2015 measures will deliver is 

unclear due to proposals for a new MKS and seasonal closures which are yet to be calculated. However, 

it is clear that the reduction will be nowhere near the 80% reduction in landings advised by ICES or the 

60% reduction in fishing mortality needed to reach MAY. ICES issues its advice for 2016 in the summer 

which will provide an update on the status of the stock and advice on landings. We are seeking 

commitment from the government for it to follow the scientific advice in full when it is published. 

Why three fish. 

The Commission’s original proposal to be adopted at the Council’s December meeting was for one fish 

per-person-per-day. This was rejected by the Council. The Angling Trust and European Anglers 

Alliance had argued against a one fish bag limit (and against compulsory catch and release) for a long 

time. This has been communicated to the EU in various ways including meeting with Commission 

representatives in Brussels last year and in February this year to explain, among other things, why a one 

or zero fish bag limit would be unfair on anglers and would have a damaging impact on the jobs and 

businesses reliant on recreational bass angling. 

This position was supported by other angling organisations across the EU. Member States listened to 

our arguments and finally it was agreed to amend the proposal and increase the bag limit from one to 

three fish per day which, if complemented by proportionate controls on commercial fishing, would be 

more balanced as well as contributing to recreational anglers reducing their impact on bass stocks. This 

bag limit also discourages illegal sales of bass from unlicensed commercial fishermen claiming to be 

fishing recreationally. 

Is there a long term plan. 

Not yet, but there is commitment to develop a long term management plan (also known as multi-annual 

plan) for bass. However, proposals for this are not expected to be made until 2017 and will take 

approximately two years to be agreed through co-decision between the European Council, Commission 

and the European Parliament (which adopted a resolution on bass earlier this month which included a 

request to the Commission to bring forward the development of a multi-annual plan). 

Will the discard ban apply to Bass. 

Yes, but not immediately. Timings are unclear but we expect discards of bass to be banned over coming 

years. This will have implications for minimum landing sizes and minimum conservation reference 

sizes which have replaced the MKS for quota species since the CAP was reformed. It is therefore very 

important in our opinion that commercial fishers change to more selective gears and practises now and 

not after the discard ban takes effect. That will secure a smooth transition to a sustainable bass fishery 

with little or no discards. 

Did the angling trust support the introduction of a bag limit. 

Not as a stand-alone measure and certainly not the one-fish-per-angler bag limit initially proposed by 

the EU. However, in the course of researching how other bass fisheries are successfully managed we 

looked at other parts of the world, such as in Ireland and in the United States. It was clear from these 

two examples that bag limits can play an important role, and be supported by recreational anglers, in 

these fisheries where bag limits are used in conjunction with restrictions on commercial fisheries. 

We have always told government that bag limits would be unjust if they were not accompanied by 

measures to cut back significantly on fishing mortality from commercial fisheries where fishing effort 

has been allowed to increase unchecked and which are responsible for the vast majority of landings. 

During the course of discussions with the EU Commission and the UK Government we argued that a 

higher minimum landing size (MKS) would be a better alternative measure to reduce fishing mortality 

from recreational catches because it would be fairer and more balanced because it would apply to all, 

177

and because compliance would be higher due to many anglers already adhering to legal size limits or 

their own limits which often exceed those set legally. It also would protect immature fish and secure 

that more bass reach spawning size before being captured (no female bass spawn at the present MKS 

36 cm). 

So, make what you will of that. As for me, while there aren't many compensations for growing old and 

not having the same number of years left on the clock as younger anglers, one definite plus is the 

satisfaction of knowing that at least I fished at a time when we had the best of it. A time which sadly is 

now long gone, possibly never to return. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 59, 73, 74, 142, 168, 169, 190, 195 and 200. 

COMBER Serranus cabrilla 


Comber are quite small but strikingly colourful relatives of the bass, and as such are one of those fish 

which again, if you don't know what it is, begs to be identified. In general layout it is not unlike the 

other `grouper' shaped members of the family, having quite a thick set body with a spiny first and softer 

second dorsal fin which are joined. 

Its colouration and markings are what most catch the eye. The base colour is usually a rusty brown with 

several darker vertical bars and two or three bluish longitudinal stripes starting on the head close to the 

eye, extending along the length of the body over the mid to lower flank region. 

Said to be more or less at their regular northerly limit over the reefs of the western English Channel, 

larval counts from plankton samples in that area suggest it to be quite a scarce fish at our latitude, 

something angling catches also tend to support, though numbers on reefs such as the Eddystone could 

be swelled in favourable years by immigration from more established populations a little further to the 

178

south, as it is a common enough fish throughout the Bay Biscay, and exceedingly abundant around 

mainland Atlantic European into the Mediterranean. 

If not by name, then certainly by sight, comber will be a reasonably familiar fish to many of those 

holiday making Brits who pack a telescopic rod for visits to the Mediterranean or Canary Islands. Not 

so much on the insides of harbours or around shallower rock marks. But along the seaward side of rock 

based harbour walls where there is deeper water, and more especially, over heavy ground while out in 

boats, comber will be a fairly regular catch. 

They should also be an obvious catch, taking a wide variety of baits including worms and prawns, 

though more usually for holiday anglers, calamari squid or raw prawns cadged for the hotel kitchen. 

However, that's not how we used to catch them up here in home waters. Though we never saw many, 

and I personally didn't catch one, our group would pick up odd ones here and there, and of a fairly 

decent size it has to be said, on small strips of mackerel out from Looe over the Eddystone and some of 

its surrounding reefs. 

And we it seems weren't alone in that. Occasional reports in the press suggested that others all along 

that stretch of the south Devon and Cornwall coast were occasionally also doing the same. 

Then the reports stopped coming in. Whether that was because the fish also stopped coming, or news 

editors no longer saw the value in reporting them is difficult to know. 

What I would say is that in the current climate, that being the appropriate word here, with sea 

temperatures rising and comber being fish of a more southerly warmer water persuasion, I would be 

most surprised if a few were not still out there for the taking. 

WRECKFISH Polyprion americanus 


This is a thick set fish with a large 

mouth and very noticeable 

protruding lower jaw, plus a 

particularly spiky looking first 

dorsal fin which runs on into the 

taller softer second dorsal fin, and 

as with the anal fin, is set on top of 

what looks like a raised fleshy 

hump, which like the rest of the 

body and the head is covered in 

small scales. 

The first long thick sharp spine of 

the pelvic fins has a rough serrated 

edge, as has the pre-operculum or 

first gill cover and the lower edge of the operculum or main gill cover, both of which also carry some 

sharp spines. 

Colouration is usually dark brown, lightening a little on the lower flanks and becoming more yellowish 

underneath. Immature fish may show signs of lighter and darker flecking on the back and sides. The 

edge of the rounded tail has a lighter banding than its base colour. 

179

Also known as the stone bass, the wreckfish is an open oceanic species making it a most unlikely catch 

on rod and line. On the other hand, when it is found, it can be encountered in vast numbers. 

The larger fish, which can weight anything up to a hundred pounds, are bottom feeders in very deep 

water ranging between fifty and a hundred fathoms, occasionally down to five hundred fathoms, with a 

regular distribution taking in the Bay of Biscay, all of the English Channel, and the British Isles as far 

north as south-west Ireland. 

Distribution becomes more erratic beyond that area, though it can extend as far north as Faroe on into 

the northern North Sea, sometimes even as far as the Norwegian coast. 

Usually it's the smaller fish up to perhaps ten pounds that are caught within home waters angling range, 

having strayed close enough in for boats either to find them or to pick them up accidentally. 

Though they seem to run in cycles, some years ago, chance encounters were not that uncommon around 

southern and western parts of Ireland. 

Odd specimens were also picked up here and there along the English Channel coast. Then every so 

often an angling party would get lucky and catch them literally by the boat full. 

This happens because the smaller fish show a tendency to gather around pieces of floating wreckage or 

weed drifting closer to shore, which is undoubtedly the origin of their name. 

Angling boats simply stumble into large shoals, sometimes at the surface, as has happened with parties 

going well off to the wrecks from Plymouth, where it's every egg a bird. Then nothing for ages 

afterwards. 

DUSKY PERCH Epinephelus marginatus 


Not a species likely to cause much 

confusion. Quite a heavily built 

thick set fish with joined spiny 

and soft first and second dorsal 

fins, the first part of which can 

have an orange tint. 

Basic body colouration is 

invariably deep chocolate brown 

becoming more yellowish on the 

underparts, with markings present 

in the form of pale brown to green 

flecks, and possibly some 

mottling, which is most prominent 

on top of the head and along the 

upper back. 

Dusky Perch, Fuerteventura 

These marks tend to reduce in 

size and regularity lower down the body, though they may well show as clearly defined lines of spots 

radiating outwards over the gill cover from the eye. 

180

A fish with a large mouth and powerful teeth used to deal with molluscs, crustaceans, and some smaller 

fishes. Rather confusingly, a fish also described in various publications under the scientific names of 

Serranus gigas and Epinephelus gigas. 

Of academic interest perhaps, but important when you consider that this is an extremely rare fish at 

northern latitudes, and a most unlikely migrant in view of its poor swimming abilities, fiercely territorial 

lifestyle, and the fact that because it will stand its ground to defend that territory, spear fishermen have 

been able to decimate its numbers on a large scale. 

Normally it's the warmer waters of Portugal and the Mediterranean that are its principal European 

haunts. I've observed them myself on odd occasions while scuba diving around Malta. 

Usually a solitary fish with a liking for very heavy ground, particularly with large holes or even caves 

around which it will patrol. Potentially quite a large fish too which would make it of great interest to 

anglers were it more regularly available. 

A lone boat caught specimen of twenty eight pounds taken off Durlston Head in Dorset back in 1973 

has placed it on the bucket list here. 

THE MULLETS 

The mullets, or more to the point, the grey mullets, are something of an enigma. Generally, one of the 

best known and most widely observed fish in the sea, familiar to anglers and none anglers alike, yet 

containing within its family ranks not only one of the most difficult of all saltwater species to catch, but 

also two of the most difficult to identify when you move away from the common thick lipped grey 

variety to species like the thin lipped and golden grey. 

A fourth species, the red mullet, though a mullet by name, has no genetic or family ties to the grey 

mullets whatsoever, and would be better re-named as the red goat fish, that being the family to which 

it actually belongs. 

THICK LIPPED GREY MULLET Chelon labrosus 


A familiar fish to anglers and 

none anglers alike as it so often 

shows itself at the surface 

cruising around harbours, 

marina's and estuaries. Quite a 

long, narrow, torpedo like fish 

with a sharp spiny first dorsal fin 

and a second softer dorsal fin 

some distance behind it. 

Colouration in all three home 

waters species is very similar, 

that being greenish to bluish grey 

on the back becoming silvery on 

the sides and underparts, with 

several narrow longitudinal darker stripes running the full length of the body. 

181

Some of the mullet species are difficult to separate from each other. Fortunately, that is not the case 

here. As the name implies, the upper lip is obvious and is key to instant positive recognition. 

With the other species, the lips are pretty normal and evenly paired. Not so here. In the thick lipped 

grey mullet the top lip is extremely prominent and enlarged or swollen looking, with rows of what are 

known as papillae, which are small bumps on its lower edge. 

It may well be the most common and universally best known visually observed marine fish around the 

British Isles, but in angling terms, the thick lipped grey mullet doesn't sit comfortably with all the other 

species on the saltwater scene. And though tactically it is more akin to freshwater fishing, it doesn't sit 

too well there either. 

A grey mullet, and an equally grey area. In some ways even an angling cross-over species with a foot 

in both camps, and for the most part also ignored by both. 

Mullet specialists need an appreciation of float choice, shotting patterns, and the use of bread flake, 

coupled to an understanding of tides and their effect on the distribution and feeding habits of saltwater 

fish. As a result, and despite the earlier visual reference, this is not a species most sea anglers are hands 

on familiar with, often considering it too difficult or too demanding to invest time in. 

Similarly, few freshwater anglers target them, despite being at a distinct advantage tactically. That said, 

grey mullet are a species many of us have a bit of a dabble at while on holiday, particularly to southern 

Europe where they seem to be everywhere, tempting us to pack a few floats, small hooks, and telescopic 

rod in our suitcase, and in all of those regards I am no different to everyone else. 

Then back home, I see them and I ignore them again. Well, most of the time anyway. But I have had 

my moments both here and abroad, and it's these that form the basis of my own personal experiences 

related here. 

Ironically, my personal best thick lipped grey fell so far outside the regular rules of engagement that I 

still struggle to believe what actually happened there. 

I was conger fishing along the side a wreck in Oxwich Bay from Dave Lewis's dinghy with a full side 

of mackerel on a 6/0 hook. I don't particularly recall the take. But what I do recall is eventually seeing 

a grey missile of a fish shooting off across the surface, which quite naturally we both thought was a 

bass. It was still a bass even as it slid into the landing net. Only when it was on the deck did the reality 

kick in. 

This actually is not the first time 

I've seen mullet caught against 

all the odds like that. I can think 

of at least two previous 

occasions at Looe in Cornwall 

where kids lowering big chunks 

of mackerel down the side of the 

quay for crabs have hooked big 

mullet, one of which when they 

eventually got it in and weighed, 

was well over seven pounds. 

Dave Lewis, Thick Lipped Grey Mullet 

To an extent, I can understand 

why this happens at commercial 

fishing ports. It's well known in 

mullet circles that 'conditioning' 

through loose feed is essential in 

182

weaning these otherwise algae grazers into taking whatever it is you intend to put on the hook. So dead 

fish, discards, rubby dubby bags and the like still hanging over the sides of shark fishing boats, all fall 

under the umbrella of 'conditioning'. 

On many occasions I've seen fish skeletons on harbour bottoms suddenly appear to come back to 'life'. 

Least ways that's what it looks like out of the corner of your eye. Then on closer inspection you see 

several mullet lifting them up with their noses as they poke around the bones looking to pick off any 

remaining soft flesh. 

Over in the Isle of Man I've even watched mullet anglers tie a mackerel head to their line, with a tiny 

piece of flesh on a small hook to a short dropper fluttering a few inches away, looking like it's just 

drifted free. 

So carnivorous feeding, while it doesn't fit with their supposed normal regime of grazing algae from 

harbour walls, boat hulls and even the mud at the harbour base where they leave characteristic scrape 

marks, is under specific circumstances, a factor. 

Some small animals are also regularly taken, though often these will be accidents mixed in with any 

vegetative matter being grazed. Scavenging, thought not supposedly a part of their routine diet is none 

the less a reasonably regular practise, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised so by my Oxwich fish. 

To an extent, this links very nicely into what few experiences I have had of fishing for Mullet around 

the UK. These actually are all confined to Guernsey with friends of mine Peter Frise and Joe Gomez, 

both keen shore match anglers, who unless specifically targeting big fish such as conger, or pleasure 

fishing the bottom for say plaice, usually have a couple of rods set up ready, feed in plenty of shirvey, 

then play it by ear according to how the session develops. 

Shirvey is a mix of boiled sandeels, bread, water, and pilchard oil made into a sort of porridge. This is 

then spooned in little and often when fishing from the rocks to be dispersed far and wide by the tide and 

back wash wave action. 

Often the first fish on the scene will be garfish, known 

locally as long nose. But always there is the expectation 

of mullet coming into the swim, for which reason a light 

float rig with a size eight to ten hook is set up ready to take 

a small portion of sandeel as bait, because when the mullet 

are spotted in the swim, that's what they'll be mopping up 

from the shirvey. 

So it is deliberate mullet fishing, though not the primary 

objective of the session. More of a bonus target if they 

come along. However, there have been days, not only with 

Peter and Joe, but other Channel Islanders I've fished with 

specifically targeting mullet, when the time honoured way 

of days of preparatory loose feeding followed by a float 

fished offering of the same was the last thing on their 

mind. 

Guernsey surf Mullet 

This involved a more typical shore angling scratching rig 

of two short droppers above the lead and one below tied 

to line of maybe six to eight pounds breaking strain with 

small hooks which were baited with pieces of bread crust. 

The lead was light so as not to break the fine line during 

183

casting and would therefore do a bit of wandering about, particularly in any surf. And amazingly, I saw 

mullet in excess of five pounds as a result. 

My personal best ever mullet fishing was over in Gibraltar. I was going to cover this fully in Part 2 

looking at the foreign fishing venues, but have decided to extract the mullet component from it and 

discuss it here, exploring two stand out incidents which may well carry over to home waters. 

Both took place in Gibraltar's main harbour which is no longer accessible due to it having been 

converted into a plush waterside marina from which angling riff-raff it seems is now barred. 

The first incident of interest was a late evening session. It was pitch dark in fact, with just a couple of 

harbour side lights shinning on the water. We'd been encouraged to give it a try by our local guide Tony 

Triay. So, fishing small bubble floats with attached tails of a couple of feet of light mono, a size ten 

hook, and a piece of bread flake, we decided to give it a go. 

I can't honestly remember if we threw in any loose feed, though I feel sure we probably would have. 

We couldn't see the floats either. But providing you kept a tight line, you sure as hell could feel the 

mullet pulling at them. 

I've never heard of people mullet fishing after dark before. The fish however didn't seem to mind, and 

we finished up the session with literally dozens of the things, which in terms of conditions is in complete 

contrast to my other Gibraltar mullet session which was in broad daylight under a blisteringly hot sun. 

I'd been badly bitten and 

hospitalised by a moray eel the 

previous day and therefore 

couldn't go out with the others in 

the boat. Bored out of my skull, I 

decided to take a walk around the 

harbour where I saw lots of small 

to average mullet out in open 

water. 

Gibraltar Harbour 

Always the absolute monsters 

would be lurking under boat 

hulls, either out of the sun or 

grazing the weed and algae off 

them. So, as you do, I nipped 

back to the hotel for my gear 

then to a small supermarket for a 

loaf. 

Again I was fishing the bubble float rig to give me range with the bread on the top, and initially, as you 

would expect, the action came from the smaller fish. But eventually, all that activity would draw some 

of the bigger fish out too, which would bully their way to the head of the queue. 

That so called 'rest' day saw me take dozens of mullet to over seven pounds, with a bonus speckled bass, 

again on bread, which was the last thing I expected to see. 

That is pretty much my total thick lipped grey mullet experience, though I did once try for them in the 

traditional ground bait and shotted float rig style inside Christchurch Harbour, where all I could catch 

was freshwater bream. 

Not a hint of a mullet throughout my stay, which doesn't surprise me, as while I don't think mullet are 

as difficult to catch as most sea anglers tend to think, unless you are prepared to adapt, locate prime 

184

spots, and put in the time both swim feeding and fishing specifically for them, except for the odd once 

in a lifetime accident like my Oxwich fish, then you are simply just not going to catch them at all. 

Adapt and target, and success should start to come, which is what the fanatical mullet specialists have 

all had to do. Be prepared to put in an apprenticeship. So it would be pointless for me to start spouting 

off about techniques I've read up on for catching them without actual experiences of my own. There is 

plenty of potential help out there in magazines, on book shelves, and on the Internet. Tap in to that and 

learn. 

One tip I will give is to refer people to a couple of audio interviews I have recorded on mullet fishing. 

One is with Leon Roskilly looking at it from a bait fishing perspective, the other being with Dr. Mike 

Ladle who catches them on the fly, at times in bigger numbers than can be caught on bait. 


THIN LIPPED GREY MULLET Liza ramada 


Greg Whitehead, 7 pound plus Thin Lipped Grey Mullet A fish with the potential to be both easy 

and at the same time difficult to identify. 

Easy in the sense that because, as the name suggests, it has lips which are far and away thinner that it's 

more common and widespread cousin the thick lipped grey mullet, so there will be no mistaking it there. 

On the other hand, difficult because superficially it shares a number of similar traits to the golden grey 

mullet. 

Coming to the rescue here to some extent is the fact that golden greys are probably less common, and 

more inclined from an angling perspective to feed along open beaches than well up inside brackish 

estuaries. 

185

So the chances are that most of the mullet caught that are not thick lips, and almost certainly those 

caught on ragworm baited spinners, are going to be thin lips. But just in case, fold the pectoral fin 

forward. If it fails to reach or just touches the margin of the eye it's a thin lip, whereas if it reaches past 

the margin of the eye it's a golden grey. 

Basic colouration and patterning seems to follow a similar format for all three home water grey mullet 

species, that being blue or grey on the back and upper sides becoming silvery lower down and along 

the belly, with several longitudinal stripes running along on each side. 

Obviously, golden greys also have the golden spots on the cheek and gill cover from which they derive 

their name. Unfortunately, used in isolation, these are not enough, as I have also caught thin lips with 

golden markings around the gill cover area with just the very occasional genuine golden grey in amongst 

them, despite at a glance perhaps thinking we had caught more. 

This is a paradoxical fish in that throughout much of Europe it is a rare, or should I say rather localised 

fish, yet within favoured locations it can also be extremely abundant. Find one thin lipped grey mullet 

and you invariably find large numbers of them. Let me quote an example I am familiar with which 

Keith Philbin, Steve Lill and myself turned up completely out of the blue. 

During the late 1970's when my kids were young, I used to trail a caravan down to Christchurch in 

Dorset, which obviously meant that I couldn't also trail the boat down there to fish. So on the first 

weekend, my boat partner Steve would trail our sixteen foot Mackay Viking down, stay for the weekend 

to fish, then repeat the operation on the last weekend to drag it back home, meaning that in fact I could 

actually have both. 

At the same time, Fleetwood charter skipper Keith Philbin and his family would be in the caravan next 

door, and we would explore either the Solent out from Lymington if the wind was right, or when the 

tides were right and the weather wasn't, put the boat in at Pontins on the River Stour and explore the 

stretch from the slip down to Mudeford harbour instead. 

We liked to go early, often launching around five am before all the holiday makers in the self-drive 

motor boats took over the place. There wasn't any sort of a game plan to it. More a case of taking 

everything tackle-wise we could muster along with a load of fresh ragworm and simply making best 

use of the boat. 

Not being shore anglers, we were fairly resistant to mullet fishing, though we had both read and heard 

about the good mullet potential in and around Christchurch harbour. 

On a number of occasions I had seen anglers float fishing for thick lipped greys and even tried it myself. 

You could see the things swimming around all over the place, but amazingly, all I could catch was 

freshwater bream. 

I also had to put up with kids throwing stuff into the water, which seems to be a juvenile genetic trait, 

and let's not forget families feeding the swans with all the commotion that involves. Needless to say, 

after a couple of attempts I gave up trying, which was when we switched more of our attention to the 

boat. 

Much of the lower Stour, certainly when travelling down it by boat looks inaccessible, or at best 

problematic, which meant we pretty much had the entire place to ourselves. 

We'd also heard that there were bass and sea trout to be had on spinners in the lower reaches, plus lots 

of flounders, which would not only take the ragworms, but also give chase to a moving bait, particularly 

if something in the way of 'bling' catches their eye. 

186

Ollie Stenning, 8.7.4 Thin Lip record Looking to combine all these prospects and factors into one 

single hit, we put ragworms onto the trebles of our spinners 

and proceeded to twitch and inch them back, looking for anything that might be willing to take hold. 

With not much to show from our earliest attempts, one particular morning, everything unexpectedly 

clicked into place. We had started casting just below where the motor boats moored up, slowly working 

our way downstream trying the baited lures both on the drift, and for short spells at anchor, on what 

turned out to be an ebbing tide. 

It must have been getting well down too, because as we reached the spot where the Avon joins the Stour 

just above Mudeford, there was hardly any water left to fish in. 

So little in fact that we pulled over alongside the reeds on the western side, popped the anchor into reeds 

themselves, and with hardly enough width in the low water channel to cast, started twitching our rag 

baited spinners back towards the boat with pretty much instant interest shown. But from who knows 

what. 

We were getting repeated tugs and pulls, and all the time the ragworm was getting shorter and shorter 

to the point where it was barely filling the hook. Then things really started to happen. One of us finally 

was into a fish, and a powerful fish too streaking off in all directions against the fixed spool drag. 

Moments after the first glimpse, it was there in the landing net. A mullet of maybe a couple of pounds, 

which being unaware of what was about to happen, we didn't give a second glance to. 

The only observation we did make was that despite all we'd read about mullet being shy, soft mouthed, 

and easily lost, you could have swung this one around your head and still not have had it come free. It 

had seen the bait and it was having it, with all three hooks of the treble firmly embedded inside its 

mouth. 

Obviously buoyed up by our success 'at last' we fished on for another hour or so and probably caught a 

dozen more. Something however wasn't quite right. Neither of us had either caught or examined many 

187

mullet before. But we'd seen pictures, and around the mouth, these mullet didn't look anything like what 

we had expected them to look like. 

With some unfortunate individuals having been deeply hooked, and always willing to try new culinary 

challenges, we took a few back to the caravans with us to eat. 

There was no Internet back then to refer to, but I did have Alwyne Wheelers classic fish identification 

book 'The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe' with me at the caravan for guidance, and 

very quickly we established that they were in fact thin lipped grey mullet. 

We then began theorising as to how and why our earlier failures had suddenly been transformed into 

success, the gist of which was to put only a small piece of ragworm onto the hook to ensure they could 

get it down without first nipping bits off it; keeping the spinners working high up in the water at a 

reasonable pace, and be there over the low water period which would concentrate whatever fish were 

present into the tightest band. 

So back we went again, only this time straight to the spot just before low water with half inch pieces of 

worm retrieved at a greater pace to get the lures up closer to the surface, and this time we must have 

had twenty or more fish. 

As you do, we were constantly refining the technique all the time. After a visit to the local tackle shop 

for example, lighter bodied Jenspin lures which came up in the water better enabled us to make an even 

bigger jump forward, though fish nipping at the baits but not taking the hook was still a frustration. 

What we did start to notice was that the vast majority of takes would come towards the end of a retrieve. 

This could have been due to the lure being closest to the surface at that point. But equally, it could also 

have been a sub-conscious speeding up towards the end to make another cast, or the fish thinking the 

bait was about to get away. Possibly even a combination of all those factors. 

Whatever the reason, by the last weekend when Steve came back down for the boat, we were averaging 

forty to fifty fish per morning in just a couple of hours. More still when he joined us. 

Pleased with the result, back home I started looking up everything I could find regarding thin lipped 

grey mullet. As I've said, there was no Internet, so information was hard to come by, and getting it took 

time. 

188 

One snippet I did come across 

was the fact that the boat slot on 

the British record fish list was 

open to claims at two pounds, a 

weight which most of the fish 

we'd caught that summer had well 

topped. 

The problem was that those which 

weren't kept for eating had all 

gone back, so the evidence 

required to make a claim and put 

a tick at the side of British record 

on my fledgling bucket list was no 

longer available. But the 

Thin Lip on baited spinner 

following summer it would be. 

And this time, Trevor Housby, 

who in the intervening period had been up at my place to do some char fishing, asked if he could join 

us.

Despite living nearby in Hampshire, he too was completely un-aware of the potential. So one early 

morning he met us at the slip, and again following the now established game plan, we very quickly 

racked up quite a sizeable catch. 

I remember doing a photo session with him afterwards on a gravel bar close by, which may well even 

have been used by him as the basis for a magazine article. My writing was still in its infancy back then, 

so probably I would have bowed to his superior rank. 

All I was bothered about was hanging on to the best specimen and popping it into a sealed plastic box 

filled with formaldehyde for the journey back home so that we could make that claim. 

On arrival home, the instruction given to me by the British Record Fish Committee was to send the fish 

to Plymouth for formal identification, which I did. I then had to wait for confirmation. In fact, I waited 

and and I waited, but heard nothing back. 

In the end I rang the chap whose name I can't now remember, to which he replied, “what mullet”. He 

said he hadn't received the package. So that as they say was the end of that. We'd already been telling 

people about these record fish. Now all of a sudden it wasn't to be. 

I can only imagine the scepticism that must have been going through people’s minds. It was already our 

second season on these fish, and despite well topping the record qualifying weight on many dozens of 

occasions, there we were still unable to back up all the rhetoric. That however would not be the case at 

the third attempt. 

By this time my son Ian was about 

seven years old and was having 

the odd trip out with us, as my 

daughter Dawn who is 18 months 

younger. That year from the very 

first run down the river it was 

business as usual. Lots of fish, 

though not unfortunately this time 

round as big as in previous years. 

All of us still topped the 

qualifying weight dozens of times 

every session, but the best 

specimen, which was initially 

caught by Dawn and later 

bettered by Ian, could only pull 

Dawn Williams with one of the record claims 

the needle around to two pounds 

seven ounces, a fish which did 

eventually become the record, though we also took several 'near misses' back home with us as reserves, 

just in case that one also went missing in transit, which obviously it didn't. 

Once the word got out, the record progressively climbed by regular increments as more and more people 

started repeating what we'd previously done, both at Christchurch, and increasingly further afield. 

Thin lips it seems were not as localised as initially thought, with reports starting to filter through to the 

east of Dorset through Sussex on into Kent, though I shouldn't have thought this was an expansion of 

their range so much as a realisation they were there, because thin lips had been known from rivers like 

the Rother and Medway for many years. 

189

Now, suddenly, with an easier way of catching them, they were starting to turn up all over the show, 

with specimens well in excess of 8 pounds having been caught from an ever expanding geographical 

range from Llangenech in Wales to Oulton Broad, and not unexpectedly the Channel Islands too. 

In fact, Guernsey now sits very much in pole position. Greg Whitehead is keeping the ragworm baited 

spinner technique alive from his own boat 'Bluefin', with two records to himself and Ollie Stensen in 

two days during 2015. 

Cork harbour in south west Ireland also has a population. Only the Scot's it seems have yet to record 

the species. 

GOLDEN GREY MULLET Liza aurata 


It's difficult sometimes to be sure about the catchability status of some species of fish, and in that regard, 

the golden grey mullet could well be one. A fish which at a glance could very easily be mistaken for 

the visually similar and not quite as rare thin lipped grey mullet which seems to prefer harbours and 

estuaries, as opposed to the more open surf beaches favoured by golden greys. 

Even so, there almost certainly will have been some honest but needless mis-counting, which is a pity 

really, because while the thin lipped grey and golden grey are very similar fish with two widely spaced 

dorsal fins, small lips, and several darker longitudinal stripes over a blue to grey back and upper flanks, 

it doesn't take a lot of effort to separate one from the other. 

As the name suggests, golden greys have golden spots on the cheek and gill cover. But I've also had 

thin lips with the same sort of marks which I was convinced were golden greys, only to find out by 

checking the length of the pectoral fin that they were not. 

190

Simply fold the pectoral fin forward towards the eye. If it fails to reach or just about touches the outer 

margin of the eye then it's a thin lip. If it well passes the eye margin, then it's a golden grey. 

Though I have un-intentionally taken a couple of golden grey mullet on tiny pieces of ragworm slowly 

twitched in on a tiny spinner in the Mudeford Harbour area just below Christchurch, I passed up on a 

very real chance of targeting them deliberately, when after a trip to Namibia, Dave lewis set up a group 

reunion with some fishing for golden greys from one of his local beaches, which due to other 

commitments I unfortunately couldn't make. 

A pity really, because they do well for them from the open surf beaches along the South Wales coast, 

particularly throughout August and September, despite it being quite a rare fish, and one which for the 

most part you are lucky to catch by accident under normal beach fishing circumstances. 

The lads who do deliberately try for them obviously fish small, light, and with baits not anchored hard 

on the bottom. One approach in particular they use is to put a small drilled bullet onto the main reel line 

stopped by a micro-bead above a swivel, with a three foot hook length tied up from eight pounds bs 

fluorocarbon armed with a size six hook. 

The bait, which is typically a bunch of tiny harbour rag or 'maddies', is flicked out maybe twenty to 

forty yards and allowed to be moved by the surf, trying so far as is possible to keep a tight line and close 

contact with the lead in order to feel the often gentle plucking bites. 

Like the thick and thin lipped grey mullets, golden greys will enter harbours and marina's such as 

Brixham, Christchurch, and in Ireland, Cork, where they also catch thin lips. The fact that the Scots 

have only a shore record for the species from Fairlie on the Clyde at a mere eleven ounces caught back 

in 1972 suggests to me that they don't see too many of them that far north. 

RED MULLET Mullus surmuletus 


191 

Yet another potentially confusing 

name, because the red mullet isn't in 

any way related to the previous three 

grey mullet species. In fact, it isn't 

even a mullet by any stretch of the 

definition. 

It actually belongs with the goat 

fishes, so red goat fish might 

perhaps be a better name. Certainly 

less confusing. But we are where we 

are, and so for the moment at least 

it's the red mullet, which as the name 

suggests is a bright red fish, in this 

case with a particularly blunt facial 

profile and large scales. 

There are obviously other key features to be aware of, but to save time, simply look for two very long 

back pointing barbels hanging beneath the lower lip which it keeps tucked away when not being used 

in the search for food. No other home waters marine species has this particular feature. 

This is a very special fish to me. It was my one hundredth species; it was deliberately targeted, and it 

came on the very first cast of the first evening of a three day shore fishing stint with friends Peter Frise

and Joe Gomez at Guernsey, who while they weren't seeing red mullet regularly back in the 1980's, 

were certainly still getting their share. 

So with me a none shore angler, and them both ardent shore match specialists, who better to team up 

with. And while red mullet were very much at the top of the my visit list, that wasn't necessarily the 

expectation that first evening when we fished from the rocks at Havalet Bay just to the south of St. 

Peterport harbour wall. 

I remember it well. It was quite late in the year and therefore dark fairly early. I don't recall what Peter 

and Joe were after, but I can remember them telling me to fish small and hard on the bottom with 

ragworm. I can also remember Joe climbing down the rocks with his head-light on to lift up what until 

that point could well have been anything, then shouting back up "I don't bloody believe it. It's a red 

mullet". 

I couldn't bloody believe it myself either. But there it was. I'd done it. Not only a species I had long 

wanted to catch, but the completion at long last of the main strand of my bucket list project, the catching 

in home waters of one hundred species of fish listed by the various record fish committee's. 

Since that time, red mullet it seems have not only become more regularly caught, but also more 

widespread, though the south coast is still the place to be, with the north coast of the west country across 

into South Wales running it a close second. 

Odd specimens have even turned up as far north as Scotland. On the other hand, in some areas such as 

Falmouth Bay, commercial fishermen are now targeting them with small mesh monofilament gill nets, 

though these reportedly kill more un-wanted by-catch species than red mullet, and should therefore 

under the regulations be classed as illegal. 

Percentages there depend to no small degree on sea conditions, with warmer summers on into autumn 

producing more than in cooler years. 

Also working against good codes of practise is the fact that as they grow larger, red mullet appear to 

prefer deeper water, making the smaller, possibly immature fish most vulnerable. The same is probably 

also true of angling, as most specimens are caught from the shore in areas of sand, mud, and gravel in 

that order. 

Don't however assume them to be restricted to large areas of open clean ground. Any soft substrate, 

even patches between rocks will do. Even so, their availability to anglers is not easy to assess. With 

shore fishing in the most productive areas more widely practised there than at a lot of other locations, 

plus the fact that where there are boats available, these tend to fish out deeper and for bigger stuff, then 

this is perhaps an unbalanced view. 

As regards tactics, simply placing the baits hard on the bottom is going to be in with as good of a chance 

as anything. My choice was for a two up short dropper rig with size 1/0 hooks and ragworm, though 

without doubt other baits would also catch. Live shrimp for example would be an item from the fishes 

regular diet. 

THE MACKERELS AND TUNA'S 

Mackerels and tuna's do have anatomical differences which set them apart from each other, though not 

enough to take them out of the same family, which is scombridae. Tuna's for example have a lateral 

keel either side of the body which the mackerels lack. 

192

Otherwise, a family of fishes of vital importance on a number of levels, ranging from human 

consumption and food for other predatory marine species through to angling for pleasure, and angling 

as a source of tourism income in some corners of the world. 

It also contains some of the largest fish on the planet, several of which have been caught around the 

British Isles, not to mention some of the hardest fighting fish it could ever be your fortune or misfortune 

to hook up, depending on which species and how big. 

Having caught various small to middle range tuna and related species over the years, I can honestly say 

that currently at my time of life, I would not want to hook up a big treble figure tuna, and most certainly 

not a giant blue fin. 

You can pay far less to have the same level of pain and suffering inflicted on yourself by hooking up to 

one of the many sado-masochism sites that currently advertise on-line instead. 

TUNNY or BLUE FIN TUNA Thunnus thynnus 


Blue Fin Tuna, Downings, Ireland Not that many tuna species visit the British Isles, and none, 

other than the blue fin tuna, has evolved the physiology to 

generate sufficient internal body heat, not only to withstand, but to thrive in the cooler water 

temperatures at our latitude. So on that basis alone, confusion with other similar species is most unlikely 

to be a problem. 

Size and rarity are also going to be determining factors. This is the largest of the tuna's, and is 

infrequently caught by anglers at weights low enough to allow cross species confusion to creep in. For 

completeness however, the back is dark blue changing quite rapidly to greyish white above the pectoral 

fin extending down to the underparts where it becomes more silvery white, often showing a good 

scattering of silvery or even colourless spots and lines. And while the two dorsal fins don't actually 

touch, they are very close together, with only a small distance of separation. 

193

The only other home waters tuna species with a similarly small dorsal inter-space is the long fin tuna 

or albacore. A fish with a very long pectoral fin stretching way back to below the mid point of the 

second dorsal fin above it. In blue fin tuna the pectoral fin is short, reaching only about half way along 

the first dorsal fin. 

Scientists also use gill raker count comparisons as a further means of verifying speciation. But for 

anglers this won't be necessary, with size, colour and positioning of the dorsal fins being sufficient, on 

top of which, the likelihood of catching one (or any tuna species) accidentally is low in the absolute 

extreme. 

A tunny, or blue fin tuna as they are now preferentially called, tipping the scales at 851 pounds caught 

in 1933 holds the British record for the species, making it the largest fish officially caught on rod and 

line in the United Kingdom. But it isn't the largest individual fish ever caught in the UK, and nor is it 

the largest fish or even the largest species of fish caught around the British Isles. 

The heaviest blue fin in home waters is an Irish fish caught by Adrian Molloy in 2001 off Donegal 

weighing in at 968 pounds, while the largest fish, again Irish, is a six gilled shark listed at 1,058 pounds 

taken out of Carrigaholt on the Shannon estuary. 

The actual largest British fish, which is another big tunny caught off the Yorkshire coast in 1949, 

marginally beat the 851 pound Mitchell-Henry record but was rejected, arguably because of petty 

politics and the 'old boys' network. 

Bearing in mind that tunny fishing in those days out from Scarborough and Whitby was a rich man's 

pursuit done in the main by influential people who not only liked to catch impressive fish, but as 

importantly, liked to be seen to catch them, with all the prestige that goes with it. 

So when Lincolnshire farmer John Hedley-Lewis comes along and beats the lot of them at their own 

game by a mere whisker, it isn't hard to imagine that feathers were going to be ruffled, which they most 

certainly were. 

Complaints were made that the rope around that fish’s 

tail used to hook it on to the scale was wet, therefore 

artificially adding enough to the weight to pip the record. 

Sour grapes – most definitely. But sufficient reason it 

seems back then to those connected enough to cast doubt 

and put this 'outsider' well and truly in his place, all of 

which is a great shame. 

Even if it had truly been marginally smaller than the 

Mitchell-Henry record when the weight of the rope was 

subtracted, it was still a magnificent fish. The second 

biggest British tunny ever in fact. And now it's a fish not 

only potentially cheated of record status, some would 

say without good reason, but largely forgotten too as a 

result. 

John Hedley Lewis, 852 pound Tunny 

That piece of information came to light during a 

conversation with the late Bill Pashby at his home in 

Scarborough back in 2010. Bill was the last surviving 

person with any first hand experience of this particular 

incident and countless others between the 1930's and 

1950's, the likes of which are unlikely ever to be 

194

epeated off the Yorkshire coast. Yet amazingly, it wasn't a lack of tunny numbers that brought the 

episode to a close. Rather, it was a shortage of herrings. 

The east coast herring drifters, along with boats from Scandinavia just across the North Sea, had 

collectively driven the herring population to such a low level that in 1956 an emergency symposium 

agreed a moratorium on herring fishing, and it was this that brought the rod and line tunny fishing to a 

grinding halt. 

To catch tunny, the angling boats, which were themselves commercial vessels chartered for weeks on 

end by people who could afford to cover the cost of a crews wages, would shadow the herring fleet, 

which when they hauled their long drift nets, would lose lots of dead, dying, and in some cases healthy 

fish as the net came up the side of the boat, which in turn would often chum up pods of big tunny to 

pick them off. 

In a situation of mutual gain, boats encountering tunny would radio over then flash their lights to 

indicate their position to the tunny anglers, who on nearing the action, would be taken across to the side 

of the drift netter in a small rowing boat where a bait on a short wire trace would be thrown at the tunny, 

and in a fourteen foot boat with no engine often many miles out on the North Sea, you can probably 

imagine what followed. 

Bill Pashby was the oarsman in one such a boat lowered down from his fathers trawler 'Courage'. 

Meanwhile, as the action took them away from the nets, his dad would then nudge in with a crate of 

beer or a couple of bottles of whiskey as a thank you for the tip off. But once the herring netting was 

stopped, the ability to locate the tunny was also lost. 

Tunny fishing started back in the 1920's with 

commercial herring boats regularly reporting sightings 

of big fish around their nets as they hauled. So much so 

that in 1929, Henry Stapleton-Cotton decided to charter 

a boat with a view to fishing for them, resulting in the 

hooking up of two fish, both of which were 

subsequently lost. 

The following herring season, which started off 

Scarborough in August, he was back out there again. 

But by that stage he wasn't the only person interested. 

Lorenzo Mitchell-Henry had also decided to take up the 

challenge, ultimately becoming the first angler to catch 

a tunny on rod and line in British waters that year with 

a fish of 560 pounds. 

Four other tunny were also taken during the 1930 

season, weighing in at 392, 591. 630, and 758 pounds, 

the biggest of which fell just short of Zane Greys world 

record at the time from Nova Scotia, which was finally 

broken in 1932 by Col. E. T. Peel with a fish of 798 

pounds, and again by Mitchell-Henry the following year 

with the 851 pounder which still holds the British 

record to this day. 

Bill Pashby Tunny Club HQ 2010 

Eclipsing these efforts in terms of angling feat are Cpt. 

Cyril Hubert Frisby VC, who over five consecutive days took twelve fish, five of which weighing 

between 461 and 658 pounds came out on the same day. 

195

Equally creditable was Harry Weatherley fishing with Bill Pashby, who boated fish of 545, 589 and 

748 pounds, plus one other smaller fish of unspecified size one morning before breakfast, and while he 

was on the boat, which could be for up to three weeks at a time, he lived in a tent on the deck, fearful 

of going down below because of sea sickness. 

It was also Harry Weatherley, again fishing with the Pashby's aboard 'Courage' who caught the last ever 

North Sea tunny on rod and line in 1954. 

But that wasn't to be the end of the story. Now calling them blue fin tuna, a small group of Irish 

enthusiasts enjoyed a successful if unfortunately rather short lived series of big fish encounters off the 

west coast between Westport and Malin Head, in the main fishing out of Downings and Killybegs. 

Coincidentally, another story which starts with small bait fish and accidental commercial encounters. 

Tuna had quietly been going about their business of running along the Atlantic coast of Ireland on up 

around the west then north coast of Scotland probably for thousands of years without anybody really 

realising they were there. Then, in the mid 1990's, one of Killybegs pelagic super-trawlers fishing for 

herring picked up around a dozen of them which caused quite a stir when landed, but were very soon 

forgotten about. 

Much of the pelagic fishing in that area at that time was for mackerel from October through to April. 

But when an opportunity came along to fish for scad to satisfy a new demand from Japan, the fleet made 

the switch, which then required them to fish from August through to November. 

This as it would turn out coincided with the tuna running through, though still nobody realised that fact, 

until suddenly the pelagic pair trawlers started bringing in a few tuna every night as by-catch, which 

they didn't want as they were too big for the pumps used for the scad, and it was this that planted the 

seeds of rod and line fishing in the minds of three people – Michael McVeigh, Adrian Molloy and 

English ex-pat Alan Glanville. 

In effect, the race to catch the first Irish blue fin tuna was 

on, though at the time, none of the trio realised this, as they 

were independently embarking on the same quest. 

To cut an otherwise long story short, Michael McVeigh had 

a brand new boat ordered, which he intended to kit out for 

the attempt. Through Kevin Linnane and Clive Gammon, 

he eventually made contact with commercial rod and line 

tuna fisherman Dan Shannon, who while he lived and 

worked out of Boston on America's east coast had Irish 

roots, and agreed to come over for a few days to show 

Michael the ropes when the boat was eventually ready in 

September 2000. 

Unfortunately, trolling out of Killybegs a few weeks prior 

to Dan's visit, Alan Glanville had already done it by boating 

a tuna of 353 pounds, followed the next day by an even 

bigger fish of 529 pounds. Shortly afterwards, Dan and 

Michael went on to boat a tuna on live-bait, at which point 

Adrian Molloy picked up the reins by perfecting his trolling 

technique, and eventually boating his 968 pound Irish 

record fish. 

As I've already hinted, that run of fish unfortunately turned 

out to be quite short lived, as several years later the boats 

Andy Griffith Release, Milford Haven 

196

were forced to remove their fighting chairs and outriggers due to the fishery slipping into decline. But 

yet again, that still isn't the end of the story, as between 2013 and present, which is late 2015, blue fin 

tuna have made a dramatic reappearance at a number of venues. 

The first of these reports concerns Scottish boat skipper Angus Campbell, who in 2013 targeted and 

caught a blue fin tuna on rod and line working well off to the west of Scotland's Outer Hebrides, which 

coincides with the migration route mentioned earlier. 

The following year, American outdoor channel's 'Monsterfish' series sent over tuna expert Fred 

Lavitman, along with a film crew, to team up with Angus Campbell, and this time they had one on 

camera with the program subsequently going out to something like thirty nine million US TV viewers. 

On subsequent occasions, Angus reports seeing huge numbers of tuna out there, but as with the Irish 

skippers, it can take time to locate the fast moving pods and keep up with them, a problem which the 

Scarborough boats didn't have, as the herring drifters chummed them up ready for the catching, as 

evidenced by some of the spectacular statistics reported earlier. 

To bring the Tuna story right up to date, just as I was preparing to publish, reports started filtering 

through of sightings of literally hundreds of blue fin tuna off the coast of Cornwall, presumably moving 

up from the Mediterranean to follow their traditional migration route up Ireland's west coast on around 

Scotland into the North Sea. 

Regular sightings had also been reported by the Welsh sharking boats fishing way off over the Celtic 

Deep out from Milford Haven. So much so that 'White Water II' skipper Andrew Alsop had earlier 

predicted that sooner or later a big blue fin would pick up a shark bait and be caught in much the same 

fashion as the commercial tuna fishermen catch them along the eastern seaboard of the the USA, and 

he wasn't wrong 

First amongst these was Mike Steer fishing from the private boat 'Full Monty' who caught and released 

a fish of around 300 pounds. Then three days later, Chris Bett had a tuna of around 500 pounds on the 

leader at the side of Andrew Alsops 'White Water II' which eventually managed to part the reel line. 

Not that anyone was bothered. It still counts as a catch under IGFA rules, and was destined for release 

anyway. 

Finally, arguably the best catch of them 

all. I am a dinghy angler who fishes 

from a Warrior 175. A make of boat 

with a cult following to the point of 

having an un-official Warrior owners 

club who organise trips and share catch 

reports, much of which I receive either 

by email, the Internet, or through 

Facebook. 

Mike Steer, Milford Haven Blue Fin 2015 

Towards the end of September 2015, 

one such a report came my way from 

Alastair Wilson fishing alone aboard 

his Warrior 165 'Viper', trolling out 

from Teelin just to the west of 

Donegal, who over three consecutive 

days had three blue fin tuna hook-ups. 

The first of these was a brief encounter 

resulting in the hook pulling free. The 

197

second was a fish with the leader out of the water and the fish in view lost due to fraying of the reel 

line, and the third, a fish of around 300 pounds, was successfully brought back to shore. Two days later 

he caught and released a further two tuna at the boat. 

Whether Alastair should have killed that fish at the boat is another matter. I know he took some stick 

for doing so, not knowing that the species is now heavily regulated, though not totally protected, and as 

such he regrets killing it, hence the two further releases at the boat. But in terms of pure angling – what 

a feat, to target, hook up then land a fish of that size alone in a small trailed boat. 


BIG EYED TUNA Thunnus obesus 


Due to its very close likeness to the yellow fin tuna, the big 

eyed tuna is a difficult fish to positively identify. This can 

be achieved in one of two ways. Internally, the livers of the 

two fish differ in that in the big eyed it is serrated, whereas 

with the yellow fin it is smooth edged. 

Gill raker counts on the first gill arch also differ, with 

eighteen to twenty two for the big eyed, and twenty seven 

to thirty three in the yellow fin. Understandably, in both 

instances, not something most anglers would want to get 

involved in reliably checking out I'm sure. 

Externally however there are also small differences, though 

mainly of a comparative nature, which really needs both 

species to be present to feel confident about drawing 

conclusions from. So not much help there either, but let's do 

it anyway. 

Alan Pasco, Big Eyed Tuna 66.12.0 

The two dorsal fins of the big eyed are shorter and closer 

together than in the yellow fin, with thirteen or fourteen 

spines in the first and fourteen to sixteen in the second. 

Colouration is a deep metallic blue on the back becoming 

white on the lower sides and belly, with the anal and 

second dorsal fins being a pale yellow, and the finlets 

between those two fins and the tail being bright yellow and 

edged in black. 

On the plus side, yellow fin tuna have yet to be officially caught on rod and line around the British Isles, 

and with only the one big eyed reported thus far, I don't think any of the potential pitfalls regarding 

identification are going to be much of an angling issue. Besides, if one or other does end up on the end 

of a line, it will very likely be coming ashore anyway, so professional advice could easily be sought and 

would under the circumstances I'm sure be willingly given. 

A tropical and sub tropical fish with a liking for foraging at great depth, hence the size of the eye, where 

water temperatures drop considerably, which the big eyed can handle on account of its ability to regulate 

its body core temperature within certain parameters. Grows to around five hundred pounds, and a 

species inclusion here with a bit of an unusual story behind it. 

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So far as I can ascertain, this is a one-off catch, which while it could theoretically be repeated, it is very 

unlikely to be, particularly from the shore, as the lone specimen responsible for placing it on the list 

was taken from of all places inside Newlyn Harbour in Cornwall back in 1985 by Alan Pascoe, who at 

the time was fifteen years old. 

In an interview I recorded with veteran west country angling journalist Mike Millman, amongst many 

topics discussed, this particular fish crops up. Apparently, for reasons yet to be explained, the fish in 

question had been seen by numerous people swimming up and down inside the harbour, and as you 

might expect, some optimistic individuals, obviously Alan Pascoe included, set about trying to catch it. 

I use the word optimistic here on two counts. First off, because this is an open water species which uses 

the deep water column as part of its normal daily feeding regime, it wouldn't be unreasonable then to 

expect this particular individual to feel distressed, and therefore be un-willing to feed if it felt 'trapped' 

inside a harbour. 

Even if it did have an interest in food, which clearly this specimen had, what are the chances of actually 

landing such a large and extremely powerful fish from the shore in the confines of such a place. 

I've caught all sorts of tuna species on heavy gear from the boat which at even half that weight have 

been a real handful. Yet Alan Pascoe stalked it, persuaded it to take, and ultimately got it in, which has 

to be one of the most incredible shore angling feats of modern times. 

Very impressive, and not one likely to be repeated I'll wager. Probably not even from a boat. But just 

in case, the British Record Fish Committee in their 'wisdom' have set a thirty pounds minimum 

qualifying weight for record claims. 

Now how ridiculous is that. Surely the biggest example of any fish caught fairly on rod and line has to 

be the record, and to potentially bar such a rare fish of under thirty pounds shows just how far these 

'dinosaurs' are out of touch with the real world. 


LONG FINNED TUNNY Thunnus alalunga 


One of the smaller tuna species, the long finned tuna or albacore 

is not exactly a scarce fish in European waters to the south of the 

British Isles where it is of immense commercial importance. 

The bad news is that it has a marked preference for deep water 

out towards the edge of the continental shelf, though it will on 

occasion come closer to the shore when temperatures in the upper 

waters layers warm up sufficiently later in the year. 

When it does, pelagic fishes such as mackerel and herring form 

the main-stay of its diet, whereas out over deep water, epipelagic 

species living down to perhaps a hundred fathoms below the 

surface will feature, which means that at such times it will be far 

less readily available to be targeted by rod and line. 

Andy Griffith, Albacore 

A fish which, other than in terms of growth potential, is not that 

dissimilar to a blue fin tuna, except for one major distinguishing 

point. As the name suggests, of all the tuna species, this one has 

199

the longest pectoral fins. So long in fact that they extend almost to the posterior edge of the second 

dorsal fin. 

Colouration is deep blue, often with a brownish tinge on the upper back, and maybe even showing 

faintly on the lighter lower parts too. 

Unlike us Brits, the Irish prefer the name albacore, and for any realistic chance of catching one around 

the British Isles, Ireland is the place to be heading for. South west Ireland to be precise where the water 

warms most quickly and there is access to the deeper open oceanic stuff that the albacore seems to like 

best. 

Even then it's often a long hike off from ports between Cork and Kerry, where a number of Irish 

enthusiasts have made something of a speciality there of successfully targeting them, with Nick Dent 

and Derek Noble right there at the fore front of the investigative work. 

So it is to them that all the recognition here must go. I merely report their findings, because like most 

home waters anglers, I've never seen an albacore let alone caught one, even beyond the British Isles. 

In summary, the fish arrive later summer when the water is at its warmest, and have probably been 

doing so for many years, feeding quite a lucrative commercial fishery which is often conducted way 

beyond what can be described as angling reach. 

However, over recent years, pioneers like Dent and Noble, fishing beyond the thirty mile mark trolling 

with six to seven inch self weighted skirted lures at around six knots have on occasion found themselves 

good numbers of fish, with pink and white being the most favoured lure colours. 

Being so fast, and a fish driven by strong migratory urges, means that the angling boats don't find them 

every time. But when they have, on some days they have taken in excess of twenty specimens, with the 

record standing at a touch over sixty six pounds. 

More than likely the boat caught British record standing at four pounds twelve ounces from the 

Salcombe estuary was a chance encounter with a lone vagrant that had wandered way off course. 

PELAMID Sarda sarda 


For some strange reason, at the time of writing, the British 

Record Fish Committee have Sarda sarda listed twice as separate 

inclusions under the names pelamid and bonito. As pelamid are 

also known as Atlantic bonito, this might explain the confusion. 

Something to be aware of, though this obviously could change. 

A hard fighting small tuna species unlikely to go more than 

around ten pounds in weight in our waters, though you could be 

forgiven for thinking it to be a very much bigger fish by the 

dogged effort which I can vouch for that they will put in. 

Aram Taholakian, Pelamid 

Colouration and markings should be sufficient to set it apart from 

any other small tuna's. The back is an azure blue and the under 

parts silvery. Above the lateral line is a series of oblique or 

diagonal stripes starting above the corselet and going all the way 

back to the tail, the corselet being a clearly defined area of 

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different scales starting at the gill cover and surrounding the pectoral fin. The upper jaw also reaches 

back just beyond the rear extremity of the eye. 

Pelamid are said to be the most abundant and certainly the most widespread of the tuna's found in 

northern waters. Potentially the most catchable too as they will stray into coastal waters, and therefore 

in theory at least, more frequently to within angling range. 

Unfortunately, this is only really true from the Bay of Biscay heading south, though obviously with a 

reasonable amount of scope to push north towards the west country and southern Ireland during 

favourable summers, the crucial limiting factor being water temperature. This needs to be above around 

fifteen degrees C, which theoretically could bring in quite a large chunk of the British Isles. 

The British boat record not unexpectedly came from Torbay, though the shore record resides in Wales 

from the Pembrokeshire Coast, on top of which there have been several un-specified reports of 

specimens also having been taken around the Channel Islands. 

Normally, a shoaling species with well-developed migratory urges encouraging it to push northwards 

whenever conditions allow. When feeding in deep offshore waters, herring, mackerel and even scad are 

pursued and eaten. However, in shallower coastal waters, demersal species such as pouting and whiting 

are also taken. 

My experiences with the species come from the other side of the pond, both in Florida and around Cape 

Cod, where at both locations they were picked up on soft bodied lead-head lures, one of which was 

shocking pink. 

Specimens caught on rod and line in home waters have without exception been accidents. But where 

the fish is known to be shoaling and feeding, any small trolled lure such as a rapala or some skirted 

pattern fished at or just under the surface could add a deliberate dimension to the fishing. 

MACKEREL Scomber scombrus 


While the thick lipped grey mullet is 

arguably the most frequently observed 

saltwater fish on the home waters scene, 

the mackerel has to be the best known. 

Certainly the most widely caught, if 

only for bait. So maybe a full blown 

identification is un-called for. Then 

again, maybe it is, at least for 

consistency on my part. 

A torpedo shaped fish then with aquadynamic 

streamlining for continuous 

swimming. So much so that the fins 

retract neatly into concave recesses 

when travelling at speed to reduce drag and energy expenditure. 

Continual swimming also pushes more water over the gills to satisfy a greater than average oxygen 

demand, while at the same time allowing the fish to maintain its position in the water column without 

the need for a swim bladder, which it lacks. There are also two inconspicuous keels at the base of each 

tail lobe, though it lacks the full lateral keels found in the tuna's. 

201

As any mackerel angler will testify, the scales are small, slippery, and easily dislodged. However, 

colouration and patterning are the real clues to identification. The underlying colours are metallic green 

on the back and upper flanks merging into silvery white ventrally. When fresh, a rainbow sheen showing 

hints of purple can reflect from the lower flanks. 

Across the back running from the head to the tail are a series of curved black zebra like stripes reaching 

down just beyond the lateral line. Viewed from above against a dark sea, or from below against a light 

sky, the perfect camouflage. 

Most anglers, particularly boat anglers, see mackerel not so much as a fish in the sense that they want 

to catch them, but more as a source of bait, and therefore need to catch them. So despite the supposed 

lack of interest, it is probably one of the most sought after and regularly caught species on the summer 

boat fishing scene. 

Less so perhaps from the shore, though shoals can come within reach of rock marks, harbour walls, and 

piers in warm settled weather. Sometimes even right up to the beaches, and under those circumstances 

they are probably treated with a little more respect. 

I personally love the things. If I don't go home with half a dozen feathered up at the very last minute 

and popped into my little cool box on summer trips then I'm disappointed, as this is my number one 

favourite eating fish. 

That said, and possibly contrary to what a lot of anglers might think, though they make excellent bait 

for a very wide range of species, they don't feature naturally on the menu of as many species as you 

might perhaps think. 

For large open water predators willing to feed well up off the bottom such as blue sharks and tuna, they 

do play an important role. For the rest, they will at best be an opportunist treat, and at worst, never eaten 

at all, unless some angler puts a lump onto a hook and drops it down in front of them. 

But when anglers do that, providing the cut is suitably sized and from a freshly caught specimen just 

before going on to the cutting board, mackerel is right up there with the finest of baits. 

Fished live for larger predators such as tope or bass, at times 

there can be nothing better. So as much as knocking out a good 

supply may be seen as something of a chore, the time invested 

in doing so will usually be more than amply rewarded later. 

On that basis then, the quicker you can feather up enough for 

your needs, the less 'proper' fishing time you waste, so it pays to 

be good at catching them, which not everybody it seems is. For 

while they might at times appear stupid bordering on suicidal, 

that isn't always the case, and like most regular boat anglers, I 

have spent some very frustrating times struggling to get enough. 

Essentially, three factors are at play here. First off, conditions 

need to be right. Settled weather with not too much colour or 

algae in the water not only suits the fish, but also their ability to 

see the lures. Poor visibility and heavy weather can play havoc 

with the shoals, particularly inshore where they can become 

split-up and fragmented. Even out deep it can still scatter them 

sending them right down. 

Brace of jumbo Mackerel 

The second factor is locating them. Even when the previous 

conditions are not doing their worst, don't expect to find them 

202

everywhere as was once the case. With numbers far lower to start with due to commercial pressure these 

days, in terms of distribution, they have the option now to be as selective as they might want to be, with 

areas of disturbed tide often an attraction to them. 

It needn't be much. Any bits of headland close in to shore can do the trick. Equally, they can favour 

other types of location sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Charter boat skippers often have marks 

they stop off at where they both expect and usually get sufficient for bait for the day. 

On my local patch, the area just off the end of Blackpool North Pier is always a reliable producer, 

though the ground there doesn't appear to be much different to that which surrounds it. 

One day we literally went right up to the pier to try out a new side scanning sonar around the metal legs. 

There we found a shoal actually lurking underneath the pier itself. Spotters leaning over the rails were 

shouting down to us when the shoal came out allowing us to get right over the top of them, and we filled 

up a cool box in no time at all. 

The third factor is knowing how to catch them which sub divides into two parts, the first of which is 

technique. There will be days when you can send a string of any type of feathers into free fall and the 

mackerel will be so keen and well grouped up that they will quite literally stop the gear in its tracks, six 

ounces of lead and all. 

On days like that, getting it right probably isn't an issue. Getting it wrong would be more difficult. But 

of course, not all days are going to be like that, and often you will need to work hard for your fish. 

That can either be as an individual not bothering with what anybody else is doing, or as part of a team, 

perhaps all using different colours or patterns of lures, and telling everyone else where in the water 

column you think you found your fish, which as we all know could be anywhere between the surface 

and the sea bed, though less likely to be the latter as water depth increases. 

So a search technique is required, which is nothing more taxing than leaving the reel out of gear and 

letting the lures go a little deeper every minute or so by controlling the spool with the thumb until the 

feeding depth, or a few passing individuals if they are patchy, are located, after which it's all down to 

lure choice and being willing to work at it. 

When I first started fishing, feathers 

were quite literally just that, 

sometimes white and other times 

dyed, whipped onto quite large heavy 

gauge wire hooks which were 

themselves whipped to short droppers 

fished in strings of six. 

Even fresh from the packet they were 

of poor quality. The feathers often 

became pulled clear of the whipping; 

invariably they were too long and 

needed to be trimmed down to make 

sure fish took the hook instead of just 

nipping at the end, and after just one 

trip, in most instances, they needed to 

be discarded. 

Traditional style Mackerel feathers 

Blunt to start with, the hooks would quickly rust or themselves pull free of their whippings, and the 

heavy monofilament used to present them would often become coiled and useless. 

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In contrast, feather rigs today employ small needle sharp hooks, light monofilament, and come in a 

huge range of presentations. My particular favourites are shrimp rigs, sabiki's, and either the small red 

or the luminous green rubber shrimps marketed by Mustad. 

Actual feathers, thankfully, have been pretty much consigned to history and nobody should be sorry 

about that. So there is a world of opportunity out there now in terms of choice, most of which is very 

good, and some of which is truly excellent. But as ever, that can vary on a day by day basis according 

to ambient light and prevailing sea conditions. 

CHUB MACKEREL Scomber colias 


Mark Kaeznarek, Chub Mackerel Previously known and recorded as the spanish mackerel, 

appearance wise, the chub mackerel is not so radically different 

from the mackerel we see around the British Isles, and as such, could very easily be over-looked. 

The general body layout and size range is similar too. Features like the presence of a swim bladder, 

which chub mackerel have and 'normal' mackerel lack, carry little weight in terms of field identification. 

Chub mackerel have nine or ten spines in the first dorsal fin whereas our mackerel have at least eleven. 

Chub mackerel also lack the two small inconspicuous keels at the base of each tail lobe which again are 

present in regular mackerel. 

Colouration and markings, though broadly similar to those of the mackerel, tend to be made up of spots 

forming faint wavy lines, with the addition of more spots below them stretching all the way down the 

fish’s side to the belly. 

In addition, the scales around the pectoral fin and to the rear of the gill cover are larger than the rest and 

tend to stay attached, even when scales elsewhere are lost, almost forming a corselet. 

204

Quite an unusual visitor to our patch of the Atlantic, though numbers increase noticeably along 

Portugal's Atlantic coast around into the Mediterranean, an area which supports quite a sizeable 

commercial fishery for the species, and it’s around southern Europe and the Canary Islands that I have 

encountered them on a number of occasions. 

I haven't actually caught one myself, because when I fish those venues I tend to concentrate on the 

bigger target species. But I do see chub mackerel in the boats brought on as bait in much the same way 

as we would use mackerel back home. 

Those that do make it up as far as Britain are typically lone individuals that have probably become 

isolated from their own kind, and as you do when shoaling is an instinctive protection measure from 

predation, you team up with the next best thing which is a shoal of regular mackerel if you come across 

one and try to blend in. 

Not that blending in will be difficult, as superficially the pair are very much alike. So much so in fact 

that I wouldn't be surprised if more specimens than people realise turn up and are over-looked in the 

frenetic action that ensues during a good mackerel bashing session when rushing to catch enough for 

bait. 

Mass catches on the other hand in home waters are rare, though several were recorded over a period of 

a few days from Mounts Bay back in the summer of 1995. Possibly a shoal or a partial shoal and 

favourable weather conditions. Who knows. 

Amazingly, a species which is absent at the time of writing from the Irish record list, though even more 

amazing, one that appears on the Scottish list, with a specimen taken way up the west coast off 

Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. So always it pays to be looking out for those spots on the flanks. 

THE JACKS 

A huge global family with in excess of one hundred and forty species, including many of the best pound 

for pound fighting fish on the planet, distributed throughout all tropical, sub-tropical, and some 

temperate latitudes. Also a family which have what is known as an adipose eyelid that can vary between 

prominent and negligible, depending on the species in question. 

Best known amongst those found around the British Isles has to be the humble scad. But increasingly, 

as sea temperatures climb, more and more of its warmer water relatives are also starting to head north 

to join it. So, while at the moment it's just an odd specimen here and there, undoubtedly there will be 

more, and as anglers we should welcome that. 

SCAD Trachurus trachurus 


Scad have large transparent eyelids which come in from the sides rather than the top and bottom of the 

eye. Visually more prominent still is a very noticeable line of bony scales or scutes over the lateral line, 

which again is a characteristic of some, though not all members of the family carangidae. These are 

quite soft above the pectoral fins, becoming progressively more raised and rough to the touch towards 

the tail. 

Scad are quite a laterally compressed fish with a large mouth and two individual spines just ahead of 

the anal fin. Colouration is bluish grey on the upper back becoming white underneath, with yellowish 

tints on the flanks when fresh. There is also a small dark blotch on the upper outer edge of the gill cover. 

205

By and large, scad or horse mackerel as 

they are also known, are open water fish 

which move into coastal areas during 

the warmer middle months before 

pushing back out as deep as two 

hundred and fifty fathoms during the 

depths of winter. 

between the bottom and the lower pelagic layers. 

More often than not they will remain 

some way offshore over the medium to 

deep water boat marks, even during the 

summer, at depths varying between 

fifteen and fifty fathoms, where they 

can be found feeding anywhere 

Distribution of their principle food fishes such as juvenile herring, pilchard, sprats, and small free 

swimming cuttlefishes or squids determines the level at which they feed. Once found, deliberately or 

otherwise, they are usually far from demanding fish to catch, especially from a boat. 

Jigged feathers, baited feathers, small rubber eels drawn slowly from the bottom to the top, and various 

paternostered baits will all pick up scad if they are present. Even live sandeels drifted over offshore 

banks for turbot and bass will be taken. In fact, banks are a very good place to fish if scad are what you 

want, as when bottom feeding, sandy areas are particularly well favoured. 

In angling terms, they are also a bit on an enigma. On the one hand, like a lot of people, I seem to catch 

them reasonably regularly, but on the other, I never ever seem to catch a lot, and rarely if ever more 

than the odd one usually followed by some degree of drought, despite them being described as a 

shoaling species, something I have never found them to be. 

Not only that, I've either caught them myself or have seen them caught here, there, and everywhere 

around the country, and on all sorts of baits and tactics. So once again, no discernible pattern. 

For me they simply pop up from time either on feathers, especially when fished baited from the boat, 

or when float fishing from rocks, piers, or harbour walls for other stuff, particularly if there are lights 

shinning on to the water at night to attract them. 

If not, and you suspect they might be about and fancy giving shore fishing for them a try, then you will 

need to search for the correct feeding depth starting close to the bottom and working up. 

It might also be an idea to retrieve slowly with pauses using float tackle causing the bait to lift as well 

as travel back towards to your advantage in the hope of grabbing one’s attention. 

GREATER AMBERJACK Seriola dumerili 


Some of my physically most painful angling encounters with fish have come from greater amberjacks. 

Huge things not far short of a hundred pounds taken off the Florida coast, where it was every drop a 

fish on both small live-baits and jigged lures, and where if one came off, within seconds there would be 

another lined up to take its place, so absolutely no respite. 

206

Four of us we were drift fishing a deep water wreck off Key 

West, taking it in turns in pairs to drop down and hook up. 

Normally under those conditions, when it's your turn, you 

can't wait to get hold of the rod. Not so on that occasion. 

Similarly at Islamorada where we took individual turns. 

Knowing the hard fighting endurance mauling that was 

about to come, there were regular arguments between all of 

us insisting it wasn't our turn again yet. You genuinely 

needed an R & R break with fish of that size and power, so 

it's good to hear they have finally made it, albeit at a very 

small size as yet, onto our home waters list. 

More common in southern Europe, and in particular the 

Canary Islands where I most recently came across them, I 

suppose it was only a matter of time before they started 

pushing up into our latitudes. I don't however expect that we 

will see a lot of examples of any size, though it would be 

nice if we did. 

You only have to look at a jack, and amberjacks in 

particular, to appreciate that these are powerful predatory 

Dave Devine, Greater Amberjack animals. Confusingly, so too are a number of its similar 

close relatives, which for our purposes here means the 

guinean amberjack and the almaco jack, which collectively make for one big potential identification 

nightmare. 

There are subtle external differences between the trio. Unfortunately, these are best picked out when all 

three species are present for direct comparison purposes, which in our waters, or any other waters for 

that matter, is rarely if ever going to happen. 

To really settle the issue, and even this is not one hundred percent conclusive, you need to undertake a 

count of the gill rakers on the first gill arch, which while it can come up with a positive result, equally 

might be of absolutely no help whatsoever, as there is the possibility in all three cases for a slight overlap 

at the margins, which could in some circumstances see a fish killed and its captor still none the wiser. 

The one plus in all of this is that because the three jacks in question are so rare in our waters at the 

moment, and therefore of interest to ichthyologists and fishery scientists too, you could probably get 

help in putting the issue beyond doubt by contacting say the British Museum or similar. 

In this particular case we are talking about a fish whose lateral line is without an overlay of prominent 

sharp scales otherwise known as scutes. The tall front edge of the dorsal fin, known as the lobe, is 

approximately the same length or only slightly longer than the pectoral fin. 

In terms of colour, I would describe the back and upper flanks as coppery or olive brown becoming 

silvery white below, though small specimens of the type we have been seeing in our waters can have 

five darker vertical bars on the upper flanks and back, with a sixth tight up to the start of the tail. 

Running the length of the fish from snout to tail passing 'though' the eye and along the body at roughly 

the mid point of each flank is a diffuse amber stripe, with a second more distinct stripe, again passing 

'through' the eye, this time from the mouth to the start of the dorsal fin, which I have heard described 

as a dusky mask. The gill raker counts are as follows............ 

Greater amberjack 11 to 19: Guinean amberjack 19 to 23: Almaco jack 22 to 26. 

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GUINEAN AMBERJACK Seriola carpenteri 


Not a fish I am familiar with, though judging by the fact that it has both a boat and a shore record 

inclusion from The Lizard in Cornwall and Herm in the Channel Islands respectively, perhaps it is a 

species which both myself and other sea anglers ought to be familiarizing ourselves with. 

A warm water species more normally found from Angola north to the Bay of Biscay where it feeds in 

coastal waters on squids and small fish. But as with a growing number of previously unseen species 

around the British Isles, one that is probably going to be encountered with increasing regularity as sea 

temperatures continue to climb. 

Unfortunately, as with the greater amberjack and almaco jack with which I am familiar, again it's small 

specimens only at the moment, though still well capable of being a bit of a handful, as are all members 

of the jacks family carangidae. 

Potentially, a bit of a handful to identify too, being very similar to both the greater amberjack and the 

almaco jack about which I have already said that if it is important to know the exact name of the fish 

you've caught, it might be better to hang on to it because of the destructive gill raker count required to 

separate the three species, and even that unfortunately isn't conclusive as there are slight overlaps. 

On a more positive note, and again as previously mentioned, fishery scientists should be only too happy 

to see such a rare fish from home waters, and will therefore probably be equally happy to help. 

Superficially, a powerful looking fish without lateral line scutes, the back and upper flanks of which 

are a coppery bronze becoming silvery white below, with a diffuse straight amber stripe mid flank 

passing 'through' the eye to the tail, plus a darker strip, again passing 'through' the eye, from the mouth 

to the base of the first dorsal fin, and again in the juvenile fish there can be five darker vertical bars. 

The gill raker count should be between 19 and 23. 

ALMACO JACK Seriola rivioliana 


208 

Almaco jacks, greater amberjacks, and 

guinean amberjacks all look pretty 

much identical and share very similar 

life styles. Certainly when they are 

juveniles. Only when the AJ's really 

start piling on the pounds taking them 

way bigger than the potential maximum 

for the other two does picking that 

particular species out become less of a 

problem. It's in the lower cross-over 

weight category that accurate 

identification can be a nightmare. 

All three are a coppery to olive brown 

Greame Pullen, Almaco Jack, Ascension 

on the back and upper flanks becoming 

off-white to silvery below, with a dark 

bar running up from the mouth 

'through' the eye towards the base of the first dorsal fin, plus a diffuse amber stripe starting in front of 

the eye and running 'through' it along the flank to the tail.

Physically, the almaco is a slightly shorter fish than the two amberjack species, with the first few spines 

of the second dorsal fin standing around twice the height of the rest of the fin, which should be quite 

noticeable. However, in smaller fish of the type we've seen at out latitude, which in this case can have 

six darker vertical bars on their flanks, the differences are far less obvious. 

That being the case, option one is that as all jacks other than scad caught by anglers around the British 

Isles are worthy of note and would be of specific interest to fishery scientists, destructive identification 

is perhaps a little more easy to take. 

This involves counting the gill rakers on the front gill arch, which in this case number 22 to 26. The 

greater amberjack has 11 to 19, and the guinean amberjack 19 to 23, so there is some potential there for 

overlap. 

On the other hand, if identification doesn't matter too much either way, then why not put the fish back, 

which is what I did fishing out from Puerto Rico in the Canary Islands, and more recently from the 

shore around Ascension where they are prolific up to around double figures. 

At Puerto Rico on Gran Canaria where we had a few small almaco jacks, while I know there are some 

good amberjacks to be caught around the island too, I was happy enough when the skipper said it was 

an almaco to take his word for it. That was good enough for me, and I don't doubt that the fish would 

also have approved too, even if we had actually got its name wrong. 

BLUE RUNNER Caranx crysos 


Another warm water fish typically 

ranging between latitudes 

corresponding with Angola to the south 

and the Bay of Biscay to the north on 

both sides of the Atlantic, which 

occasionally finds itself on an anglers 

hook around the south and west of the 

British Isles. In this case the record 

inclusion came from a shore mark along 

the north Cornish coast. 

John Patten, Blue Runner, Florida 

I personally have never come across 

them over here on our side of the pond. 

But I have caught them on many 

occasions while fishing in Florida. Not 

so much as a deliberate target, though 

they are regarded very highly as a light 

tackle game fish willing to take all 

manner of baits, lures, and flies. 

My experience is of picking up small ones on scraps of squid trotted away from the boat under a small 

float in a chum slick put out to attract any small fish that might come along to fill up the live-bait wells. 

Like Scad, they are tough little fish as well as game fighters, and make excellent long lasting live baits. 

A fish which when you locate them can be particularly numerous, and very quick off the mark when it 

comes to finding and taking a bait. 

209

Taking account of the sparsity of catches in home waters, it's more probably an occasional tail end 

straggler un-intentionally finding itself this far north following an extensive bout of favourable 

conditions, but none the less, worth keeping an eye out for anyway. 

Typically jack-like, even scad-like in appearance, though with a slightly deeper body profile, and 

generally more powerful build, particularly around the shoulders and head. The mouth is large, the tail 

very strongly forked, and the second dorsal and anal fins are of roughly balanced size and layout. 

As with the scad, but not the two amberjack species mentioned previously, the lateral line comprises a 

series of obvious bony scales or scutes numbering 46 to 56. These become more pronounced from where 

it curves over the pectoral fin towards tail. 

In the scad, the first dorsal fin is taller than second. With the blue runner the reverse is true. A blueish 

green to olive green fish on the back and upper sides becoming silvery grey below, with a dusky spot, 

though this may be indistinct, on the upper gill cover. 

PILOT FISH Naucrates ductor 


Most people, including none anglers, 

will be familiar with pilot fish, having 

seen them shadowing sharks on TV 

documentaries. Sharks tolerate them as 

equal partners in a symbiotic 

relationship in which the pilot fish rids 

the shark of various ecto-parasites in 

exchange for scraps of food, protection 

from predators, and an understanding 

between the pair that it doesn't ultimately feature on the sharks menu at some stage, all of which seems 

to work quite well. 

So well in fact that pilot fish hate to be without their 'partner', and as such have been said to shadow 

boats, which is suggested as one reason why they turn up around the British Isles where very 

occasionally they are caught on rod and line, one of the latest examples having turned up in Carmarthen 

Bay. 

Thankfully, at last, a jack that is easy to identify. One in fact that is slightly different in shape to the 

more familiar scad in that it is a little heavier built with a rounded face. Also there are three to five short 

individual spines replacing the more familiar first dorsal fin. 

Two similar free spines are situated in front of anal fin on the underside, and there is a distinct scaleless 

keel following the run of the lateral line from just before the back edge of the dorsal and anal fins 

reaching to the start of the tail fin, none of which really matters a jot as colouration and markings should 

settle the issue anyway. Pilot fish are blue grey with between five and seven broad darker vertical bands. 

THE SEA BREAMS 

As with the jacks, the wrasses, and the tuna's, the sea breams are essentially a warm water family at the 

northern edge of its range at our latitude, but one which looks destined to continue to spread in terms 

of diversity and geographical limits as sea temperatures continue to rise. 

210

Already we are seeing that, not only in terms of new species such as the couches and pandora breams 

being added to the home waters list within my angling life time, but also the push northwards over the 

past several years. 

It is now possible to fish Luce Bay in Scotland and successfully target black bream in good numbers, a 

species which barely ventured much further north than Cardigan Bay in Wales not that long ago. 

A family characterised by laterally compressed, often deep body profiles, a single dorsal fin comprising 

sharp spines then softer rays, rough scales, and in many cases an almost metallic look. 

Also a family in which sex changing can occur. And as was the case with the mullets, there is an 

imposter in there too, the rays bream, which is no relation to the true sea breams of the family sparidae. 

It unfortunately just happens to share the word bream in its name. 

BLACK BREAM Spondyliosoma cantharus 


A typical bream-like fish with a laterally compressed oval body, single continuous dorsal fin comprising 

a spiky first section and a softer second section, a small mouth, rough scales, plenty of sharp finger 

threatening spines, and a rather metallic looking sheen to its overall visual presentation. 

Helping separate the black bream from its many close relatives is its colouration, which can be quite 

dark, and in some individuals, as the name suggests, bordering on black, though often as a colour wash 

over a silver metallic looking back ground, particularly lower down the flanks. 

211

Some individuals can also have several broad darker bars along their flanks. There may even be hints 

of blue or gold patterning here and there too, which, as with the darker bars and depth of dark 

colouration generally, in some fish can be quite variable, though the tendency is that most individuals 

coming from a particular location will all be similarly marked. 

Black bream are also a nest building species with some particularly interesting gender habits. Most 

members of the sea bream family sparidae are thought to be hermaphrodites; that is animals born with 

both sets of sex organs. Protandrous hermaphrodites mature as males, some of which later change to 

females, whereas protogynous hermaphrodites do things the other way around. 

Whilst not conclusive, research suggests that black bream mature as females, some of the larger of 

which, according to need, later become males displaying the characteristic humped shoulder and 

iridescent blue band between the eyes. 

Black bream and Sussex were synonymous when I first read about angling for the species. The 

Kingmere rocks in particular. All those late spring to early summer stories of huge catches of fish to six 

pounds and more, plus a dipping of the toe into the world of light tackle fishing allowing fish to show 

what they're made of instead of subduing them with overwhelmingly heavy gear was particularly 

inspiring reading back then. 

Ironically, more than forty years would elapse before I would catch my first Sussex black bream on a 

run out from Chichester eastwards along the coast towards Selsey aboard Graeme Pullen's Wilson Flyer. 

There we took quite a few very nice specimens on ultra light fixed spool outfits, finally fulfilling the 

dreams of all those years ago. 

That of course wasn't my first black bream encounter. There have been many over the years, and from 

a whole string of venues, which in a way have mirrored the species expansion northwards, marking 

them out as another of those rare fish to have enjoyed some measure of success in the face of all the ills 

fish population numbers more generally have suffered over recent times. 

Ironically, despite the increasing expansion, the 

species has still suffered numerically along the south 

coast where they once prospered. Also in terms of its 

breeding grounds which are being destroyed 

commercially, and last but not least, a decrease in 

their average size due to increased commercial 

interest in the species. 

The first black bream I ever saw was on a planned 

bream fishing trip, but not one targeting black bream. 

As will become clear in the red bream account, I have 

spent a lot of time dropping small mackerel strips on 

2/0 hooks to short droppers right into the thick of the 

Eddystone and its adjacent reefs aboard boats fishing 

out from Looe in Cornwall. 

Red bream were far and away the most common 

species there back then, to the point that I was actually 

surprised one day when a couple of nice sized blacks 

also made the frame. 

Dawn Williams, Pwllheli Black Bream 

It wasn't me that caught them unfortunately. I was 

still a black bream virgin at that stage. But 

determined that wasn't going to remain the case, by 

212

the end of the trip, still with no black bream to my credit, I decided that I would do something about it, 

which fortunately was shaping up to be achievable a good deal nearer to home. Mid Wales in fact. 

It seems that having bypassed the remainder of the west country and south Wales in respect of 

swimming over what appeared to have been suitable ground in places, black bream had decided to set 

up shop in Cardigan Bay. 

Yet another example from a whole line of similar incidents where fish push northwards into new 

territory, seemingly ignoring potentially suitable ground as they go, when the ultimate goal of their 

journey, which presumably is finding something better, is never guaranteed. 

Yet still they do this, as have the smoothhounds into Scottish waters and the trigger fish in the Heysham 

nuclear power station intakes. A fact which never ceases to amaze me. 

Aberystwyth and Aberdovey were both starting to make their name as black bream hot spots during the 

1970's, which despite all the ills mentioned previously that have befallen the species, continues to be 

the case, though no longer as this species most northerly outpost. 

Picking up on what I said earlier about ignoring heavy reefy ground along the north Devon, north 

Cornish and South Wales Coast in favour of pressing on, you can't help but wonder what it is that really 

drives a species northwards in this way, motivating it into pioneering mode. 

The reefs off the south Cornish coast 

are in many ways a mirror of those 

along the north coast. Then you 

throw into the equation the fact that 

while we did catch blacks out from 

Looe, it was just the odd one mixed 

in amongst so many reds. 

So were the reds simply beating the 

blacks to the baits through shear 

weight of numbers. I think not. The 

answer to that one lies in the 

evidence, with still only small 

numbers of black bream out there 

long after the red bream population 

spectacularly nose dived. 

Aberystwyth Black Bream haul 1970’s 

There had to be another factor, which it you reject water temperature on the basis that Cardigan Bay is 

quite a bit further north than the English Channel, only really leaves terrain preference, and it is this 

that appears to be the most likely candidate. 

Along the Susses coast, the preference is not for heavy ground per se, but for areas of more mobile 

loose material such as gravel adjacent to chalk reefs into which the males can excavate a nest for 

spawning purposes. 

Cardigan Bay also fits this particular requirement very well, because it has several extensive fingers of 

'reef' which are actually loose stones and other rubble, supposedly the remains of long since deposited 

glacial moraines. 

A glacier is for want of a better definition a river of ice. A long narrow ribbon which builds where the 

snow falls, gravitationally creeping slowly towards lower altitudes, which generally means the coast 

and ultimately the sea. 

213

As they flow, for a variety of reasons, debris in the form of 

stones, boulders, and even soil from the surrounding valley 

slopes falls onto and become consolidated into the glacier, 

which then carries the material along until ultimately it melts, 

leaving ridges or flat planes of loose material depending on 

the type of glacier and moraine in question. 

It is this process that is said to have formed the various 

fingers of reef currently accessed from ports like 

Aberystwyth, Aberdovey, Porthmadoc and Pwllheli, all of 

which attract vast numbers of black bream throughout the 

summer months. 

Obviously, the black breams arrival here will be a little later 

than might be expected along the south coast due to the extra 

time required to press further north from their southerly overwintering 

grounds. But the link between West Wales and 

black bream should at least be easier to understand. It's the 

substrate that is key. 

Geoff Thomas, Black Bream 

Water temperature and food availability are also determining 

as well as controlling factors in the overall picture, but must 

work alongside as opposed to independently of the fishes 

other needs. 

I mentioned earlier the noticeable size reduction in black bream over recent years, and nowhere has this 

been more evident to me than in Cardigan Bay. I once did a feature for one of the mags back in the late 

70's to early 80's out from Aberdovey, where not only did we have an absolute beano of a day 

numerically, but also in terms of the sheer quality of the fish, many of which topped three pounds, with 

several topping four pounds. 

One even came within an ounce of the Welsh record at the time. Not the six pounders of the early 

Kingmere days. But they weren't seeing that quality of fish there any longer by that stage either. 

The fishing along that middle stretch of Cardigan Bay over the moraines was quite outstanding, and 

while that sort of quality can no longer be expected, I was none the less given a lesson in black bream 

fishing there quite recently that has been well and truly etched on to my brain. 

This was a trip out from Aberystwyth in 2011 with Dave Taylor aboard 'Aldeberan' who I'd fished with 

many times over the years and who was about to retire, the idea being to produce a feature on the man 

and the fishing, plus record a well deserved audio interview for archive. 

On board that day was local school teacher Jeff Thomas who was fishing with a tiny fixed spool outfit 

and was about to give us a master class by catching more black bream than everyone else on the boat 

put together. 

Bream are relatively small fish with equally small mouths, and quite often, problems in catching them 

tend to be of anglers own making. I learned a long time ago that scaling down was the key to success 

with bream, not only in terms of hook size, but also bait. 

I've seen bream come up on size 6/0 hooks loaded with bait aimed at say conger. Stories of fish which 

should never have been caught are always going to crop up. But these are the exceptions. The result of 

sheer determination on the part of the fish, and dare I say it, bad fishing on the part of the angler in not 

noticing something was happening down at the business end of things earlier. 

214

I've had it happen to me on more than one occasion, so nobody is immune. It's the conversion ratio of 

bites to fish caught that is the true barometer, and to improve on that with bream, you really need to be 

scaling things back to meet their specific requirements. 

Giving them something bite sized on a short dropper fished above the lead both to keep the hooks away 

from snags and have the bait very clearly on show has always been important to me. But Jeff on this 

occasion took that to a whole new level by fishing a string of sabiki lures which are made from fish skin 

whipped to size ten hooks baited with a tiny sliver of squid, which even a modest sized bream would 

have had no difficulty wolfing down in one go. 

No need there to miss bites through interested fish being forced to nibble the bait down to a manageable 

size. If they wanted it, they had it in one go. And while this might have been marginally less interesting 

to some fish on account of the bait being so small, with bite to hook up conversion rates so high, Jeff 

was able to race away in terms of fish numbers. 

The following spring I was fishing over in Florida where I spotted sabiki's on sale, and recalling Jeff's 

master class, I bought several packs before heading out fishing from Cape Coral. 

Once out, the first thing we needed was bait. Live-baits are always handy over there, so I put the sabiki's 

down and came back up with a never ending supply pretty much to order, which meant we didn't need 

a live well. 

When I wanted a live-bait I caught one, and when I didn't, to avoid hooks lying about in the boat, I 

simply left the gear static at the bottom, and still the sabiki's caught, despite there being not a breath of 

breeze to rock the boat and move the lures. That's how good they are. They didn't even need to be jigged 

up and down. So it was back to the shop on the last day to stock up ready for home, because the 

following spring I had a Sea Angler feature trip planned out from Pwllheli fishing one particular 

moraine known as St. Patrick's Causeway. A long fairly narrow pile of stones and boulders, quite close 

to the surface in places, covered with black bream over the top, and usually plenty of huss and tope in 

the deeper water along its edges. 

Jason Owen aboard 'Hal Aled' was our skipper, and although it was flat calm on a bright sunny day, it 

was still early season following on the heels of a long spell of wind with Jason not quite sure how the 

day might go. 

With hind sight, he needn't have 

worried. It met up to all our 

expectations and more. We found the 

mackerel on the way out, then with 

swim feeders loaded with mackerel 

guts attached to the lead beneath the 

sabiki's, Charlie Pitchers and I 

proceeded to knock seven bells out of 

the bream. 

The other lads were catching a few. 

Then having cottoned on to our 

tactics and found themselves some 

shrimp rigs and the like, were very 

quickly up to speed themselves. 

It was around this point that the tope started to move in, biting the swim feeders off, and nicking the 

bream from the hooks. The sabiki rigs were constantly shrinking one hook at a time until they were all 

gone. 

215

Then unfortunately it was back either to more conventional gear, or to heavier duty flowing traces which 

produced dozens of tope to forty eight pounds. What a good day. 

Sticking with Pwllheli for a moment, another bream trip I took part in for a magazine feature some 

years earlier was aboard Dave Carey's boat 'Judy B'. Besides it being a beautiful day and producing lots 

of decent fish, two things in particular stand out about that trip. 

The first was that as the tide died away and the fishing started to tail off, Dave produced a huge container 

of boiled rice with he put into a mesh bag tied to the side of the boat so that it was just lapping in the 

water, slowly releasing the rice grains, which in the slack tide fell by gravity out of view a short distance 

from the anchored boat. 

This was sufficient to revive the flagging attentions of the bream which came right back on the feed 

again, though not with quite the same intensity as earlier. And when they came up they were bursting 

to the gills with rice grains. 

It's not as if we were using rice as hook bait, so just why it should trigger that level of response is 

difficult to say. The important message here however is that it did. 

Dave also had another trick up his sleeve to winkle out a few more extra fish. A sliding float rig with a 

one ounce drilled bullet lead stopped by a swivel around twelve inches above a size four hook baited 

with tiny sliver of mackerel. 

The bait was allowed to plummet dragging the reel line through the centre of the float until it touched 

bottom. A small piece of elastic band was then tied tightly around the line to act as an adjustable stopper 

and slid down until the float was holding the bait a couple of inches clear of the sea bed. 

What little tide there was could then be used to slowly trot the float and bait away from the boat, 

imparting just enough movement to get the bream interested again. 

I spent half an hour fishing the same way myself, and I have to say that the excitement of watching the 

float bob, plus fighting the instinct to strike every time it twitched, made for some of the best edge of 

the seat fishing I've enjoyed in many a long time. 

On my local patch, over the past several years, an odd black 

bream has been picked up over the boulders along the 

Lancashire coast and further up over similar ground around 

the southern edge of Walney Island. But not in a way that 

could be regarded as with either regularity or predictability. 

Genuinely, just odd ones. 

Charlie Pitchers and I also had a few out from Caernarfon in 

our boat, which should come as no surprise as they had been 

about in a couple of localised holding areas around Trefor and 

Dinas for quite a few years. And we again had a good session 

on them in the same area aboard Andy Owen's boat 'Morgan 

James' out from Port Dinorwic. 

I've also caught black bream from my own boat well up inside 

the Menai Strait, and more recently, Tony Parry has 

discovered quite a small but prolific hot spot for them off 

Rhyl. All part of what could be argued is a progressive 

advance northwards since those early days back in the 1970's 

when Sussex ruled the roost. 

Graeme Pullen, Sussex Bream 

216

What clinched that line of thinking for me was when Ian Burrett, who I often fish with in and around 

Scotland's Luce Bay, called to say that he'd found them in quite big and reasonably predictable numbers 

at a couple of marks higher up in the bay when putting the boats in at the village of Ardwell up towards 

Sandhead, where on one exploratory visit, between his three small boats, they'd taken in excess of a 

hundred fish, all of which, in true Ian Burrett style had been returned to the water unharmed. 

So who knows what the future holds in terms of northerly migration. With much sparser boat fishing 

activity further up along Scotland's west coast, they may already have progressed up there too as yet 

un-noticed. 

Boat fishing obviously has been my main focus of attention so far, but is by no means the only approach. 

Rock perch fishing can also produce black bream, dependant of course on where and how you choose 

to fish. Some of the steep shingle beaches along the south coast also turn up the odd one here and there 

too. 

I'm no shore angler as I've made clear elsewhere already, so my experience in that regard can at times 

be limited. That said, I do have experience of catching black bream from the shore. From the rocks in 

fact around Herm in the Channel Islands on various baits, including ragworm and sandeel strips fished 

deep under a sliding float in a trail of rubby dubby made up from boiled sandeels, bread, and pilchard 

oil, spooned into the water to attract and hold fish in our swim. 


RED BREAM Pagellus bogaraveo 


217 

A deep bodied bream with a noticeable 

hump between the eye and the start of 

the dorsal fin, the eye itself being large, 

hinting at its deep water offshore 

preference, which are just two of 

several points of anatomical detail 

useful for identification. 

For our purposes though, simply look 

out for a deep bodied laterally 

compressed fish with a wash of red 

colouration over the back and upper 

flanks of an otherwise silvery grey 

background, with a very prominent 

diffuse dark blotch just above where the lateral line starts close to the top of the gill cover. 

A fish which is a protandrous hermaphrodite, meaning it starts life with both sets of sex organs 

eventually maturing as a male, some of which switch over to being females as or when required. 

Personally speaking, this is my favourite bream species, and a fish I have invested a lot of time, effort, 

and money into fishing for, particularly in the 1970's and early 1980's when the long run south from 

Lancashire to the west country was regularly rewarded with some quite spectacular light tackle fun 

fishing, plus some excellent meals later when I got back home. 

The Eddystone reef fishing out from Looe was the main focus there, though we also had them off 

Mevagissey over the rough round, plus some particularly good ones when anchoring the wrecks at slack 

water out from Plymouth. Guernsey, and Newquay.

The last red bream I saw caught came from one of the reef marks out off Newquay. Then suddenly, 

they were gone. Not just thinned out, but to all intents and purposes, from my perspective at least, they 

might just as well have been driven to a point of sudden mass extinction. 

How could such a prolific offshore fish nose dive in so spectacular a fashion. Angler pressure was 

mentioned, though if I'm honest, while I was particularly interested in catching them, with such good 

wreck and reef prospects for all manner of other stuff around the West Country back then, I don't think 

too many other anglers were that fussed. 

Then by pure chance one evening while chatting with Sid Pender down at Penzance, what may well 

have been the cause, or at least a good part of it, suddenly came to light when he commented on an 

incident involving a large Scottish commercial boat which was either a mid water trawling, or a partner 

in a pair, out looking for mackerel close to the Runnel Stone. This boat brought in six thousand stone 

of 'unidentified' by-catch which turned out to be adult red bream, pretty much wiping out the entire 

breeding stock. In the twenty years following that incident, Sid caught just two red bream. 

In the lead up to chatting through that body blow incident, the same 

Irish Red Bream conversation also made mention of how the small local inshore boats at the end 

of the mackerel feathering season would cut their feather rigs down in terms of 

hook numbers, add pieces of mackerel to those that were left, and again around the Runnel Stone, have 

a good couple of months hand-lining for red bream, which pretty much sums up arguably the best 

outline terminal tackle approach for catching them. 

I started off fishing baited feathers out over the Eddystone, but quickly realised that as versatile as this 

approach can be across a very wide range of reef species, there were better ways of achieving a much 

improved similar end. 

Building on the feathers pattern, because let's face it, most terminal rigs are little more than variations 

on a very small number of basic themes, we adapted the three droppers above the lead idea by using 

218

much stronger sharper hooks, and built ourselves a bream trace that could cope with pretty much 

anything, with the added bonus that it also brought other species into the mix for those occasions when 

the bream weren't feeding too well. 

It was an all monofilament rig comprising a main spine of sixty to eighty pounds breaking strain with 

three lighter droppers tied to swivels trapped in position by beads, and because we didn't have crimps 

to fix their position back then, using such strong mono for the backbone of the trace meant that we could 

simply tie a knot either side of the beads and trap the dropper that way, knowing the trace would still 

be strong enough for conger or ling should they come along. 

To help ensure that one might, the bottom dropper was tied at around three feet in length with a 6/0 

hook to the same heavy mono with two shorter lighter droppers above it, the middle one with a 2/0 

hook, and on the top dropper a size one to ensure we had all options covered. The only proviso was 

spacing the droppers such that they couldn't self tangle on the drop, and it was a very productive rig. 

Some might say that the small top hook was a wee bit flimsy for what might come along. Even when 

baiting it with the tiniest of mackerel strips. And while there were occasions when it did manage to 

bring up big fish, on others it didn't last the distance. The thinking behind it though was plainly and 

simply ticks on the bucket list, which was still in its infancy back then. 

Out over the Eddystone, though it possibly wasn't potentially as species rich as it might be today in the 

wake of rising sea temperatures, there were still interesting and unusual fish to be had, the most 

memorable of which was a relative of the bass, the beautifully patterned comber. 

Talking to people in the south west, both anglers and commercials, as you might expect, it seems that 

the Scottish trawler(s) working the Runnel Stone that fateful day didn't quite scoop up the entire 

breeding stock, though the encounter certainly made a massive dent in it. 

Over the past few years, particularly around the Channel 

Islands, there have been signs of this slow growing late 

maturing bream species tentatively but steadily struggling to 

make something of a measured comeback. 

Mainly small fish for the moment, known locally as chad's, 

with a few middle range specimens dotted about here and 

there. But gone still are the days when you could fill a fish 

box with four to five pound red bream, and out over the 

wrecks, not unrealistically set your sights much higher, with 

the biggest ever specimen brought to the scales dragging the 

needle round to over 9½ pounds on Mevagissey harbour. 

The shore record not unexpectedly is a Channel Island fish. 

Aldernay to be precise. The best specimen landed in Welsh 

waters, though small by comparison to the south west is still 

a creditable fish considering the circumstances, weighing in 

at a touch over one and a quarter pounds from Amlwch on 

Anglesey, which is more like a chunk of Cornwall dropped 

into the Irish Sea than it is the rest of Wales. 

Surprisingly, the Scots too get in on the act with a more than 

creditable fish of four pounds ten ounces caught off 

Ardnamurchan on the western mainland looking south 

towards the Isle of Mull. 

Phill Williams, Looe 1970’s 


219

GILTHEAD BREAM Sparus aurata 


Having a blunt steeply rising facial 

profile is a distinct characteristic of the 

gilthead, which is both a euryhaline 

species tolerant of fluctuating salinity 

levels, providing these are not extreme 

or sudden, and a protandrous 

hermaphrodite, which means it starts 

life with both sets of sex organs 

eventually maturing as a male, some of 

which switch over to being females as 

required. 

What they most definitely cannot 

tolerate are sudden dips in water 

temperature which will push them out deep to more stable conditions, a point worth bearing in mind 

perhaps early season. 

Positive identification is made easy by a highly conspicuous golden curved bar bordered by darker 

markings across the forehead. There is also a dark patch at the base of the pectoral fin, plus a second at 

the beginning of the lateral line running onto the gill cover, the edge of which can be scarlet. 

General colouration is otherwise metallic grey above becoming silvery below, then white. A beautiful 

powerful looking fish, which by any definition it most certainly is. 

Despite an extremely limited home waters potential geographically speaking, gilthead have a very real 

and at times obsessive following along the south coast of England, and increasingly also over in Ireland, 

particularly amongst shore anglers. 

Some are caught from boats, especially small boats working the same areas that the shore lads fish. But 

we are predominately talking shore fishing here, which for a powerful migrant from afar makes quite a 

refreshing change. 

Said to be an extremely rare inshore vagrant north of the Bay of Biscay, and even within the confines 

of the bay itself, this is now a species that is increasingly turning that supposed wisdom on its head by 

becoming something of a regular star attraction in some areas. 

The Salcombe Estuary in particular, though other adjacent West Country estuaries and harbours both 

north and south of Lands End, some Channel Island harbours such as St. Sampson on Guernsey, and 

similar areas around the south and west of the Irish Republic are also getting in on the act, which 

between them throw up a number of themed clues. 

Coastal shallows in the extreme south west, preferably with some freshwater influence or a harbour are 

favoured, with a first appearance in the spring followed by a disappearance either offshore or by 

dropping back to the south towards the end of the summer would on paper at least appear to sum things 

up. 

But as ever when collating scientific data, there are always those un-explained troublesome outliers. 

Blips on an otherwise perfect distribution map, which in the case of the gilthead are the semi-puzzling 

Welsh record from Llandwyn Beach on Anglesey, and the inexplicably puzzling Scottish record from 

Dunnet Head, which is about as far north as it's possible to go on the British mainland. 

220

Mike Thrussell, Gilthead 

Bream 

I have caught giltheads on a number of occasions, though mainly 

at the smaller end of the size range, and always well outside our 

home waters boundaries. 

Chief amongst these has been the southern Mediterranean from the North African beaches of Tunisia 

where they proved to be not only the most dominant, but at times apparently, the only species within 

casting range. So it's not really my place to talk with authority on gilthead fishing on the home front. 

Saying that, I am privy to a good deal of quality information on the subject by way of an audio interview 

I recorded with gilthead bream fanatic ad Sakuma tackle MD Alex MacDonald, the basic content of 

which is summarised as follows........ 

Predominately Salcombe which holds both British records, boat and shore, with fish up to just a touch 

either side of the ten pound mark, though the Exe, Teign, Taw and Torridge estuaries should also be in 

reckoning. So potentially a big as well as structurally a powerful fish, even by bream standards, which 

needs to be geared up for specifically. 

This is not shore fishing in the traditional sense of firing out baits towards the horizon pinned in place 

by wired grip leads. The recommendation here is to carefully place baits along the established run of 

hard bottomed clearly defined estuary channels, which depending on where these are situated, could 

require no more than a good lob. 

In that regard, a sturdy fixed spool reel loaded with braid and with a quality drag suitably set for what 

hopefully is to come, paired with either a heavy duty spinning rod or stepped up carp rod capable of 

handling two to three ounces of lead is ideal. 

Lead pattern is obviously a matter for personal choice. Alex tends to use a three ounce pear lead 

hammered flat to lie on the bottom and not catch too much flow. 

Good chemically sharpened hooks are also recommended and must be constantly checked for sharpness 

on account of the hard interior of the giltheads mouth, which besides the normal teeth, comes armed 

with hard crushing plates to deal with molluscs and crabs which are its favoured food. 

221

Peeler crab in particular is a highly rated bait when the main crab moults are under-way, switching to 

lugworm as the summer progresses, then back to crab later in the season, though shellfish still in their 

shells are a favourite elsewhere in Europe, along with smashed up shellfish catapulted in to a swim as 

ground bait. With that in mind, shellfish farms might also hold some attraction. 

Invariably, any fish caught tend to be relatively isolated catches or from small groups moving up and 

down the estuary with the tide. In so far as they coincide with previously established feeding times 

within a tide, early morning and late evening sessions are preferred, along with a willingness to move, 

which means travelling light, on the one hand if nothing seems to be happening, and on the other after 

a fish has been caught, trying to second guess where they might move to next in order to be there when 

they arrive. 


COUCHES BREAM Pagrus pagrus 


Couches bream is one of the typically 

deeper bodied species, but with a 

noticeably flattened blunt facial profile. 

The other `red' bream species such as 

the pandora and true red bream lack this 

sudden change of profile angle above 

the eye. 

Colouration is basically silvery with a 

slight tinge of pinkish red washed over 

the upper parts and fins with some 

darker and lighter blotching. 

Phill Williams, Couches Bream 

A species belonging to the protogynous 

hermaphrodite category of having both 

sets of sex organs, maturing as a female, 

only for large specimens to switch over 

to being males as and when the need 

requires them to. 

My experience of the species is of catching them on small fish baits out over moderately deep water off 

Puerto Rico at the southern end of Gran Canaria, and off Gibraltar, where if you fished small enough, 

in the company of other 'UK exotics', they were fairly easy to catch. 

The mid 1990's saw quite a number of reported occurrences, including rod caught specimens, from 

around the Channel Islands, and Guernsey in particular, where they are now thought to be quite firmly 

established, and may even be breeding both off there and along the Cornish Coast. One more indication 

perhaps, if ever it were needed, of rising sea temperatures making their mark. 

Quite a large growing fish with weights up around fifteen pounds potentially attainable, though it has 

to be said that in today's commercially pressured climate, those sorts of weights are rarely achievable, 

particularly as this is a species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 

endangered list. 

Sandy or patchy ground is generally favoured where a diet of crabs, prawns, shrimps and small fishes 

is pursued. 

222

BOGUE Boops boops 


Bogue are a long shallow bodied 

shoaling species of sea bream, 

commonly found in very shallow 

coastal areas over rocky ground where 

a variety of suitably sized crustaceans 

and some algae form the basis of their 

regular diet. 

Colouration is greenish blue with 

golden or silvery flanks and three to 

five longitudinal golden stripes. There 

is also a small and at times diffuse dark 

spot at the base of the pectoral fin. 

A fish which can quite happily live 

anywhere from the sea bed to the 

surface where they may form quite 

extensive shoals after dark, a point not lost on southern European fishermen who attract them with 

bright lights on the bows of their boats in order to net them. 

Another species which falls into the protogynous hermaphrodite category of having both sets of sex 

organs, initially maturing as a female, only for large specimens to switch over to being males as and 

when the need arises. 

As ever with the more exotic bream species, my experience is of catching them around the Canary 

Islands, both when float fishing small baits from the rocks and harbour walls, and by the bucket load 

on tiny pieces of prawn at the bottom out in the boat. 

Though anglers have occasionally picked them up for as far back as I can remember off south Devon 

and Cornwall, there are now increasing reports of bogue being more regularly caught around the 

Channel Islands, the west country generally, and the south west of Ireland, probably resulting from a 

concerted northerly push. 

PANDORA BREAM Pagellus erythrinus 


As with the white, axillary and saddled breams, one of an ever growing number of sub tropical species 

more inclined towards a life spent south of the Bay of Biscay, which now occasionally creeps beyond 

its normal range, presumably encouraged by rising sea temperatures, ending up usually around the 

Channel Islands or along adjacent parts of the south coast. 

A fish which could at a glance be readily mistaken for the more common red bream Pagellus bogaraveo 

which it quite probably has been confused with over the years. Particularly around the western English 

Channel and along the coast of south-west Ireland before the red bream slipped into decline and the 

presence of both the pandora and the couches bream was realised. 

223

Shallow water down to perhaps thirty 

fathoms in the vicinity of rocks are its 

normal haunts, though at times it may 

also feed over sand. Either way, it is 

not an uncommon fish and can be 

caught using exactly the same baits 

and tactics as for red bream, adding 

even more to the potential for 

confusion. 

The key point in distinguishing 

between the pair is the dark blotch on 

the shoulder just above the gill cover 

which red bream have and pandora 

lack. The facial profile also lacks the steep vertical angle and rather blunt appearance of the similar 

looking couch's bream. 

Colouration is red on the back and upper flanks, changing to a pinker red, then silvery below. Small 

blue spots may also be present on the upper flanks. A protogynous hermaphrodite in which mature 

females become males as and when required. 

Another fish I have caught on a number of occasions while on holiday over the years, the first one of 

which was brought back to the UK from Majorca as part of a mixed species consignment of artwork 

specimens for Dr. Dietrich Burkel who was illustrating the Angling Encyclopaedia back in the 1970's. 

WHITE BREAM Diplodus sargus 


Also known as the sargo, as with the pandora, 

axillary, and saddled breams, one of an ever growing 

number of sub tropical species more inclined towards 

a life spent south of the Bay of Biscay, which now 

occasionally creeps up beyond its normal range, 

presumably encouraged by rising sea temperatures, 

ending up usually around the Channel Islands or 

along adjacent parts of the south coast. 

This is a deep whitish or silvery greyish fish with 

quite a sizeable dark blotch on the top of the tail stalk, 

and five narrow dark stripes running down from the 

upper back onto the flank separated by lighter 

coloured stripes which may or may not be visible. A 

protandrous hermaphrodite in which some males can 

switch to being females as required. 

White Bream, Gibraltar 

Much of its natural feeding is directed towards hard 

shelled creatures such as small crabs and molluscs 

which are dealt with readily by its powerful teeth, 

echoing my own experience of the species which we 

caught off Gibraltar using shellfish still in their 

shells as bait. 

224

AXILLARY BREAM Pagellus acarne 


Also known as the spanish bream, as 

with the pandora, white, and saddled 

breams, one of an ever growing 

number of sub-tropical species more 

inclined towards a life spent south of 

the Bay of Biscay, which does now 

occasionally creep beyond its 

normal range, presumably 

encouraged by rising sea 

temperatures, ending up usually 

around the Channel Islands or along 

adjacent parts of the south coast. 

A slightly shallower bodied bream than the more familiar species, and one with a slightly more offshore 

preference than many of its small southerly vagrant relatives, a fact hinted at by the large size of the 

eye. 

A fish said to have a preference for soft substrates from the shoreline down to maybe a hundred fathoms, 

though most are encountered between ten to fifteen fathoms. 

Colouration is a pinkish red on the upper body, perhaps becoming darker over the head, and more 

silvery below. 

The clincher however is a dark red spot at the base of the pectoral fin, which like the other fins is light 

pink with darker edgings. The inside of the mouth is orangey red. Another protandrous hermaphrodite 

starting life with both sets of sex organs, maturing as a male, some of which switch over to being females 

as required. 

A fish I have only come across once while out boat fishing off Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, and 

then, on account of its rather small size, probably only because I was fishing small pieces of prawn on 

size 6 hooks hooks in a deliberate attempt to patch up a few of the gaps in terms photographs for this 

book. 

Quite a small growing species, and one which appears only on the British record list in the mini species 

section with a specimen taken off Guernsey. 

SADDLED BREAM Oblada Melanura 


A very small but equally very common little 

fish familiar to all holiday makers popping a 

telescopic rod into their suit case for a 

southern European holiday, where they 

appear to be virtually everywhere around 

rocky harbours. But an unlikely vagrant at 

our latitude, with the fish which put it on the 

bucket list here being a small specimen taken 

at St. Austell in Cornwall. 

225

Perhaps not quite as deep in body profile as the more regularly caught bream species, but one that is 

readily identifiable by having a base colour of silvery grey with a single large black blotch surrounded 

in white where the body narrows just in front of the tail. 

Another protogynous hermaphrodite born with both sets of sex organs, which after initially maturing 

as a female, can where necessary switch to being a male. 

RAYS BREAM Brama brama 


Rays Bream are not members of the 

family sparidae to which all the 

aforementioned sea breams belong. 

But superficially, in terms of 

appearance, not unlike them by virtue 

of having a rounded laterally 

compressed body shape. In this case 

however it's much more like a rugby 

ball with a tail. A noticeably deeply 

forked tail in fact. 

The pectoral fin is also very long. But 

it's the steep rounded facial profile that 

immediately grabs the attention, and 

the fact that as with the true sea 

breams, there is just a single dorsal fin, 

though it doesn't start off with a sharp spiky section followed by a softer second section. This one starts 

very tall before plunging quickly in height and feels the same throughout. The anal fin, though not quite 

as long, is visually similar. 

In the fish I have examined, the back and upper flanks were reddish brown becoming silvery on the 

sides and under-parts, with hints of yellow in the pectoral fins. An open oceanic deep water fish often 

found feeding well up in the water column. Off the Portuguese coast where deep water lies close to the 

shore, ray's bream are extensively fished commercially. 

Angling boats have also occasionally encountered them around the British Isles. In the main, these have 

been off Ireland's Atlantic coast adjacent to deep water. Some years ago however, an angling boat which 

put out to fish the edge of the continental shelf from north west Scotland encountered a huge shoals of 

ray's bream feeding just beneath the surface at night, where dozens were caught on fish baited feathers. 

When I first started sea fishing seriously in the 1970's, reports of rays bream were not that un-common, 

while at the same time, still unusual enough for specimens to be mentioned in the angling press. 

Occurrences of fish typically in the five to seven pound bracket would start maybe mid summer off the 

south and west coast of Ireland, progressively moving up the extreme western extremity of Scotland, 

then around the northern tip including Orkney and Shetland on down into the North Sea, which is where 

most of the press reports would eventually come from around the onset of winter, all of which is (or 

was) part of a routinely predictable pattern. 

The problem for these fish was that this migration pattern takes time. So much time in fact that as they 

reached Scotland, and later England's east coast, sea temperatures would be starting to fall away. 

226

Caught out, instead of reversing their original route, some individuals would continue pushing south 

looking for the warmer deeper waters of southern Europe which they were never going to find, a 

proportion of which, for whatever reason, would struggle inshore seemingly 'stunned' by the cold, some 

taking anglers baits occasionally from the boats, but more usually from the shore, and more regularly 

still simply washing up on the beaches towards the end of the year either dead or semi-comatose. 

A friend of mine Ken Robinson from Whitley Bay collected me a few specimens to photograph and 

examine, plus several lumpsuckers also stranded on the bouldery beaches over there. 

Year after year this pattern would be repeated, as evidenced by the current record list inclusions, which 

are all from the 1970's taken either on their round the top of Britain migration route, or more usually in 

the middle section of the North Sea. Then suddenly, no more reports. Maybe the winters just aren't cold 

enough to affect them in the same way any more these days. 

THE WRASSES 

Like the sea breams, a collection of species more commonly found around the rocks and harbours of 

southern Europe and Mediterranean North Africa, where holiday anglers with their telescopic rods 

which they've hidden from the wife in the bowels of their suit cases regularly catch them in many 

different guises. 

In home waters, when I first started fishing, attention was paid mainly to the ballan and cuckoo wrasse. 

Some of the lesser species such as the corkwing and rock cook were no doubt also there, but being so 

small and ballan-like, would for the most part slip by un-noticed. 

Not anymore. Increasingly anglers are aware of what they are now catching, and every credit to them 

for that. But they'd better have those identification field guides ready, because the influx of exotic 

visitors has already started, with no doubt many more still to come. 

Also like the sea breams, wrasse as a family have the potential for sex switching, though unlike the sea 

breams, the direction and extent of this appears to be somewhat less clear, except in the cuckoo wrasse 

where the sexes look so very obviously different. 

BALLAN WRASSE Labrus bergylta 


Despite being heavily built, powerful looking fish, ballan wrasse don't like to get the sort of buffeting 

and bouncing around which heavy seas coming in on to permanent water rough ground stretches of 

shore line can experience, preferring instead to tuck themselves away into more sheltered gullies, or to 

simply lie low out of trouble if suitable shelter cannot be found, which is also going to be true of the 

other similar smaller species. 

Fortunately, as ballan wrasse have the potential to hit double figure weights while all the similar looking 

smaller species are measured usually in ounces, an identification cut off figure in the region of half a 

pound is probably about right here. 

Everything bigger than around half a pound, and certainly a pound, irrespective of colour or markings, 

unless of course it's a cuckoo wrasse, is going to be a ballan, whereas for anything under half a pound, 

if in doubt, it's worth checking it out a little more closely. 

All the wrasse species so far found in home waters have a long spiky first dorsal fin which merges into 

a shorter softer spined second dorsal fin, giving the impression of one long continuous run. Similarly, 

227

all are, in relative proportions, 

heavily built fish with quite 

large powerful tails, prominent 

lips, and short canine like teeth. 

For identification purposes, you 

can immediately rule the cuckoo 

wrasse and the goldsinny wrasse 

out of the reckoning based on 

their bright orange, blue, or 

yellow colouration, plus their 

distinctive upper back dark spot 

markings. 

Only the ballan, corkwing, rock 

cook, baillon's and scale rayed 

varieties are likely to pose any similarity problems, and even they can be readily separated in most 

instances, with ballan wrasse said to be protogynous hermaphrodites in which some females can switch 

to being males as required. 

Ballan wrasse are highly variable in colouration and patterning depending on location. Best then to 

check out the pre-operculum, which is the first flap of the gill cover. If this has a serrated edge it is NOT 

a ballan wrasse. The rock cook, corkwing and baillon's all have a serrated pre-operculum. 

It then becomes a case of looking for a single dark spot below the lateral line and in front of the tail for 

it to be a corkwing; a dark crescent shaped band on the tail fin which will also be lighter in colour at 

both its edge and its base to make it a rock cook; and no tail pattern or dark spot near the tail, but with 

red tinged fins for it to be a baillon's Wrasse. The scale rayed wrasse is self explanatory with scales 

extending onto its fin membranes. 

As regards maximum sizes, both the British boat and shore records, plus the Irish record which makes 

no distinction between boat and shore, all come in at over nine pounds, leaving the two Scottish records 

trailing way back in their wake at between five and six pounds. Still very good fish, and probably with 

a lot bigger yet to come. 

The fact that temperature controls wrasse movements as well as having an effect on food intake to 

weight conversion rates may well be a further factor here, particularly when temperatures take on 

sudden as opposed to gradual change. A prolonged very severe cold spell during the winter of 1962/63 

for example resulted in the deaths of many wrasse. 

As wrasse are long lived slow growing fish, it then took many years for fish of specimen proportions to 

start showing in regular numbers again, so maybe we still haven't seen the record peak just yet. 

The famous explorer and angler F H Mitchell-Hedges was for a long time credited with four huge ballan 

wrasse all over ten pounds taken from around Looe Island, the biggest of which, quoted at twelve 

pounds twelve ounces, held the British record for quite some time. 

It was long known that the quartet had been mounted and glass cased, and eventually this case turned 

up in a tea chest stashed away in a loft on the Isle of Wight. 

Closer examination of the proportions of its contents however lead to the supposed weights being 

declared in-accurate, and for Mitchell-Hedges record to be removed from the list. 

228

The biggest of the four was put at 

around nine pounds, and the others not 

far behind that weight. Still a 

magnificent haul taken long before the 

severe winter mentioned earlier. So the 

fact that the record keeps creeping on 

up and may yet continue to do so was 

always on the cards. 

Wrasse have always been a fish of 

mixed patronage. In my early days 

there used to be shore wrasse specialists 

who would openly sing the species 

praises in the press. Then that all 

seemed to subside, and ballan wrasse 

Dave Lewis Ballan Wrasse, Oxwich Bay 

were relegated to being more of a bycatch 

or something you fished if there 

was nothing else, or needed one in a species match. 

From the boat it was even worse. I do recall reading the odd article extolling the virtues of using a small 

boat to get in over inshore marks which couldn't be fished from the shore, in the main because of 

impossible or dangerous access. So once again, wrasse were being projected as something to target for 

a change, but never as part of any ongoing enthusiasm. 

I think what I'm trying to say here is that ballan wrasse have never been fully valued or taken seriously 

as a single species obsession for as far back as I can remember. But over the past couple of years, that 

situation has very definitely started to change, with people both appreciating their hard fighting qualities 

and their inshore availability, though no longer fishing for them in the time honoured ways of old, which 

has both elevated their standing, and made them even more catchable than ever before. 

But before we start digging too deeply into the present and the future, let's first do a little bit more raking 

over the past. 

Ballan wrasse have long been looked upon primarily as a shore anglers fish, which quite simply is not 

the case. They are not in the strictest definition of the term even a shore loving fish. What they like is 

permanent shallow water down to around forty feet with lots of heavy kelp, weed, and other rough 

ground cover, which just happens to bring them in close to some sections of the shore. 

On the other hand, it could just as easily be around some isolated piece of drying offshore rock or 

shallowing reef. The wrasse neither knows nor cares what the exposed bits are used for, and some of 

the best wrasse fishing I have taken part in has been from boats fishing offshore. 

I remember one day anchoring off Peninnis Head in the Isles of Scilly and having an absolute burster 

fishing short dropper rigs with lugworm baits, catching dozens of hard fighting ballan's to just short of 

five pounds as we struggled to keep them from power diving back into the snags and kelp. 

Another memorable occasion, though we weren't specifically fishing for wrasse this time, was a patch 

of reefy ground in around thirty feet of water in some pretty nasty weather conditions fishing ragworm 

baited feathers out from Wexford. There wrasse in the three to four pound bracket were really in feeding 

mood. 

Those are just a couple of examples of red letter boat trips, though there have been numerous other 

occasions when we caught well whilst not necessarily always specifically targeting wrasse, and could 

229

probably have had a whole lot more had we made the 

Jonathan Law, Holyhead Ballan effort, which for a variety of reasons we didn't do. 

Wrasse 

One such a venue is Holyhead. There are good ballan wrasse close in all the way around the coast from 

the breakwater down past Rhoscolyn and beyond. The 'Fangs' just off Trearddur Bay can produce some 

very good specimens where they are typically either deep reddish in colour, or a beautiful lighter 

greenish-yellow. 

Over in the North Sea, particularly from around Amble up into Scottish waters where there is more of 

a tendency to fish small baits over really heavy ground within the right sort of depth range, they tend to 

be darker and more drab. 

West country fish on the other hand are often bright red with pinkish tints and lots of lighter spots, 

whereas those taken off the south west of Scotland show more of a leaning towards deep unmarked red. 

So potentially very variable depending on location. What never changes for me is their power and 

willingness to make a contest of it once hooked. 

From the boat, it pays to fish hooks in the size one to 1/0 range baited with crab or worm on short simple 

monofilament droppers with something disposable weak linked to the bottom of the trace to take it 

down. 

Any bits of metal will do. One good trick is to cut thin strips from old lead flashings and roll them like 

a swiss-roll through a loop at the bottom of the trace, which, if it becomes snagged, will often unwind 

itself without loosing everything. 

The closer down into the rock and kelp you drop, the better in terms of fish potential interest, but the 

less time you have to bring a fish under control as it power dives for snaggy cover. That said, my best 

ever boat caught ballan wrasse was taken on anything but that approach. 

We'd just finished filming a fly fishing for pollack video off the Mull of Galloway, so I decided to work 

a long thin strip of mackerel belly close to the bottom on a six foot monofilament trace to see if I could 

interest a pollack or two. First drop, bingo, a take. 

230

So there I am winding in, certain I have 

a fish, only to see a large red blur under 

the surface quite a way out from the 

boat which I thought was a small 

pollack covered in kelp. But it wasn't. It 

was a ballan wrasse of five pound ten 

ounces, a couple of ounces bigger than 

the then Scottish record. 

Suitably weighed and photographed, 

we then put it back down on the hook to 

shoot some video footage of it, 

whereupon it promptly got away. Not 

that it mattered. The policy on Ian 

Burrett's 'Onyermarks' is that all fish, 

Phill Williams, Scottish record Ballan Wrasse including some IGFA pollack world 

records on the fly earlier that day, must 

go back. So it was always destined to be released without charge. 

Funnily enough, my best shore caught ballan wrasse came under similar circumstances. I was 

photographing a feature looking at shore competition fishing on Herm in the Channel Islands with my 

friends Peter Frise and Joe Gomez from Guernsey, and so as not to get in their way, I rigged up a short 

spinning rod with a boat style dropper rig baited with ragworm and let it go straight down the front of 

a rock face at my feet. 

That fish tipped the match scales at a shade over six and a half pounds, marginally bigger than specimens 

I'd taken on previous visits to the Channel Islands, again fishing over on Herm, that time at the landing 

steps where the ferry drops its passengers. In fact, the whole expanse between the Rosaire Steps and St. 

Peterport is littered with prime ballan wrasse, black bream, and bass holding marks. 

So much so that I approached the Guernsey tourist board with regard to taking my dinghy over to more 

fully investigate this entire piece of sheltered water, only to have the plan scuppered by the local 

Coastguard on the grounds that it wouldn't be safe to have outsiders racing about there with so many 

dangerous protruding and sub-surface rocks. I was disappointed, but I took his point. Maybe then a 

slowly paddled kayak would be a safer approach. 

Just to round things off, Graeme Pullen and I once spent a week exploring Lundy Island in the Bristol 

Channel, which is normally closed to angling. We'd read that it was the best shore based spot in Britain 

to target huge and potentially even record ballan wrasse, and as such were expecting monsters galore. 

Unfortunately it wasn't like that. I can only conclude that the people responsible for all the hype were 

assuming great things without ever having had the chance to actually try it. We had plenty of ballan and 

cuckoo wrasse, both legering and fishing slider floats, but nothing bigger than around four pounds. 

I was similarly disappointed with the Scilly Isles too from the shore due to the depths at some of the 

best accessible marks, though the boat fishing within casting range of some of the less accessible pieces 

of shoreline was excellent. 

There are going to be good shore marks right throughout the west country, particularly along the rocky 

north coast. But for me, you would need to go a long way to beat the Channel Islands, where the current 

boat record of nine pounds seven ounces by Jersey based charter boat skipper Tony Heart was taken, 

and possibly the Mull of Galloway where I know there are some very big fish, but where few boat 

anglers ever seriously try for them. 

231

Joe Gomez, Guernsey 

Jumping forward a decade now into the modern era, ballan 

wrasse have suddenly become highly fashionable targets 

once again. Not so much a case of the wheel having turned 

full circle, or even a new generation discovering the 

species, because as we all know, angler numbers are 

dropping away all the time, and young new blood coming 

in to replace them is so desperately lacking. 

One thing and one thing only has brought about this revival 

in interest, that being the development of Light and Heavy 

Rock Fishing, LRF and HRF, and the sudden realisation 

that many hitherto neglected species are actually worth 

fishing for, with a few added surprises along the way. 

Both LRF and HRF are variants of the same approach, the 

light and heavy component relating to the size of rods, reels 

and lures, plus the areas in which they are deployed. 

LRF tends to employ ultra light tackle and the smallest of 

lures worked around rocky harbours and inlets, targeting 

anything and everything at the lower end of the size range, 

bringing into the frame quite a few species which might 

previously have been over-looked. 

HRF on the other hand requires that heavier, though still 

not over heavy hand tackle and larger lures be used, and is probably aimed more at pollack, bass, and 

now as it would turn out, ballan wrasse along deeper, open, more exposed stretches of rocky permanent 

water coast line. 

One of the key practitioners of HRF is north Devon shore angler Danny Parkins who I have chatted 

with at length on all aspects of the topic. 

Danny is quite open about the fact that he got the idea from Channel Islander Keith White, then 

developed it based on what's known as the Texas Rigging method of using a self weighted head with 

an offset hook carrying a soft plastic lure into which the hook is embedded so that it won't be a snagging 

threat, but will cut through the lure body and hook a fish when a take followed by a strike comes along. 

Key to this is the use of none stretch braided line for instant feedback allowing a quick response, not 

only to set the hook, but also to help avoid a fish going to ground when it feels the point. 

Working in water typically between twelve to twenty feet in sheltered gullies over the snaggiest terrain 

imaginable with drab natural looking lures in the three to four inch range tweaked slowly along the 

bottom, the success rate with wrasse, and in particular big ballan wrasse, has been nothing short of 

phenomenal. 

In response, ballan wrasse have shown a whole new actively predatory side to their feeding which no 

other approach is able to tap into, nor in numerical terms it appears, comes even close to matching. 


232

CUCKOO WRASSE Labrus mixtus 


I 

I remember a time when many anglers thought, and possibly 

Male & Female Cuckoo Wrasse some still do think, that male and female cuckoo wrasse are 

different species of fish. Understandable I suppose in some ways 

as they do show extreme sexual dimorphism, which is the scientific way of saying they are very 

obviously visually different based on sex. 

Male cuckoo wrasse are strikingly beautiful fish with blue heads and blue patches on the sides of their 

body. These can often appear like stripes. Blue edges can also be found on the fins, the remainder of 

the colouration being a striking orangey yellow, with perhaps some white on the top of the head if the 

individual is in breeding condition. 

In contrast, the females are a plain deep orange to red with three prominent dark blotches on the upper 

back between the end of the dorsal fin and the tail. As with the males, expect these colours to be 

especially vivid around breeding time. 

Like ballan wrasse, cuckoo wrasse are protogynous hermaphrodites, all starting life as females with the 

ability to change sex when required, such as when the ratio between the sexes becomes disproportionate, 

or when the male in a small localised group dies, whereupon the dominant female changes and takes on 

the role. This metamorphosis is thought to take place over just a few days, and even more amazing is 

supposedly reversible. 

Other features include both dorsal fins being joined creating a spiny first part followed immediately by 

a softer second section; very prominent lips, and short sharp canine like teeth. 

While I have caught cuckoo wrasse from the shore at a number of deep water rock marks, this is 

predominantly a boat anglers fish, preferring depths of between twenty and forty fathoms over rocky, 

reefy ground, anywhere from the far north to the deep south, though at a much lower level along North 

Sea coasts. 

233

Left to their own devices, crabs, prawns and other small crustaceans are probably their primary food 

source, though the frequency with which they are found inside lobster pots also suggests that fish and 

scavenging are equally acceptable given the opportunity, which fits in nicely with how most are taken 

by anglers. 

Small cut fish baits, and to a lesser extent squid strips presented at or close to the bottom are as good as 

anything, though ragworm will also take its share. As for trace construction, this will depend on whether 

you are fishing at anchor or on the drift. 

At anchor you can place baits on the bottom without much risk of loosing everything to a snag, unlike 

drift fishing, where it pays to go for short droppers above the lead like a feather rig, allowing it to just 

touch bottom and lifting it clear at the first hint of a hang-up. 

Monofilament breaking strain isn't crucial to beat teeth or anything here, though I find that twenty to 

thirty pounds breaking strain does give a better presentation, and as importantly still won't put fish off. 

Size one hooks are probably about right. 

Thinking back to the venues I've caught them at, and looking 

at the spread of venues quoted in the various home waters 

record lists, this should not prove a difficult fish to find, and 

providing the bait and hook sizes are right, not a difficult 

fish to catch either. 

We used to see a lot out over the Eddystone reef, around the 

Holyhead area of Anglesey, and up into Scottish waters as 

far north as the Pentland firth. I've seen some particularly 

big ones fishing out from Scrabster which holds the current 

Scottish record at three pounds, though for some reason not 

the British record which is more than half a pound lighter, 

despite Scotland contributing to the overall British record 

List. 

The Isle of Man too can produce a lot, and we also used to 

get quite a few when boat fishing along the south and west 

coast of Ireland. 

Dawn, Male & Female Cuckoo Wrasse 

From the shore, Lundy Island and Rhoscolyn Head on 

Anglesey have been my most productive marks. A fish you 

shouldn't have to try too hard to tick off the list, but at the 

same time, one you can enhance your chances of 

encountering simply by scaling down accordingly. 

CORKWING WRASSE Crenilabrus melops 


If you regularly fish moderately deep areas of heavy ground over-looked by safe rock ledges, or the 

bouldery bases of deep harbour walls using small pieces of ragworm on size six or eight hooks under a 

sliding float straight down the face, if you then carefully examine all the small 'ballan wrasse' this will 

deliver, you are almost certainly going to find other previously over-looked small growing wrasse 

species mixed in amongst them, the most common of which is going to be the corkwing wrasse, which 

closely fits the ballan wrasse description given earlier to the point of easy confusion. 

234

For deliberately targeting them, there is 

no need to change anything tactically 

other than to keep fishing worm baits 

and make them a readily manageable 

size. Then simply look for the 

giveaway eye sized single dark spot 

below the lateral line just in front of the 

tail. 

There are other less obvious things to 

check for such as a serrated preoperculum 

or first gill cover. But quite 

frankly, why bother, as no other home 

waters wrasse species has this 

particular spot marking. A species that is thought to be a protogynous hermaphrodite with the ability to 

switch from female to male as required. 

A common inshore fish throughout the English Channel, Western Britain, and Ireland, becoming 

progressively thinner on the ground as you progress up into Scottish waters, though with continuing sea 

temperature rises, that could so easily change. 

My own catches have come from the Channel Islands, the Scillies, Lundy, Anglesey, and the Luce Bay 

area of Scotland. Grows to around six inches. 

GOLDSINNY WRASSE Ctenolabrus rupestris 


As with the corkwing, fish all the 

usual wrasse shore based haunts 

with small baits and hooks where 

you find plenty of cover and 

moderately deep permanent 

water. But equally, also expect to 

see them when fishing the same 

small baits from boats out over 

mixed heavy ground. 

My personal experiences extend 

to both boat and shore, though like 

most people, I will never know 

just how extensive that might 

ultimately have been because of 

the bigger hooks and baits we tend 

to use in the normal course of 

events when fishing offshore. 

Fishing small baited feathers over the mixed ground to the south end of Walney Island once saw three 

come up in quick succession. I've also had them while float fishing tiny pieces of ragworm from the 

rocks at Rhoscolyn Head on Anglesey when my children were younger, and have seen them brought up 

in trawls working the edge of Lune Deep out from Fleetwood. 

235

So expect them anywhere and everywhere when the terrain is right and the baits are small enough, 

though most especially along the western side of the British Isles from north to south. And if you do 

hook one there should be absolutely no doubt as to its identity. Along with the cuckoo wrasse, this is 

one of the easiest and most obvious species to pin the right label on. 

A small fish with a typically wrasse like profile, but one coloured plain reddish brown to bright orange 

with a dark spot at the start of its dorsal fin, and a second at the top of the body immediately in front of 

the tail. Another wrasse species thought to be a protogynous hermaphrodite with some females 

switching to being males as required. Grows to seven inches. 

ROCK COOK WRASSE Centrolobrus exoletus 


Also known as the small mouthed 

wrasse, with the obvious angling 

connotation that brings. Again, as 

with the corkwing, a fish almost 

identical to the ballan wrasse 

described in full detail elsewhere. 

Taking the corkwing out of the 

equation is easy enough by checking 

for the presence of the dark spot just 

in front of the tail. If that's absent, the 

next thing to look for is a serrated preoperculum 

or first gill cover. 

If serrations are absent then its a small 

ballan wrasse. But if they are present, 

look for a broad dusky coloured 

crescent shaped mark across the tail along with a lighter band at both the base and outer edge of the tail 

fin. Rock cook also have five very strong spines at the start of their anal fin. 

In my experience, they appear to have hints of blue on the fins and upper flanks along with blue lines 

around the head. A fish with more of a northerly bias perhaps than the other small wrasse species, and 

one with more of a preference for water depth. 

Accurate information regarding sex changes in this species has been difficult to come by, though the 

suggestion is of it being a protogynous hermaphrodite switching from female to male as required. 

Scotland and the west coast of Ireland rate highly on its distribution map, though I have caught them at 

Anglesey on more than one occasion whilst float fishing small pieces of ragworm with my children 

when they were younger from the rocks at Rhoscolyn Head, where on one several occasions we caught 

five species of wrasse in a single session. Grows to around six inches. 

SCALE RAYED WRASSE Acantholabrus palloni 


Yet another small wrasse species to be aware of when baits and hook sizes are small enough, though 

unusually for wrasse, one with more of a tendency to place itself out of reach of shore anglers, preferring 

depths down to around sixty fathoms. 

236

The scientific wisdom suggests it to be a 

solitary fish commonly found as far 

north as Norwegian waters, but only 

rarely around the British Isles. Yet rod 

and line specimens have been taken from 

as far afield as the Eddystone Reef and 

Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. So 

always worth keeping an eye out for. 

Tony Kenna, record Scale Rayed Wrasse 

Again, typically wrasse like in basic 

body layout, though a little more 

elongate than some of the other small 

wrasse species. A fish whose large scales 

extend onto the fins, particularly the 

short soft posterior section of the dorsal 

fin, anal fin, and the tail, hence the 

name. 

Colouration is some shade of deep greyish green to brown with a dark blotch on the upper edge of the 

body just in front of the start of the tail, plus a second at the junction of the soft and spiny rays of the 

dorsal fin. 

Accurate information regarding sex changes in this species has again been difficult to come by, though 

the suggestion again is of it being a protogynous hermaphrodite switching from female to male as 

required. Grows to around ten inches. 

BAILLON'S WRASSE Crenilabrus bailloni 


Also shown in some texts as having the scientific name 

Symphodus bailloni, this is the latest addition to our 

home waters wrasse family. The big question is, was it 

already here but previously over-looked, as it is not a fish 

that immediately stands out from small specimens of 

other more common wrasse species, or has it only 

recently arrived here having been tempted northwards 

due to rising sea temperatures. 

If a scientific paper produced by M R Dunn and M J 

Brown. J. Mar. Biol. Ass. UK (2003), 83, 875-876 is 

anything to go by, then it has probably only recently 

arrived. This was based on the results of a 2002 CEFAS 

Bass survey of The Solent and adjacent harbours which 

turned up eighty nine baillon's wrasse. 

Shortly afterwards, my old Boat Fishing Monthly editor 

Jim Whippy, who is a species addict, reported catching 

quite a few of them on rod and line in the same area and 

to the east along the Sussex coast. 

237

The current British record, which is the only home waters inclusion for the species, was caught at 

Bournemouth, suggesting a very definite link between the species and that particular mid section of the 

English Channel. 

So again, worth keeping an eye out for by checking all small wrasse for obvious spot markings, which 

unlike the corkwing, goldsinny, scale rayed, and female cuckoo wrasse, the baillon's wrasse lacks. Male 

cuckoo wrasse with their blue and yellow markings also immediately rule themselves out of the 

reckoning. This leaves just the ballan wrasse and rock cook. 

Baillon's wrasse have a serrated pre-operculum or first gill cover which ballan wrasse lack. This 

however is present in the corkwing which also has the distinguishing tail spot mentioned earlier. That 

leaves the rock cook with its distinctive lighter and darker tail markings which baillon's wrasse doesn't 

have. And finally, thankfully, a feature which baillon's wrasse has all to itself, which is a very obvious 

red tinge to its fins. 

Accurate information regarding sex changes in this species has been difficult to come by, though the 

suggestion is of it being a protogynous hermaphrodite switching from female to male as required. Grows 

to around eight inches. 

THE GURNARDS 

A small group of bizarre but at the same time compellingly attractive fishes about which I've never 

heard a bad word said. They are actually very good to eat after you've struggled with the sharp spiny 

head and spiky fins, though these days, most people are only too happy to put them back, and I can only 

concur with that. 

he four rod caught species we have around the British Isles, plus a couple of potential deep water species 

which may or may not pick up a hook bait at some stage or other, all have the first three rays of each 

pectoral fin free of any connecting membrane, allowing them almost to finger tip walk along the sea 

bed, and most certainly raise themselves up off it for a better field of view, both for hunting and to help 

avoid predation. 

TUB GURNARD Trigla lucerna 


A fish with a blunt facial profile, armoured 

bony plates, and spines on and around the 

head, with the first three rays of each pectoral 

fin free of any connecting membrane, 

resembling fingers, both in terms of 

appearance and of usage. 

In the case of the tub gurnard, a fish of 

widespread distribution east and west right up 

into southern Scottish waters, though more 

common on southern and west facing coasts, 

particularly those of Wales and Ireland. Also 

the largest growing of the gurnards, capable of 

reaching well into double figures. 

238

As is the trend with most of the gurnard species, this a red coloured fish. But unlike the true red gurnard 

and the rarer streaked gurnard, a much richer and deeper shade bordering almost on reddish brown. Not 

that this is in any way crucial to pinning the right name on a specimen. 

What gives this particular fish away is the beautiful blue edging to its large pectoral fins, which 

occasional specimens I have caught and seen have also had a small centrally placed pectoral ocellus or 

eye spot made up of small blue and even black spots. 

The other key feature, and one important in identifying all four home waters recorded gurnard species 

is the lateral line, which in this particular case is slightly raised, but perfectly smooth to the touch when 

the finger is brushed along it in either direction. 

In my experience, few people deliberately fish for gurnards. Yet by the same token, few are disappointed 

when one of any species or of any size comes along. Such is the esteem they are held in by many sea 

anglers who see them as beautifully fascinating creatures which, despite their good eating qualities, 

deserve to go back unharmed and invariably do. 

If more people did deliberately target 

them with smaller baits and hooks over 

the summer and autumn months, there 

is no doubt that more would be caught, 

though to be in with a real shout, some 

areas are obviously better than others 

on a species by species basis. 

Tub Gurnard with ocellus markings 

Putting the where and when aspect 

aside just for a moment, the how 

applies pretty much across the board, 

with small static baits fished at or just 

off the bottom being an excellent 

approach. Baited feathers can do this as 

well as most rigs, and let's not forget 

the feathers un-baited and working in 

their own right as well. 

My most cherished tub gurnard memories come from north of the England-Scotland border. Loch Ryan 

to be precise back in the early 1970's where I took the Scottish record while fishing with the legendary 

Davy Agnew out from Lady Bay. 

But while we also picked up a few other nice specimens both there and just around the corner in Luce 

Bay, I think for pure numbers and potential specimen size, you need to move down to Merseyside where 

the long standing British boat record comes from. 

Dinghy fishing all along this stretch of coast from Gut Buoy at the southern entrance to the River Ribble 

to the other side of the Welsh border down around Rhyl is about as consistent a tub gurnard area as you 

are ever likely to find. 

You will still see them popping up right throughout Welsh and Irish waters, though the tendency is for 

tubs to give way a little more to reds from the Bristol Channel through the English Channel and on into 

the southern North Sea, mainly out over the inshore boat marks. 

I've no doubt, like anything else, that it will be possible to catch an odd one from the shore where the 

water is deep enough, including some big ones as evidenced by a monster of twelve pound seven ounces 

at Langlan Bay in Wales which must have come as something of surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to its 

captor. Generally speaking however, gurnards of all species do tend to be boat anglers fish. 

239

I've mentioned Merseyside and I've 

mentioned mackerel baits. But 

probably the best gurnard haul 

including reds, tubs and greys I ever 

took part in came on an exploratory 

trip out of Rhyl fishing aboard Tony 

Parry's boat 'Jensen II' on which we 

were trialling a synthetic bait shaped 

like a ragworm called Gulp from 

American tackle giant Berkley. 

The actual shape probably didn't 

matter other than making it possible 

to break it up into small hook sized 

portions which we put down on two 

and three hook dropper rigs, and at 

Phill Williams, Tub’s Loch Ryan 1972 

times were coming back filled to 

capacity with gurnards on virtually every drop. Mickey Duff in particular was having a field day. 

We did catch a few other species on it including dabs and rays, but the gurnards simply couldn't get 

enough of the stuff. The problem then is that in the heat of such action, you can tend to loose 

concentration during handling which will lead to sore hands. 

Extreme care is needed as both the bony head and the gill cover are lethally sharp. So too is the spiky 

first dorsal fin which needs to be flattened down with the hand as you take a firm grip if you want to 

avoid shedding some of your blood. 

Gurnards are said to form small loose shoals within which individuals can keep in contact with each 

other through clear audible sounds created by muscular contractions forcing air through chambers in 

their swim bladder. 

You can often hear them grunt during disgorging if squeezed too hard around the mid body region just 

behind the pectoral fins. In fact, the name gurnard is said to be derived from the French word grogner, 

which means to grunt. This loose aggregation suggestion however is said to be more prevalent with 

greys, and to a lesser extend tubs than with the other species. 

Natural feeding also varies slightly from species to species, with shrimps, small crabs, hermit crabs and 

small demersal fishes being the common denominator, in all cases sought out by the slow methodical 

search technique of using their free pectoral rays almost to walk along `feeling' and even `tasting' for 

their food before perhaps flushing it out, then making a darting grab as the victim flees. 

Blunt head shape and the positioning of the eyes suggest this to be a likely mode of hunting. Those free 

pectoral rays are also used to raise the gurnard up higher as if standing on its finger tips to increase its 

field of view. 

RED GURNARD Aspitrigla cuculus 


Very similar to the other gurnard species in terms of blunt sharp bony head and three free pectoral fin 

rays. Unfortunately, a fish with a name that is bound to create confusion on account of two of our other 

home waters gurnard species also being red, with even the grey gurnard sometimes having a reddish 

tinge, depending on where it lives and what it's been feeding on. 

240

In this particular case however, red really does mean 

Tub Gurnard above, Red Gurnard below 

red. The colouration here is a very bright clear red. 

Again, not that this makes a whole lot of difference 

when you can check the pectoral fins for blue edging, which if present indicates that the fish is in fact 

a tub gurnard. Better still, there is always the lateral line to fall back on. 

Gurnards can be readily identified by appearance and feel of their lateral line, which in this case is not 

smooth like that of the tub gurnard, but has short soft lateral extensions. In addition to this, the pectoral 

fin only just reaches as far back as the vent. A fish perhaps best identified by checking for the features 

it hasn't got which the other species have. 

Though their distribution potentially encompasses the entire British Isles, red gurnards tend to be less 

often caught than the tubs and greys on account of their preference for slightly deeper water, which very 

often goes hand in glove with being further off-shore where the use of small baits likely to attract them 

is very much more limited. 

We're talking here of twenty fathoms minimum over sand, and particularly offshore banks, which in 

areas such as Devon or Cornwall, and in particular around the Channel Islands, is where I have come 

into contact with them most. 

I have seen a few caught well offshore over open ground in both north and west Wales, plus the odd 

one around the West Country. Western Scotland too should offer good prospects, though in all honesty, 

I personally haven't seen them caught there. 

Not unexpectedly with so much deep water about, I have seen and caught them over on the west coast 

of Ireland. That said, for me, the banks around Guernsey and Aldernay present the best opportunity. 

But you need to be offering baits small enough to give these fish a chance, which with bass, turbot and 

brill about in good numbers, is never an easy thing to bring yourself to do. 

241

GREY GURNARD Eutrigla gurnardus 


A text book grey gurnard, while having 

the same blunt facial profile as the 

other gurnard species, is a beautiful 

metallic grey, often with a liberal 

scattering of small white speckles. But, 

and not infrequently the case either, if 

an individual has been feeding heavily 

on small crustaceans, particularly 

shrimps, the basic grey colouration can 

begin to look decidedly red tinged. So 

don't take colour as an absolute guide. 

As with all the gurnards, go to the 

lateral line for positive confirmation, 

which in this case is a series of sharply pointed back facing scutes with a rough prickly feel when 

brushed against the grain from tail to head. A prominent dark blotch on the membranes of the first 

dorsal fin will also help put the issue beyond doubt, as will the length of the pectoral fins which reach 

the vent. 

The smallest, most abundant, and best distributed of the four home waters gurnard species. Also the 

one most likely to be found closest to the shore. But again, not a species you would realistically go out 

and target. More a case of if you fish small enough and often enough over clean through to quite mixed 

ground, an odd one must eventually come along. 

Some of the better ones I have taken have been on feather rigs baited with small strips of mackerel belly 

fished at the bottom. I've also had plenty of smaller specimens just on the feathers themselves. In fact, 

we often pick up really small ones in quite shallow water on shrimp rigs just off North Pier at Blackpool, 

an area which for some reason attracts lots of mackerel, which is why we go there, looking for a quick 

supply of bait. 

STREAKED GURNARD Trigloporus lastoviza 


As with all gurnards, a fish with a tall blunt facial profile, though in this case noticeably more so than 

the others, and another red coloured species, which because it isn't a particularly large growing fish 

maxing out at around a couple of pounds could lead to it not getting noticed or being mis-identified, 

which may help explain why so few are reported on rod and line. 

Another reason however is most certainly its rather patchy south westerly offshore distribution, though 

having said that, authenticated specimens have been taken from the shoreline of Loch Goil on the Clyde, 

and aboard boats out around the Isle of Mull. 

Again, the lateral line is key to its identification, in this case having skin ridges running out along the 

flanks at right angles to it. As mentioned previously, the base colour is red, sometimes with darker 

blotches, and with rows of blue spots around the greyish edges of its pectoral fins, but not a continuous 

blue band as in the tub gurnard. 

242

Although I've never caught one myself, 

I do have experience of this species 

around the Wexford area of Ireland 

from where the Rosslare small boats 

festival has been fished ever since the 

mid 1980's. As this is a species 

competition, understandably, 

competitors need to make themselves 

aware of everything in terms of 

identification, always looking to get 

one over on the rest of the field. 

On one occasion when I was over there I saw a trawler unloading boxes of gurnards, and when I sorted 

through them, all four species were present. Needless to say, not long after that, streaked gurnards 

started featuring in the species count and have done so ever since, though very likely others will have 

been caught in the past on small hooks and fish baits and were missed. Yet for some reason, the species 

doesn't feature on the Irish record list. 

Interestingly, while reading a report on monofilament gill netting for red mullet in Falmouth Bay, 

identified amongst the by-catch by fishery scientists over a three week period were 254 streaked 

gurnards, which suggests that perhaps anglers down that way either don't fish small enough to catch 

them, or when they do, are not fully appreciating what it is they are catching. 

THE GARFISHES & SKIPPERS 

Only recently did the record lists go from having one garfish species to two, and now there's a third. 

However, it's not certain at the moment just how widespread or numerically well distributed that latest 

addition Belone svetovidovi actually is. 

Only time and some eagle eyed identification will tell. As for the skipper, though it looks like a garfish, 

actually it isn't one, but to avoid confusion, this is most definitely the slot where it needs to be discussed. 

GARFISH Belone belone 


It's probably fair to say that any sea 

angler worth his salt should know 

what a garfish looks like. An elongate 

bodied fish with dorsal and anal fins 

set well back towards the tail, while at 

the other end, the jaws have formed a 

long pointed beak. Colouration is 

green or sometimes blue on the back, 

becoming lighter then silvery on the 

lower flanks and underside. 

A fish prone to losing its scales during 

disgorging, which rather interestingly 

have a green tinge to them reminiscent 

of oxidised copper which is also repeated in the bones. So no identification problems there to worry 

243

about. Or so you would think. But actually, nothing could be further from the truth, as over recent years, 

two further 'garfish' species have appeared in the angling record lists. 

The skipper I already knew about having seen one in the flesh alive, though at that time it wasn't 

recorded on rod and line. The other species, the short beaked garfish, is a more recent discovery and 

may well have been taken mixed in amongst other gars for who knows how long. Nobody is quite sure. 

What fishery scientists are sure of however is that we see it fairly regularly now in home waters, so as 

with the skipper, and after much difficulty getting comparative identification information which is so 

minuscule that difficulties are bound to arise, the key points of identification are listed below which 

suggest possible differences in feeding. 

Garfish Belone belone - vomerine teeth, the vomer being pads on the roof of the mouth, are present in 

larger mature specimens. Teeth in the jaws are comparatively large and well spaced. 

Short beaked garfish Belone svetovidovi – vomerine teeth, the vomer being pads on the roof of the 

mouth, are absent. Teeth in the jaws are competitively small and well packed. Has a more compressed 

body. 

Skipper Scomberesox saurus – Though not a true garfish, none the less, typically garfish like in body 

layout, but with a series of five finlets between the dorsal fin and the tail on the top of its body, and 

seven finlets between the anal fin and the tail on the bottom side of its body which neither of the other 

two garfish species have. 

NOTE: Finlets are best described as a row of tiny easy to miss mini fins which for reference are also 

present in mackerel. 

Essentially, garfish are open water fish, living at least part of their lives well away from the coast. Then, 

as coastal waters start to warm during the late spring and summer, quite an extensive inshore migration 

gets under-way at or close to the surface, with only occasional specimens taken at depths exceeding 

thirty feet, which is probably why angling catches are not reflective of the numbers of garfish available. 

A case then of our baits being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Like most people, I've picked up an odd one here and there over the years on feathers and small baits 

in the normal course of my fishing without deliberately trying for them. 

Occasionally one comes along as you are winding in, and that's how it is. But when I have consciously 

set out to catch them, this has always involved the use of rubby dubby or chum, both from the boat and 

from the shore. 

I first became aware of garfish as near surface offshore targets when fishing for blue sharks out from 

Looe. Often when we shook the rubby dubby bags we would see gars darting about picking off the bits 

in the slick. So I started free-lining tiny pieces of mackerel belly, and bingo. 

On later sharking trips I took along a light float rod, and I remember Graeme Pullen having a similar 

experience, only with a fly rod. Great fish to catch on light tackle with their speed and aerobatics. The 

nearest thing we have here in home waters to marlin fishing, but obviously on a very much more modest 

scale. 

Some years later I had a similar experience drift fishing inshore around Guernsey taking dozens of the 

things on free-lined and float fished baits. 

Elsewhere, I've taken them around Wales and occasionally off Blackpool where in calm weather we 

used to see them playing, at times jumping over the anchor rope just where it came out of the water. 

244

So you can expect to see them in most places from the 

Channel to the Shetlands, both east and west, though from 

personal experience, west facing open oceanic coasts are 

always the best. 

All my shore fishing experience for gars comes from the 

Channel Islands where they are a major player on the local 

match fishing scene. 

Most rock marks can be persuaded to produce them, one of 

the favourites being St. Martins to the south of St. Peterport, 

whereas with the boats, rubby dubby, or shirvey as they call 

it locally plays a vital role. 

This comprises boiled sandeels, bread, and fish oil made into 

a sloppy porridge like mix which is spooned into the water 

on a little and often basis, drawing in the garfish from far and 

wide. It also draws in grey mullet, for which reason a second 

mullet rod is often also rigged up ready. 

Phill Williams, Garfish 

For the gars, or long nose as Peter Frise and Joe Gomez who 

I fished with call them, it was a simple fixed or sliding float 

rig set to fish no more than a few feet down with tiny pieces 

of sandeel on a say a size four hook, and they would catch 

literally dozens of the things. 

SHORT BEAKED GARFISH Belone svetovidovi 

Bucket List status – catch status uncertain 

How the hell this species ever came to light is beyond me. I have no doubt at all that it has been caught 

by anglers in the south west on many more occasions than reports suggest, where due to it's almost 

identical appearance to Belone belone, that's what people quite naturally would have thought it was. 

That was until 1990, when eagle eyed angler Mr. A.C. Cass caught several garfish in Mounts Bay, one 

of which he thought looked slightly different to the rest and therefore was sent to the Marine Biological 

Association for examination, resulting in the first ever report of Belone svetovidovi on rod and line in 

British waters. They are also now recorded from Irish waters too. 

From an angling perspective, they are still just garfish. So in the interests of non-repetition, read the 

Garfish Belone belone account above. You'll also find the key comparative identification features there 

too. Other than that, check out any garfish you catch, for this is not as rare a fish it seems as previous 

records might suggest. 

SKIPPER Scomberesox saurus 


A fish I know as the saury pike. I haven't actually caught one but did handle and examine a live specimen 

some years ago which I picked up flapping about at the waters edge one very rough back-end day while 

beach fishing over on the west coast of Ireland. 

245

Almost identical, though not directly 

related to the garfish, the skipper is 

more of an open oceanic fish, and 

therefore more likely to be caught 

around the south west of Britain and 

Ireland. 

Not a fish you should expect to see on 

rod and line, but it can happen, so as 

with the short beaked garfish, give all 

garfish-like fish the quick once over, 

which in the case of the skipper is very 

quick and easy by checking if it has 

finlets or not. If it has then it's a 

skipper. See the garfish account above for a more detailed explanation. 

NOTE: Finlets are best described as a row of tiny easy to miss mini fins which for reference are also 

present in mackerel. 

THE HERRINGS 

The herring is another of those fish people tend to think of as a stand-alone species, which on the one 

hand it is, while on the other it is also the father figure of a family of species of which five have been 

recorded on rod and line around the British Isles, including two, the allis shad and twaite shad, which 

are now officially classed as critically endangered. 

HERRING Clupea harengus 


A small pelagic shoaling species and 

potentially major prey item for 

numerous large predators around the 

entire British Isles. A fish with a 

prominent lower jaw and up-pointing 

mouth, enlarged easily detached scales, 

and no ridged keel formed by the scales 

along the belly line which other similar 

family members have. 

Colouration is dark blue on the upper 

back lightening through to silvery white 

on the lower flanks and belly, 

occasionally with golden tints. 

Primarily a planktonic feeder, but occasionally caught on small feather type lures such as sabiki's and 

shrimp rigs. Grows to around sixteen inches. 

Probably one of the best examples of over-exploitation of an aquatic resource ever, leading in the mid 

1950's to a moratorium on fishing for them which brought the pursuit of the so called 'silver darlings', 

along with a complete way of life for many fisher-folk along the North Sea coast, to a very abrupt and 

hard hitting close. 

246

The knock on effect would also signal the end of rod and line fishing for tunny off Scarborough, which 

is detailed fully elsewhere, but mentioned here to give something of a flavour of just how abundant, 

how important, and eventually how vulnerable the herring as a species was, and to some extent 

continues to be. 

Those herrings that are caught these days on rod and line tend to be taken accidentally while feathering 

for mackerel with small lures. Personally, I've picked them up and have seen them caught mainly as 

odd ones here, there, and everywhere. North Wales immediately springs to mind, though it could just 

as easily be elsewhere, which given time and plenty of feathering, it probably will be. 

PILCHARD Sardina pilchardus 


Identification here is pretty 

straightforward. In the pilchard both 

jaws are equal, while the related 

anchovy has a short lower jaw and the 

herring a protruding lower jaw. As with 

the herring, the scales are large and 

easily dislodged. 

Colouration is usually a deep greenish 

blue on the upper body becoming 

silvery beneath, sometimes with one or 

more lines of dark spots along the upper flanks. When still alive, the silvery scales can appear to have 

a golden and sometimes even a rainbow glint. The gill cover has three to five bony ridges radiating 

downwards from an area just behind the eye. Grows to around eight inches. 

A small shoaling fish historically responsible for the Cornish blue shark fishing scene, which in some 

ways helped financially compensate one-time commercial pilchard netters at ports like Looe when the 

shoals began to thin out. 

Constant problems with sharks damaging the pilchard nets back in the 1950's grabbed the attention of 

the early pioneers of west country shark fishing such as Brigadier Caunter. Unfortunately this didn't do 

much for the pilchard fishery itself which went into sharp decline shortly afterwards, though in recent 

times, stocks have started showing some signs of recovery. 

In the normal course of events, pilchard tend to keep themselves out of most angler's way, preferring 

open waters in excess of forty fathoms in which feeding depth will vary with time of day. 

Like most pelagic feeding fishes, they will move closer to the surface towards evening and on into the 

dark, triggered by the upward migration of the pelagic food chain driven by the vegetative 

phytoplankton moving up to grab the last of the fading sun's rays to drive their photosynthetic processes. 

As with the herring, you can pick up an odd one here and there on small feathers while fishing for 

mackerel, particularly towards the south west of the country. I've both caught and seen maybe half a 

dozen over the years, and always out from either Plymouth or Looe. 

247

ANCHOVY Engraulis encrasicolus 


At our latitude, the anchovy could 

hardly be described as common, 

despite there being the occasional 

flurry of commercial interest when for 

whatever reason, large enough numbers 

decide to invade our side of the western 

approaches to the English Channel as 

they did in back 2009. 

This probably was as a consequence of 

prevailing local climatic conditions 

linked to climate change more 

generally, as the anchovy is not a 

common fish in our corner of the world. 

This, together with its smallish size 

which rarely exceeds eight inches makes its interest to anglers minimal, though it does willingly take 

small baits and feathers. 

Its normal geographical range more or less mirrors that of the pilchard to which it is related, though it 

lives very much closer to the shore during the summer months. 

Anchovies are elongate slender fish with a more rounded body than the other members of the herring 

family. The mouth is large extending well back beyond the eye, with the upper jaw protruding 

noticeably further than the lower. 

Colouration is green on the back and upper sides and silvery below, the two colours being separated by 

a greyish band. 

A fish I have caught on small baits in the Mediterranean while collecting illustration specimens off 

Majorca back in the 1970's for artwork done by Dr. Dietrich Burkel. 

TWAITE SHAD Alosa fallax 


Like the herring and sprat, the twaite shad has formed a number of geographically localised races, one 

of which has become permanently landlocked in Lake Killarney in south west Ireland where it is known 

as the goureen. Elsewhere, the species can be identified by colouration and markings, though this is not 

an entirely reliable approach. 

The upper back is a brilliant deep blue becoming yellowish, particularly around the head, giving way 

to silvery white below. There are usually several conspicuous dark spots running along each flank 

starting just behind the gills, with the operculum or gill cover having a number of radiating ridges on it. 

Unfortunately, the flank markings may not always be present, allowing the fish to resemble the allis 

shad which has either a single dark mark behind the gill cover, or in some cases, no mark at all. 

The only fool-proof method of identification is a gill raker count on the first gill arch which will contain 

between forty and sixty gill rakers. However, due to the undoubted damage this would cause, and their 

current protected status, this now is no longer an option. 

248

Phill Williams, Shad on fly 

Unusual among marine fishes, the shads are anadromous, 

which is to say they live out the bulk of their lives at sea, but 

need to enter freshwater to spawn. 

In times gone by they probably ran all the river systems of 

northern Europe. Now sadly, rivers that still see them are the 

absolute exception rather than the rule. 

By and large, man-made obstructions are to blame here, 

though to a lesser extent with the twaite shad than the allis, 

the latter preferring to migrate further upstream and therefore 

is more likely to encounter weirs and similar man made 

barriers which fish like salmon are better able to negotiate. 

Speaking of salmon, likewise, shad are also said not to feed 

during their brief stay in freshwater, though they are not 

infrequently caught on rod and line. Ironically, often by 

salmon anglers fishing either the River Severn or the Wye. 

Whether the feeding strike is through frustration, irritation, or 

out of hunger is difficult to say, though to be honest, it makes 

little difference from an angling perspective if in the case of 

the bucket list all you want to do is tick it off a species list. 

At sea, shad are a very rare catch indeed, in part due to their 

current scarcity resulting from an inability to access suitable spawning sites, but as much to do with 

them preferring a pelagic offshore lifestyle, much of the time placing them beyond regular angling reach 

until it comes time to run up into freshwater, which can take them through harbours and past jetties that 

are based on river estuaries. 

Offshore, a very occasional one will turn up out of the blue on feathers. Early summer, mainly around 

Kent and Sussex, and much further west, the upper reaches of the Bristol Channel, a few more will be 

picked up on small baits or small spinners as they prepare to head inland. 

But we are talking here of extremely low numbers compressed into a very short seasonal window of 

opportunity, other than which, I can think of just a couple of specific locations where I used to catch 

them in very big numbers, though that is no longer possible, as both species are now legally protected 

and must therefore be avoided or returned immediately wherever possible. 

As it's no secret where they used to be caught, I don't feel I'm setting them up for potential illegal 

exploitation here by looking at some historical detail based on my own experiences. 

Both twaite and allis shad were predictably found at two locations I am aware of and fished, my first 

encounter being a drive down to Tewkesbury on the River Severn one day in May back in the 1970's 

where large numbers of mainly twaite shad, plus a few allis shad, were being held back waiting for 

heavy rain to take them over Tewkesbury weir. 

It was Des Taylor who first introduced me to the spot, after which we trailed a small rowing boat down 

on a number of occasions. Tiny lightly weighted fly spoons were the in thing back then, and if I'm 

honest, as we had to take turns fishing from the boat and the bank, we probably had just as many fishing 

from either, and fantastic fishing it was too. 

It was rather like hooking a mini tarpon. They would clear the water time after time, never giving up 

until enveloped by the landing net. What a pity then it is that anglers now are prevented from fishing 

249

for them instead of removing the 

many obstacles most rivers have these 

days which are responsible for 

keeping their population numbers so 

low. 

My most recent encounter with shad, 

again mainly twaites but potentially 

also the odd allis too, was fishing with 

Dave Lewis at the mouth of the tiny 

River Monnow just prior to its 

confluence with the River Wye, where 

again, a small shiny spinner would 

produce hit after hit. 

Having caught both species before, 

Fly fishing for Shad, River Monnow 

and knowing exactly what to expect, 

on that occasion I also packed a seven weight fly rod paired to a floating line and a selection of small 

gaudy silver streamer lures. 

It was a bit difficult casting due to the location with its tree's and other vegetation, but when the lure 

went out on a decent line, again, it was every egg a bird. 

Unfortunately, as I say, those opportunities are now gone, which I fully appreciate and support. I'm just 

glad I was able to legally sample what both species had to offer before the necessary restrictions were 

put in place. 

ALLIS SHAD Alosa alosa 


All that needs to be said with regard to 

the allis shad has already been 

discussed under the twaite shad 

heading above. So in the interests of 

none repetition, that will not be 

explored again here. One thing 

however which does need to be 

discussed is the identification protocol, 

as colouration is broadly similar to the 

twaite shad with blue on the upper back 

and silvery white below. 

Allis shad, if they have any markings at 

all, have just a single dark spot behind 

the gill cover. Unfortunately, absolute 

Allis shad below, Twaite Shad above 

identification can only be made by the 

destructive process of counting the gill 

rakers on the first gill arch, which for an allis shad will number between eighty and a hundred and thirty, 

and for a Twaite Shad, forty to sixty. 

250

THE GOBIES 

Potentially quite a large family of small, often coastal fishes, which are probably better known from the 

stomach contents of predators such as cod and bass than as specimens dangling on the end of a line. 

Gobies, blennies and the like are not fish normally targeted by anglers. Certainly not serious anglers 

other than in species competitions, where people often find that they actually present more headaches 

in the finding and identifying than many of the better known more regular species. 

To the rest of us, they are just small fish, which if you go often enough using small baits such as scraps 

of worm, mackerel or squid on small hooks such as a sabiki rig from the boat, which can also be lethal 

for breams and wrasse, or LRF gear from the shore, then you are pretty much bound to encounter one 

of them, plus other small species sooner or later in some form or other, depending of course on where 

it is you fish. 

Not exactly an angling prize then, but interesting, attractive, and often obliging little creatures, still 

deserving of the same respect and conservation minded thinking afforded to other better known species. 

Rock marks, weedy reefs, the base of harbour walls, and even rock or sand based harbours generally 

can make good deliberate areas to search. Otherwise, fish small enough, and depending on the ground 

and where in the country you are, be it boat or shore, eventually some of the so called mini species are 

bound to cross your path. 

BLACK GOBY Gobius niger 


The only time I can ever remember 

mini fish fever taking hold was during 

one of the Wexford small boat 

festivals quite a number of years back 

which was cancelled day after day due 

to poor weather. So on one of the days, 

a team shore based species 

competition was arranged, and off we 

all went to see what we could find 

along the rocks, beaches and estuary 

marks. 

For dinghy anglers who rarely fish 

from the shore, our team was actually doing quite well to the point that with several species to our 

credit, we actually started to fancy our chances of a win, especially when we then managed to get 

ourselves inside Rosslare Harbour. 

There we split our tactics between exploring the open area of the harbour itself and dropping down the 

inside of the wall, which was my designated duty. A task which amongst other things including various 

small wrasse, caught me quite a sizeable round bodied little fish with big lips and bulging eyes perched 

on the top of its head. 

Both its tail and its pectoral fins were rounded, and both its dorsal fins were touching each other, joined 

at their base by the fin membranes. Colouration was a greyish brown with darker blotches and spots, 

patterned by diffuse darker patches over the upper flanks and back, with both dorsal fins having light 

lines running along their length, which can at times be hard to pick out. 

251

A black goby as it would turn out, taken on a scrap of ragworm nicked on to the smallest hook we could 

find, which was probably something like a size four. A fish caught down the face of the wall on the 

muddy sand around its base which this species prefers over heavy ground. So it can be done. 

Unfortunately, despite catching thirteen species in total, we still failed to win the match, as many of our 

fish were ruled in-eligible based on minimum landing sizes which was a bit much. But interesting none 

the less. 

COMMON GOBY Pomatoschistus microps 


As the name suggests, an extremely 

abundant round bodied little fish, and 

one with a preference for soft 

substrates, plus a tolerance of reduced 

salinity of the type found around 

estuaries where it feeds on small 

worms and crustaceans. 

Typically goby-like with big lips, large 

eyes set into the top of the head, 

rounded pectoral fins and tail, and in 

this particular case, a very obvious gap 

between the two dorsal fins, quite a 

long reach from the back of the second 

dorsal fin to the start of the tail. Colouration varies between deep grey and sandy fawn, with some 

irregular dark spotting and pale saddles across the back. 

Breeding males can have up to ten vertical bars on their flanks extending on to the dorsal rays as well 

as the dorsal membranes, and may well be darker than at other times of the year. 

There may also be a dark spot towards the rear of the first dorsal fin. Instead of bars, the females can 

have spots. Both sexes have a dark mark on the upper edge of the base of each pectoral fin. 

Found throughout the inshore shallows of all our home waters where I have come across the species at 

many locations in shallow sandy bays and inlets, and while fishing with my children, having taken them 

on baits from venues as widespread as St. Mary's on the Isles of Scilly and Anglesey. Grows to around 

three inches. 

ROCK GOBY Gobius paganellus 


Quite a thick set round bodied typically goby-like fish with big lips, large eyes set into the top of the 

head, and rounded pectoral fins and tail which is found exclusively around the intertidal and low water 

regions of rocky stony shores. More so on southern and western coasts than in the east. 

For identification purposes, its most important physical feature is the fact that the upper pectoral fin 

rays have become divided and separate from their connecting membranes over much of their length. 

This fin reaches almost to the origin of the dorsal fin. Has five or six finger-like protrusions from the 

nostrils. 

252

Colouration varies between reddish 

brown occasionally through to black, and 

mainly without markings on the body, 

though it can show some blotching or 

mottling. The top third of the dorsal fin 

also carries a distinctive lighter banding 

which can even be orange in breeding 

males. 

Otherwise, colouration tends to become 

more pronounced generally during the 

early to mid summer breeding season. 

More a fish of the English Channel, 

Western Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. 

My personal encounters have been around Anglesey and in Luce Bay. Grows to around four inches. 

SAND GOBY Pomatoschistus minutus 


Another typically round bodied gobylike 

fish with its big lips, large eyes on 

the top of the head, rounded pectoral 

fins and tail, and in this particular case, 

slightly more slender elongate body 

profile than the common goby with 

which it also shares a long reach from 

the rear of the second dorsal fin to the 

start of the tail, though in this case the 

two dorsal fins almost touch. 

In terms of colouration and markings, 

typically sandy brown to grey with five 

reddish flecks along each side, plus a conspicuous blue-black spot towards the back of the first dorsal 

fin. Adult males can also have four rather indistinct vertical bars on each flank. 

A common fish over sand and mud in shallower water down to maybe sixty feet throughout all home 

waters where small crustaceans form the basis of its diet. Grows to around four inches. 

GIANT GOBY Gobius cobitis 


As might be expected from the name, this is the largest goby to be found in home waters with lengths 

potentially approaching twelve inches. A deep round bodied bodied, stocky looking, typically gobylike 

fish, with big lips, moderately large well spaced eyes on top of the head, plus rounded pectoral fins 

and tail. 

Key identity points to look out for include scales on the nape and none on the cheek, and pectoral rays 

which are well developed. 

253

An inhabitant of rock pools, particularly 

those well up the shore, and a lover of 

rocky weedy shores down to around 

thirty feet along suitable areas of the 

south Devon and south Cornish coast, 

the Scilly Isles, and the Channel Islands. 

Colouration varies from dark grey to 

greenish brown mottled with lighter 

shades and some small darker spots or 

flecks. The second dorsal and tail can 

show a banded lighter edging, particularly during the breeding season. Feeds mainly on small 

crustaceans and also eats green algae. 

LEOPARD SPOTTED GOBY Thorogobius ephippiatus 


To mark this species down as typically 

round bodied gobylike with big lips, 

large eyes on the top of the head, plus 

rounded pectoral fins and tail might 

offer some help to identification. But in 

all honesty, as soon as you look at it, 

colouration and markings will 

immediately set it apart, not only from 

the other gobies, but from most other 

species too. 

A fish covered in large dark spots on a 

pinkish brown background which can 

become silvery pink on the lower flanks 

and underparts. And as if that wasn't 

enough, the fins are edged in blue. 

A fish fond of shallow sandy substrates with lots of cover in the form of rocks or weed fringed harbour 

walls in home waters, mainly along west facing Atlantic coasts where it feeds on small crustaceans and 

worms. Grows to around five inches. 

THE BLENNIES 

As with the gobies, a family of small, mainly coastal species, which on account of their proportionately 

large mouth size have a higher probability of being caught, particularly when fishing small hooks and 

baits in rocky areas for wrasse. 

The ones I have listed here, despite being called blennies, are not all members of the same family. They 

actually belong to four different families, with the catfish or wolf fish Anarhichas lupus being only 

distantly related to the group. 

254

TOMPOT BLENNY Parablennius gattorugine 


Blennies, gobies and the like, are not 

fish that are regularly targeted by 

anglers, certainly not serious anglers, 

but in my own experience, blennies 

with their quite large mouths probably 

rate amongst the more regularly seen 

of the so called mini species to turn up 

accidentally on a baited hook, 

especially when fishing for wrasse in 

fairly shallow water. 

The tompot blenny in particular where 

there is plenty of rock and weed cover, 

such as when Graeme Pullen and I 

spent a week based on Lundy Island where every day we managed to squeeze in at least a couple of 

hours fishing from the rocks. I had my first ever tompot there on a piece of shellfish as other baits were 

hard to come by. 

If my memory serves me well, it was fished quite close in to the rocks under a float. Since then however, 

I've had them while float fishing at Rhoscolyn on Anglesey, and from similar types of rock marks 

around Guernsey. 

In common with the other blenny species, a powerful, thick set little fish, with both its dorsal fins 

merging into one continuous run, and a face which is blunt and rounded with big lips. 

In this particular species there is a ragged looking tentacle above each eye, which the butterfly blenny 

also has. To distinguish between the two, the butterfly blenny has an exceptionally tall first dorsal fin 

with a single large white edged dark spot which the tompot doesn't have. 

Colouration is variable according to location and time of year, but typically some shade of green, light 

brown, or fawn, and possibly a blend of all three, with six or seven deep brown vertical bars along each 

side. 

During the breeding season, which is late spring to early summer, colouration darkens to a deeper 

brown. Quite an aggressive predatory fish for its size if its willingness to take anglers baits is anything 

to go by. Grows to around twelve inches. 

SHANNY Lipophrys pholis 


In common with the other blenny species, a powerful thick set little fish with both its dorsal fins merging 

into one continuous run, and a face which is blunt and rounded with big lips. By far the most abundant 

and widespread blenny in northern coastal waters, and one separated from the tompot and butterfly 

blenny by having no tentacles above the eyes. 

This is an extremely common intertidal and shallow water fish on rocky shores right throughout home 

waters. Also, a fish frequently found as well as caught by anglers when bait gathering under boulders, 

weed fringes, or in rock pools, and equally happy in shallow permanent water where it will nibble away 

255

at any soft baits intended for bigger 

fish, sometimes even managing to take 

them inside the mouth if the hook is 

small enough. 

But beware its teeth; a small fish which 

can give quite a nasty nip as I know to 

my cost at a number of locations where 

I have caught them, including Lundy, 

Anglesey, and while wrasse fishing in 

and around Luce Bay. 

As with the other blennies, colouration 

is variable according to location. 

Normally it will be some shade of 

brown with green and yellowish 

patches or spots, and five or six darker vertical bars. Males in breeding livery will be darker still with 

conspicuous lighter coloured lips. Its feeding takes in a wide range of small invertebrates including 

quite large numbers of barnacles. Grows to around six inches. 

BUTTERFLY BLENNY Blennius ocellaris 


As with the other blenny species, a 

powerful thick set little fish with both 

its dorsal fins merging into one 

continuous run, and a face which is 

blunt and rounded with noticeably big 

lips. 

A visually striking fish which will 

immediately stand out as something out 

of the ordinary due to the height of its 

first dorsal fin section, this being 

marked just beyond the midway point 

by an extremely obvious dark blotch 

edged in white. 

As with the tompot blenny, there are 

short ragged tentacles above each eye. General body colouration varies between brown and grey with 

several darker vertical bars on the upper sides extending on to the dorsal fin. 

Not a fish likely to be caught by shore anglers fishing for wrasse on account of its offshore preference 

for water in the thirty to sixty foot range, though this could include deep water harbours right down the 

face of the concrete walls. 

A fish more likely found in and around the western approaches, south west Ireland, and the Channel 

Islands, over mixed ground with some areas of coarse sand or grit where it feeds on whatever small 

invertebrates it can find that will fit into its mouth. Grows to around eight inches. 

256

BLACK FACED BLENNY Tripterygion delaisi 


I must confess that I had to research 

this one completely from scratch, as I'd 

neither seen nor heard of it in home 

waters before writing up the bucket 

list. A fish which, like the yarrell's and 

viviparous blenny, despite the 

suggested clue in the name, is not a 

true blenny at all, belonging instead to 

the 

family tripterygiidae, the threefin 

blennies. 

At species level however, the clue really is in the threefin blennies family name, because unlike the true 

blennies, the black faced blenny has three separate dorsal fins instead of the two joined dorsal fins found 

in the shanny, tompot and butterfly blenny. In light of what else is to come, not exactly a point that will 

either help or hinder identification. 

Black faced blennies present themselves in two distinct colour forms, both of which, again using the 

name as a clue, have a black face. The females and non territorial males are grey with five broad dark 

vertical bars, the last of which forms a spot onto the tail. 

Territorial males on the other hand have bright yellow bodies which makes their black head appear even 

more prominent. Both versions have blue edged fins and a bright red fluorescent iris to the eye. 

A rare and highly unusual fish as far north as the British Isles which has been found in the Fleet Lagoon 

at the back of Chesil Beach. Eats small bottom living invertebrates and rarely exceeds a couple of inches 

in length. 

YARRELL'S BLENNY Chirolophis ascanii 


Though it carries the name blenny, this 

fish is in fact a quite distant relative of 

the true blennies. That said, you could 

be forgiven for thinking otherwise on 

the basis of its blunt face, continuous 

dorsal fin and ragged appendages above 

the eyes, with further smaller tentacles 

in front of them, though the body itself 

is both narrower and more elongate than 

the true blennies discussed previously. 

The tips of the first few rays of its long 

continuous entirely spiny dorsal fin are 

also fringed. 

257

Those features alone should set this fish apart from similar species. Colouration varies between greenish 

yellow and reddish brown with darker transverse bars. A fish with a dark ring surrounding the eye, an 

offshoot from which also reaches to the corner of the mouth. 

Again, not exactly an anglers fish, but with the potential to reach a length of twelve inches, always a 

possibility, though to counter that, a species found in small isolated pockets around the western 

approaches to the English Channel, the northern Irish Sea, and along the mid North Sea coast, where 

even at those locations it is said to be very thin on the ground. A coastal but not shore loving fish found 

over mixed and rocky substrates where it feeds on small invertebrates. 

VIVIPAROUS BLENNY Zoarces viviparus 


The viviparous blenny, or eelpout, 

which is probably a more suitable 

name as this helps separate it from the 

true blennies to which it is only 

distantly related, is most commonly 

found along North Sea coasts through 

into Scandinavia and the Baltic. 

An unusual but very straight forward 

fish to pin a name to due in the main to 

the arrangement of its fins. The long 

continuous dorsal fin and not quite as 

long anal fin meet at the point where 

there should be a tail, but there isn't 

one, giving the impression of a 

continuous wrap around the fish’s long 

narrow body. And just before the point where that missing tail should be, the dorsal fin has a shallow 

but noticeable depression in it reminiscent of a portion having been nipped out of it. 

Colouration varies with habitat, but is usually yellowish to greyish brown with rows of dark blotches 

along the dorsal fin and upper flanks. The pectoral fins are edged in yellow. Unusually, this is also a 

fish which, as its scientific name viviparus suggests, gives birth to live young. 

Reputedly a very common fish over on the eastern side of the North Sea, whereas here on our side, 

despite its size and diet of crustaceans, molluscs and small fish, anglers don't often see it, suggesting 

much lower population numbers. Grows to around twenty inches. 

CATFISH Anarhichas lupus 


I've listed the catfish or wolf fish as it is also called immediately following on from the blennies, because 

in terms of blunt facial profile and body layout, it superficially resembles them. A fish with a single 

long dorsal fin and shorter anal fin, both of which terminate at quite a small rounded tail. The pectoral 

fins are large, deep, and also rounded. 

258

A very dark blue-grey fish over its 

entire body with even darker vertical 

bars along the flanks running up onto 

the dorsal fin, and some of the most 

serious looking dentistry you are ever 

likely to come across, including in 

sharks. 

pretty much all of the North Sea down to around the Wash. 

It is actually a distant deep water 

relative of the blennies. But that is 

where any similarity ends. A 

predominantly offshore fish said to be 

found throughout all Scottish waters, 

and over on the east coast throughout 

The reality however is that from an angling perspective you need to be fishing from Yorkshire north to 

Aberdeen to have any real chance of picking one up, which sadly these days is becoming an ever 

declining opportunity due to over fishing and by-catch landings. 

The first one I caught was out from Hartlepool in the early 1970's. I'd seen pictures of them previously 

and desperately wanted to catch one, but didn't really ever think I would. 

We were out a few miles off drifting worm, squid, and fish baits for cod and haddock from Tom 

Williams boat 'Famous' when this black shape appeared at the surface on the end of my line. 

For the reasons already explained, I knew exactly what it was, so it was with a huge amount of relief 

that I saw it scooped up out of the water in the landing net and dropped on to the deck where I just 

couldn't stop staring at it. What an amazing looking fish. 

Unfortunately, try as I may at a number of ports along that stretch of the North Sea from Bridlington 

through to Stonehaven, I didn't see another one caught on rod and line until I fished Iceland, and later 

Norway. But I did encounter it again off Hartlepool while out for a day observing aboard the fly shooter 

'Adaptable' working within sight of the coast. 

I sometimes spend time out on commercial boats, because as a scientist and a keen photographer, that 

is the only way you get to see certain species of fish in pristine condition. On the day I'm talking about 

here, amongst many other species, we put anglerfish, forkbeards and hagfish in front of the lens. Fish I 

might not otherwise have seen had I not gone. 

As importantly, the net also brought in literally dozens of cats, giving me the opportunity to learn a 

whole range of facts about them, including the extent and gripping power of their incredible crab and 

sea urchin crushing jaws. 

To demonstrate this, one of the crew picked up several cats and got them to bite on one of the overhead 

ropes, where once they were clamped on, they wouldn't let go. He even started swinging it round like a 

skipping rope taking them through a full 360 degree's, and still they stayed clamped on. 

This prompted the relating of story about a deckhand on the boat some years earlier who had a habit of 

pushing fish’s heads against his body while he gutted them. Unfortunately, he did this once too often 

with a cat which took a firm hold of his wedding cluster and refused let go. 

As you might imagine, he was screaming and panicking. In the end, one of the other crew members 

grabbed the deck shovel and smacked him around the back of the head with it as a sort of make shift on 

259

the hoof anaesthetic, as that was the only way they could keep him still for long enough to cut the 

catfishes jaws free. 

My Hartlepool fish was caught on lugworm bouncing along 

the sea bed on the bottom hook of a triple snood dropper rig 

designed to keep the baits from actually touching the bottom 

and getting stuck in the rocks or weed and becoming lost. 

Catfish supposedly don't eat fish. Certainly not regularly. Yet 

surprisingly, quite a few are, or should I say were, taken on 

pirks both baited and un-baited from many ports including 

Bridlington, Whitby, Hartlepool, Amble, Burnmouth, 

Berwick, Eyemouth, Arbroath and Stonehaven to name but a 

few. Anywhere in fact along that stretch of the coast where 

there is mixed hard ground. 

It doesn't have to be excessively deep either, though in 

fairness, most are taken from the boats. That said, they are (or 

again were) also caught reasonably regularly from some of 

the deeper rock marks, and from the longer stone piers they 

have over that way, particularly as you progress further up 

into Scotland, with the biggest recorded so far from the shore 

weighing in at over twelve pounds coming from Stonehaven. 

But unfortunately, not recently, as both commercial as well 

as angling reports of the species slip ever further into decline. 

Not surprisingly, there are no records listed for Ireland or 

Wales. 

Phill Williams, Hartlepool 1970’s 

THE REMAINING FISH SPECIES 

All the other home waters species which either appear as stand alone individuals, or are not worth 

grouping together in family units such as the sea scorpions and weevers because of the low species 

numbers or distant relationships involved. 

CONGER EEL Conger conger 


The clue here is in the name. The conger is an eel that lives in the sea. Everyone knows what an eel 

looks like, so what more is there to be said in terms of identification. Well, actually, some so called 

freshwater or silver eels also choose to spend their entire lives in saltwater, and all eels when sexually 

mature must return to the sea if they are to complete their life cycle. 

On the basis of that, both for situations in which small eels are caught at sea, and for completeness, it's 

probably best then that the finer points of species differentiation at least get a superficial airing. 

We're talking long fish here, which besides having pectoral fins on either side of the body butted up to 

the gill cover, has just one long single wrap around fin which trebles up as dorsal fin, anal fin, and tail. 

Both species share this fin layout. What both species don't have are identical mouths, eyes, and dorsal 

fin starting positions. 

260

If it's a conger, the eye will be large, 

the upper jaw longer than the lower, 

and the dorsal fin on the back of the 

fish will start pretty much level with 

the tip of the pectoral fin, whereas in 

the silver eel the complete opposite is 

the case. The eye is small, the lower 

jaw protrudes beyond the lower, and 

the dorsal starts way back behind 

where the pectoral fin ends. 

Colouration generally in conger is 

quite variable and dependant upon a 

range of factors including water depth 

and favoured ground, but is usually some shade of brownish grey through to almost black on the back 

and upper sides, becoming much lighter beneath, and with quite an abrupt transition between the two. 

In both species, when the call to seed the next generation comes, certain physiological changes start to 

occur which will ultimately result in the death of the fish. A process which starts with a cessation of 

feeding coinciding with tooth loss as the skeleton slowly de-calcifies. 

Lack of food also means that the bodies internal repair mechanisms can no longer properly function and 

the wasting of certain internal organs follows, though not those used for reproduction. 

This preparatory process, along with the maturation of the eggs can take up to a year, giving the fish 

sufficient time to migrate along the coast then out in to open water through the middle layers of the 

deep north Atlantic, in the congers case en route for an area to the east of the Azores. 

Unfortunately, as no sexually mature specimen has ever been caught, some of the conger's breeding 

behaviour is still based on well educated guess work. They are said to spawn in mid water over depths 

of fifteen hundred to two thousand fathoms during mid summer where particularly large females can 

release as many as fifteen million eggs. 

These are bathypelagic, which means though they float off the bottom, they are still more than three 

thousand feet beneath the surface. Then, when they hatch, as with the freshwater eel Anguilla anguilla, 

distribution is passive, with the fry allowing themselves to be carried back towards the coastlines of 

north Africa and Europe by wind and currents. 

During this period, which can last up to two years for those transported the greatest distances, young 

conger bear no physical resemblance to their parents, instead being laterally flattened, shaped rather 

like a poplar leaf, and transparent, going through a stage in which they are known as leptocephalus. 

Only as they near coastal waters do they change into their familiar eel shape, which because of the time 

variations involved in getting to different locations, is thought to be triggered by the sudden decrease 

in water depth. 

Geographical positioning is also important in order to intercept the leptocephali as they drift on the 

currents. West facing coasts of Biscay and the British Isles intercept the most. Some do get into the 

North Sea and set up home over suitable terrain on both sides there up to a line drawn across to Norway 

from the top of Scotland. Iceland lies at the northern extremity of the conger's range, though some are 

carried to its southern shores by prevailing water movements. 

A lot of guff based on second hand old wives tales and urban myth has been written about conger fishing 

over the years, though in fairness, much of that was in the far less enlightened past. 

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Stories of them wrecking boats, biting lumps out of boats or 

Andrew Alsop, ton up Conger 

fisherman's boots, and generally attacking people in every manner 

possible have made less well informed people understandably 

nervous of them to put it mildly, in the same way that the film jaws spelt hatred and death to all sharks. 

262

Yes, conger can be a handful. Dangerous even if not treated with some level of respect. But so too can 

many of the other fish we catch, the vast majority of which don't have anything like the growth potential 

of a big conger eel. 

Based on personal experience, I would say that if you don't need to have a conger in a small boat then 

why do so. It's not good for the fish, and potentially it might not be good for you. 

Not so much in respect of the damage it can do as that which the occupants might bestow upon 

themselves through in-appropriate panic or concern. That being the case, take the trace in one hand, a 

T-bar disgorger in the other, and release the fish in the water. 

Besides having the ability to spin like a prop shaft, which can be off putting when wielding the 

disgorger, conger also have the remarkable ability of being able to swim backwards, which is why trying 

to get one into a landing net can be such a pain. 

In fear of imminent danger to itself, if a fish can back away from that danger, understandably it will do, 

and conger can. So usually there should be no fear about it suddenly lunging forward or anything silly 

like that. It will be putting the required tension on the trace by back peddling, which is good news in 

getting the T-bar disgorger to work better. 

I have had conger in my own small boat many times without 

even a hint of a problem. There was in fact a time back in the 

1980's while fishing for the jumbo cod which visited 

Lancashire's Fylde coast back then, when we used to catch 

conger all the time during the late autumn to early winter 

months. 

Fishing over rough ground in maybe thirty feet or so of water, 

they would regularly grab small whiting which had been 

inadvertently left un-detected for too long. 

If you wanted, you could catch maybe half a dozen in a 

session late afternoon on the edge of darkness, and if you 

didn't want them, well, you still got some anyway. 

I don't know what happened there, but I haven't seen a conger 

out that way quite literally for years. But as I say, we did see 

them up to maybe twenty pounds, we would deal with them, 

and to my knowledge no problems ever occurred. 

Most people didn't actually want the things, so they were back 

over the side as quickly as they'd come in. I have however 

Phill Williams, Firth of Lorne been out in small boats were congers were being targeted and 

kept. For example, on the four hour evening conger trips from 

Looe out around the island which I used to go on many years ago, where everything was kept for pot 

bait. 

A plastic dust bin with a lid on it into which the fish were dropped with the trace still attached would 

sit in the middle of the boat. A new trace was then tied on and the old one retrieved later when death 

had adjusted the eels attitude sufficiently well. 

The big problem was that each time the lid was lifted for a new lively specimen to be dropped in, it was 

like opening a jack-in-a-box full of snakes. Enthused by the latest addition, the other incumbents would 

suddenly all make a break for freedom stopping the lid from going back on. 

263

On the larger boats such as when we went wrecking, particularly with Dave Ellworthy aboard 'Anjonika' 

out from Plymouth, all fish as they fell clear of the hook using the T-bar disgorger would drop down 

into the fish hold below decks, and you wouldn't see them again until you got back in. But not every 

large boat I fished on was built that way. Even so, I still don't recall ever having any problems. 

Generally, a fish would slither off into some dark corner out of the way and sulk. If not, it was given 

something to sulk about with a base-ball bat. Cruel and totally un-necessary I know. I'm not condoning 

any of it, merely telling it as it was. 

Thank goodness in these enlightened times, the first thought is often of release, which is as much an 

individual gesture towards that fish as any sort blow struck through conservation against dwindling 

conger stocks. And conger fishing was very big business. Actually, more so as wreck fishing started to 

loose its edge in terms of fish numbers and huge catches than when it was at its peak. 

Big eels were still caught way back then, but even bigger ones came later after the bait robbing ling had 

slipped into decline. Otherwise, it was a case of spending most of the day thinning the ling out 

sufficiently to give a big eel even half a chance of finding the bait, and sometimes it would take a few 

sustained days of effort to do that, which is why so called 'fished out' wrecks neglected out there in deep 

water are often more likely to produce the very best conger fishing. 

Most of the mid Channel wrecks would have big conger, some even bigger than the record. But if the 

ling were on the baits first, that counted for nothing. 

Tactics for ling and conger fishing over wrecks and 

reefs can be both the same and different. Ling are 

better fished for on the drift with fish baits or squid 

on a short heavy duty dropper above the lead to 

minimise hangups, whereas conger are best 

approached with a static bait at anchor, though each 

tactic will still work to an extent for the other. 

Specifically targeting big conger on a wreck is 

pretty much exclusively done at anchor, which for 

the skipper is a massive skill set in itself. Some of 

the legendary wreck skippers were incredibly good 

at it. Others less so, preferring to stick with the 

pollack and coalfish on the drift. 

John Trust and Ernie Passmore aboard 'Our Unity' 

out from Brixham set the standard. But far and away 

the person most adept at positioning a boat over a 

wreck at anchor for me was Guernsey based Dougal 

Lane, who could scream up to a wreck, lob the 

anchor overboard without any trial positioning runs, 

and bingo, we were over fish. 

Paul Maris, 91 lbs 14 ounces 

A man who could think and visualize the world in 

terms of Decca lanes, though just how that converts over to GPS I wouldn't like to say. He was good. 

But anchoring is a short term slack water affair where the dying run, angle of breeze, and predicted 

swing angle on the rope as the new tide kicks in all have to be considered in the calculations. 

Despite the fact that conger aren't dentally blessed to the same extent as sharks, in the early days, wire 

traces were seen as must. Nowadays heavy commercial monofilament of maybe two hundred pounds 

breaking strain is widely used for a lot of fish with teeth, and could easily suit conger fishing when used 

264

to make a short flowing 10/0 hook trace baited with either a whole mackerel offered as a flapper or with 

its tail removed to prevent spinning; a whole cuttlefish or squid, or best of all, and one from the congers 

regular menu, a pouting presented as a flapper, which can usually be caught to order on baited feathers 

over most wrecks. 

Some years ago we used to dinghy fish the wrecks out in Liverpool Bay. There doesn't seem to be much 

on them these days, besides which, as the water is quite shallow and many of the wrecks have either 

broken up or become silted up, they were never a patch on similar marks elsewhere in deeper water 

over heavy ground. 

But, they were all that we had, and conger fishing at anchor was something we occasionally tried. The 

difficulty was, not being regulars at it, we couldn't do a Dougal Lane and get it bang on right first go 

every time. So what we did was approach it in pairs. 

The first boat would anchor up at the calculated point. After settling up, the second boat would run 

around it checking its position, then, taking any required errors of judgement into account, make a more 

accurate drop, at which point the first boat would up anchor if necessary and settle in alongside. Not 

quite the same skill set as the west country masters, but effective none the less. 

Not quite so promising in other ways either as the mid channel wrecking in that when the boat did 

eventually swing out of position in the breeze; as the tide died completely, or as the new tide 

strengthened taking the baits out of the heavy stuff placing them onto any sand piles built up by the tide 

tight in to the iron work, we would catch dogfish, or at best bull huss. 

Conversely, in the English Channel, they would be in with a very good chance of huge turbot, and 

hitting the same spots on the drift with lures bouncing bottom, also some of the biggest angler fish on 

record. 

Reef fishing for conger is to a certain extent a scaled down version of wreck fishing, though without 

the same level of precision and short term effective time period. Closer in to shore, it's also better done 

if not after dark, then at least later in the day when there is less light penetration. 

You can catch them on a slow drift, but it's far from ideal trying that. Much better to put the anchor 

down followed by a well scented bait such as a fresh mackerel fillet or flapper hard on the bottom in 

the knowledge that there is no reason why it should get hung up and broken off. 

Often, though not necessarily always, reef conger, particularly shallower water inshore reef conger will 

be smaller than their wreck counter-parts, say in the twenty to forty pound bracket, which all boils down 

to food availability. 

The reason why wrecks are potentially such reliable big fish producers is their ability to concentrate 

resources, particularly wrecks lying on sand which must act like an oasis in the dessert. The problem is 

that with the very biggest conger, this can eventually also be one reason why you don't catch them. 

Commercial landings and reports from wreck divers clearly show that the current British & World 

record conger of 133¼ pounds taken off Torquay, while huge, falls some way short of what else is down 

there, and on occasions, some of these monstrous fish must be hooked. 

The main reasons why they are not landed are twofold. Size obviously, and the congers ability to make 

it difficult for an angler some two to three hundred feet above it to physically drag it from its lair. 

But also in some instances, not only an inability, but an impossibility to drag it clear to fight things out 

in open water, as in some cases, if a conger gets itself into an enclosed ambush point with particularly 

rich pickings, as it grows, it could well find it impossible to get back out when the one way ticket to the 

Azores finally comes through, and presumably in light of the physiological changes that accompany 

265

that ticket, it will die shortly afterwards, and not as has 

been suggested, stay put, feed on, and wax even fatter 

still as a result. 

This brings us very nicely round to the topic of shore 

fishing for conger where the same getting trapped 

problem is rumoured to be the case for old harbour 

walls riddled with holes. In particular, at locations with 

an endless supply of food for ambush predation, or stuff 

dropping from adjacent commercial boats tying up 

nearby. 

I don't know how true any of that is, but it is a story 

often bandied about. Certainly harbours with 

permanent water and commercial fishing boats are a 

good starting point. 

John Patten, shore Conger 

Graeme Pullen was the man who got me into fishing 

these. On the Irish Sea Safari's, which we'd get invited 

on most years way back when under the 'guidance' of 

Paul Harris, Graeme would insist we fished down the 

sides of the walls amongst the moored trawlers after 

dark. 

I say 'guidance' from Paul Harris, but actually, looking 

back, that should read as mis-guidance. Some of the pranks and scrapes we got in to.....well, you can 

imagine. A set of a dozen young(ish) blokes away from home just fishing and drinking is bound to 

trigger a reversal back to childhood. 

All the usual stuff such as roped door handles so you couldn't get out; cling film over the toilet bowl, 

and mackerel strapped to the cars engine or exhaust pipe regularly took place. 

I remember going to the loo one morning only to find a huge spider crab trying claw its way up the 

porcelain. Not good in a communal bathroom shared with other non angling guests. 

On another occasion, someone had broken into my room (presumably by climbing in through the 

window), stacked all my clean T-shirts up with lugworms sandwiched between each, then hammered 

down on the top of the pile. Needless to say, I was wearing evil smelling uniquely patterned tie-dyed 

T-shirts for the rest of the week. 

Anyway, back to the conger fishing. Courtmacsherry is one location that sticks in my mind. At some 

venues it was a toss-up whether to fish or to hit the pub. Not so at Courtmac. The pub was actually on 

the edge of the harbour, so we'd take it in turns at going back for another tray of drinks. But 

unfortunately, too much alcohol and commercial harbours with lots of quayside mooring ropes don't 

necessarily mix well. 

Bearing in mind that it was also dark, on the trip in question, one of the lads tripped over a rope and 

quite literally disappeared over the wall. It's a good job there was the deck of a trawler down there to 

break his fall. The fact that it almost broke his back, yet still he fished on, is testament to the medicinal 

and anaesthetic properties of Guinness. 

Later, still on the same trip, I came back from the bar only to find my rod missing which I'd left lying 

on the harbour top. The obvious conclusion was that somebody had hidden it insisting it had been 

dragged in by a fish. 

266

Anyway, a good hour went by without me finding it. It was only when Graeme landed a conger with a 

second hook to line in its mouth which we started to pull in that my rod and reel emerged from the 

water. 

So don't leave rods un-attended without first tying them down. And equally, don't under-estimate the 

potential of harbours, which while they might look barren and un-interesting by day, can produce some 

excellent conger fishing once the sun goes down, particularly if you hang rubby dubby bags down the 

sides of the wall and leave them there throughout your stay to work their magic. 

Of course, shore fishing for conger isn't only about harbours or jetties looking out onto rough ground. 

There are numerous deep water rock marks equally capable of turning up not only conger, but big 

conger too, as the record lists very clearly show, all the way from the top of Scotland to the Channel 

Islands, though as with many species of fish, often the further south you go, the better the prospects are 

of bigger fish. 

The rocks at the side of Castle Cornet at St. Peterport on Guernsey are one hot spot I remember, where 

friends of mine Peter Frise and Joe Gomez always used to do well with fish sometimes going up into 

the forties. 

As I've said many times throughout this book, I'm no shore fishing expert. I get some great shore caught 

fish, but usually as a result of guidance by others who do know what they're about, which in the case of 

big conger, don't come any better qualified than Devon angler Roger Beer. 

The only man ever to catch a conger in excess of fifty pounds from the shore and one hundred pounds 

from a boat. An ex-British shore record holder to boot who has put a lot of thought and effort not only 

into the catching, but also the landing and handling of huge shore caught eels, which is probably the 

biggest part of the battle. 

I caught up with Roger at his home in Ivybridge back in 2012 where we talked through the whole 

process with the voice recorder running. Needless to say, he tells it far better than I could hope to 

summarize it here. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 76 

ANGLER FISH Lophius piscatorius 


Not a fish anyone is ever likely to 

mistake for anything other than what it 

is. A laterally compressed pear shaped 

predator with rounded, almost pad-like 

pectoral fins behind which are small 

inconspicuous gill openings. 

Angler Fish feeding at the surface, Lerwick 

Harbour 

The first dorsal fin has three rays with 

short connecting membranes though 

there are other free rays ahead of the 

eyes, the most forward of which just 

above the upper jaw carries the 

notorious lure used to entice small 

unsuspecting fish within grabbing 

range. A second dorsal fin is also 

situated close to the tail. 

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A fish with an extraordinarily large mouth containing sharp back facing teeth which are hinged inwards 

to facilitate easy access for prey while at the same time offering little in the way of escape potential 

should a victim try to struggle free. 

The best one line description I ever heard came from a fellow angler Ray Cattoor who compared it to a 

'rent mon's bag with teeth'. In addition, the skin has no scales and appears loose, which along with 

fringed appendages around the front end resembling seaweed fronds, helps break up its outline on the 

sea bed. 

Colouration and patterning are highly variable depending on terrain, but usually comprise of a 

camouflage pattern of browns and greens with spots. 

A fish likely to be found anywhere from the low water area down to depths in excess of fifteen hundred 

feet, though most commonly around the three hundred foot contour. Said to be common throughout 

home waters, it can grow to lengths of over six feet. 

Numbers of angler fish caught on rod and line, which are never great, and the locations at which they 

are caught, which can be scattered far and wide, depend almost entirely on the degree to which lure 

fishing is practised. 

Having studied catch reports over many years, there is a direct correlation between bottom bouncing 

fish imitating lures and hook-up rates, the reason being that angler fish feed on live prey. 

There have been occasional reports of angler fish on bait too. What we don't know is how that bait was 

being presented, and therefore what it appeared to be to the angler fish that took it. It may well have 

looked as though it was alive if fished from a rolling drifting boat. 

As their anatomy suggests, angler fish feed in a very 

specific way and are reliant on small living fish 

approaching them as opposed to regular opportunist 

scavenging, which explains why they never do well in 

aquaria, where in most instances they eventually starve to 

death. 

Yet clearly, they will pick up baits from time to time, as 

evidenced by shore catches from the various national 

record lists, with some very sizeable specimens having 

been caught, which is difficult to explain away in light of 

what has already been said, so I won't even hazard a guess. 

My only query would be, was the bait fished static or on 

the move. That said, I once saw and photographed an 

angler fish swimming at the surface in Lerwick Harbour 

as fish scraps were being shaken out of trawl net. Whether 

it was the fish bits that attracted it or the other small fish 

mopping them up is impossible to say. Either way, not 

something I have witnessed either before or since. 

Reports suggest that angler fish catches were more 

common some years ago when anglers fishing for cod in 

the mid section of the North Sea, particularly along the 

Yorkshire Coast, did so with pirks and strings of muppets. 

Legendary JJ McVicar, Plymouth 

268

More recently, that trend has given way to shads, which are small soft bodied lures on four to six foot 

monofilament droppers with a separate lead taking them down, though still fished with the same type 

of lift and drop action that pirks have. So the link is still there. 

The mimicking of a small fish darting up and down close to the bottom covering ground as the boat 

drifts taking the lure within grabbing range of a concealed angler fish, is almost certain to trigger an 

instinctive response from a concealment predator reasonably widespread enough in deep water to make 

this a potentially productive technique at many locations around the country. 

The main reason why it isn't used at many locations, and therefore possibly why fewer angler fish end 

up in the boat, is undoubtedly a lack of other more numerous and sought after species about to make 

fishing these lures worthwhile. 

West country wreck fishing bouncing lures over the sand accumulations created by tidal disruption 

around clean ground wrecks has been another major source of specimen angler fish over the years, 

including the previous record shown here taken by wreck fishing legend JJ McVicar. 

The big question has to be, which angler fish are we talking 

about here. It has been known by the fishery science 

community for quite some time now that two similar 

species exist in what I term here as home waters, these 

being Lophius piscatorius and Lophius budegassa. 

All current records are assigned to L. piscatorius, but with 

the actual bodies in many cases no longer available for reexamination, 

how can people be sure, a point I have chatted 

about with BRFC chairman Mike Heylin. 

For a long time, even fishery scientists were un-aware of 

the situation, despite the geographical overlap, though L. 

budegassa is thought to be much thinner on the ground at 

a ratio of 45:1 to L. piscatorius, and with more of a 

preference for west facing coasts. 

If you ask the question what are the various record fish 

committee's intending to do about the situation, the simple 

answer would appear to be to ignore it in the hope that it 

goes away. But it isn't going to go away. 

Yes, the problem is a difficult one to solve retrospectively without throwing all past records out and 

starting again. On the other hand, getting things absolutely right and squeaky clean is what these 

organisations pride themselves on.....supposedly. 

The major points of difference are as follows.... 

1. L. piscatorius has a tentacle on the upper margin of the eye, while L. budegassa has none. 

2. L. piscatorius has a club shaped nostril, while that of L. budegassa is flat at the tip. 

3. L. piscatorius has a broad fringed lure with a central free stalk, while that of L. budegassa is 

bilobed and without central stalk. 

4. The edge of the pelvic fins of L. piscatorius are dark edged or dusky on the upper surface, while 

those of L. budegassa are clear white, possibly tinged with grey or brown in large specimens. 

269

5. The second dorsal fin of L. piscatorius has 11 to 12 rays, while that of L. budegassa has 8 to 9 

rays. 

6. L. piscatorius has 29 or 30 vertebrae while L. budegassa has 25 or 26. 

7. L. piscatorius has a light coloured peritoneum, whereas that of L. budegassa is dark. 

NOTE: The peritoneum is the thin membrane lining the inside of the body cavity and is therefore only 

available for investigation in dead specimens. 


OPAH Lampris guttatus 


Opah 82 pounds taken on shark bait out from Mevagissey, Cornwall 

With relatives like the incredible looking deal fish and ribbon-fish, it would not be unreasonable to 

expect something visually spectacular from this species, and in that respect, the opah doesn't disappoint. 

A laterally compressed, deep bodied, almost circular fish, the upper back of which is a deep blue shading 

to green, with glints of purple, silver, lilac and gold giving way to a pale watery pinkish red below. Its 

sickle shaped dorsal, pelvic and pectoral fins are a deep purplish red, and its entire body is covered by 

large oval opaque silvery-white spots. 

270

A fish well capable of weights well in excess of a hundred pounds, and one of those species that if you 

did catch one you would most certainly know about it due to a combination of its potential size and 

spectacular appearance. But don't hold your breath. I wouldn't be so bold as to say it's not going to 

happen, but in reality, that is the most likely outcome. 

Since the late 1960's, I can only recall a couple being brought ashore by anglers, which when they are 

caught are almost certainly going to make the angling press, if not the national press, though I have seen 

the odd one or two brought in to Fleetwood over the years before the distant water trawling fleet was 

banished from Icelandic waters. 

I have to say though that I am surprised the species doesn't appear on the Irish record fish list due to the 

circumstances normally surrounding its capture. 

Both the specimens I recall reading about were taken off the Cornish coast in the western approaches, 

which fits in well with its normal distribution and life style as an epi to meso-pelagic solitary oceanic 

fish found over very deep water, which in layman's terms means it feeds in the middle to upper layers 

way offshore. 

But apparently, not always, as the two fish in question both took baits fished under a float just below 

the surface aimed at catching blue sharks, which is why you might have expected an odd one to turn up 

off the south or west of Ireland. 

SUNFISH Mola mola 


Nobody is ever going to mistake a mature sunfish 

for anything other than what it actually is. A huge 

head with a small beak like mouth and long steep 

narrow fin top and bottom towards the back-end 

close to what purports to be a tail, all of which in 

truth looks more like the left over from a shark 

attack on some poor unfortunate more 

conventionally proportioned fish. 

With a possible length of ten feet, and weights in 

excess of one and a half tons bandied about, 

potentially a real giant of a fish. Most however 

will be some way short of those proportions, 

though we were on one occasion in fear of having 

one of that sort of size hit our small boat while 

striped bass fishing off Cape Cod. It came slowly 

towards us laid on its side, and thank goodness, 

just managed to dip under the hull at the very last 

moment. 

Usually the ones I see off Cornwall and Ireland 

in the summer are a fraction of that size. It's rare, though not impossible, to see them away from Atlantic 

facing coasts, and occasionally, specimens are both spotted and hooked up from deep water rock marks 

along west facing shores. Colouration is greyish or greenish brown on the back and upper sides 

becoming a lighter silvery grey below. 

271

Irish fishery scientists and fish recorders say that because the sunfish feeds mainly on items other than 

can be used by anglers for bait such as medusae, ctenophores, and salps – in layman's terms, all 

variations on the jellyfish theme, it therefore cannot be caught on rod and line using fair angling means, 

and as such they have removed the previous incumbent from their record list. 

British and Welsh fish recorders and their advisor's however take a different view and continue to list 

it both as a current record, and for future claims. Fortunately for the Scots, they never had it listed in 

the first place so don't have the problem. 

Who's right and who's wrong is not for me to speculate, and by including it here doesn't mean I am 

taking sides. By my own set of bucket list rules, I have no other choice but to include it and deal with 

it. 

Who ultimately wins the argument, we will have to wait and see. But for my money, the Irish have a 

good case. On the other hand, anglers do appear to catch them on all sorts of baits including baited 

feathers, though whether they take through hunger or agitated provocation is again something I won't, 

or more to the point, can't comment on here. 

All I can say is that if you do come across one at the surface, then give it a go and see what happens, as 

the following tale told to me by Graeme Pullen demonstrates. 

It was during a fishing expedition out from the port of Crookhaven, ironically in Ireland. A large sunfish 

was spotted lazily finning along at the surface, which they often like to do, presumably hunting for 

jellyfish or similar prey. 

Not being entirely certain as to how best to approach the situation, it was decided that the 2/0 hooks 

being used at the time for red bream would suit the situation. So, using a small lead, the bait was cast 

at the fish. 

The sunfish repeatedly responded, but could not keep pace with the bait as the lead took it out of reach 

too quickly on the drop. So the lead size was eventually scaled right down to the point where the bait 

could be trailed just ahead of the sunfishes nose, whereupon it took it immediately. 

Other anglers report similar experiences, and of sunfish grabbing at baits on the way up. That particular 

fish turned the scales to over seventy seven pounds, but like all that have gone before, including some 

very much bigger fish, it not unexpectedly failed to impress the Irish officials. 

TRIGGER FISH Balistes capriscus 


The name trigger fish comes from the front spine 

of the first dorsal fin which some people say is 

shaped like the trigger of a gun. When this is held 

erect in the upright position, it can only be 

dropped by releasing or unlocking a short 'trigger' 

spine to the rear of it, which is another potential 

explanation for the name, and by locking this 

sharp spine in position, trigger fish hope to 

dissuade larger predators from eating them. 

A fish with an almost diamond shaped laterally 

compressed body profile similar to that of a 

272

eam covered in a mosaic of heavy scales. The large head has its small eyes set well back, and 

terminates in a comparatively small mouth with large guillotine like teeth top and bottom. 

The gills are another very noticeable feature in that trigger fish don't have a conventional lift up gill 

cover. Here it has been reduced down to a small slit just in front of each pectoral fin. The pelvic fins 

are absent, and the outer most rays of the tail fin form elongate filaments. 

Colouration can be quite variable, though is usually some shade of greyish or greenish brown with blue 

bands and spots on the dorsal and anal fins. 

Very much a fish of the English Channel, west country, and south west of Ireland, though one which 

may well be spreading northwards as sea temperatures rise, with at least one specimen recorded washed 

up dead on the shore of Scotland's Isle of Mull. 

A bit of an enigma in that according to the literature, trigger fish are feeble swimmers, yet they are rated 

by anglers in some quarters, and California in particular, as one of the best pound for pound fighting 

fish in the sea, comprising some forty or so different species spread throughout the tropics and sub 

tropics all around the world. 

I've caught them along Mexico's Pacific coast, Florida's Atlantic coast, Ascension Island, and from the 

west coast of India. More importantly, from UK waters too, where although they are still caught, so far 

as being a regularly reported species in the way they once were, things seem to have gone a bit quiet 

over recent years. 

Whether that's down to a lack of fish or simply lack of interest is difficult to say, though I don't see 

falling numbers as necessarily being the problem. 

The reason why I say this is because I believe they have been in our home waters both for longer, and 

at a greater density than many people realise, something I'm basing on one particular experience of mine 

way back in the early 1980's before they became a widely reported species. 

Nobody had, or for that matter still has so far as I am 

aware, ever taken a trigger fish on rod and line off the 

Lancashire Coast. But they are most certainly there, and 

have been in some numbers for at least the past thirty 

years in the vicinity of Heysham harbour near 

Morecambe, where two nuclear power stations have their 

cooling water uptake points, and where bubble screens 

supposedly keep fish from being drawn up into the 

system. 

We know this doesn't deter fish through my work for the 

Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority who are 

constantly trying to get access to the plant following 

disturbing reports of literally tons of fish across a huge 

range of species being sucked up, filtered out, and 

disposed of by the skip load, and repeatedly IFCA have 

been refused on security grounds. 

This dumping is known to go on from a number of 

sources. I myself have spoken with Heysham workers 

while out fishing who, un-aware of my IFCA position, 

have given me chapter and verse. So something needs to 

be done, not only at Heysham, but at all power stations 

Paul Bennett, Heysham Trigger Fish 

273

operating similar systems, and IFCA needs to flex its muscles and demand access as a statutory fisheries 

governing body. 

Many years ago, when security was much more relaxed than it is today, I managed to get myself an 

invite into the power station water intake screening room, which if my memory serves me well, was a 

sort of large rotating circular metal cage designed to collect solid matter before passing the water 

forward to cool the reactors. And there amongst the other fish and weed were literally dozens of trigger 

fish. 

When I recount the story, it often draws comments like "obviously they must be there because of the 

warm water". But how does a trigger fish travelling north know that if it grits its teeth and puts up with 

the gradual temperature decline en route, eventually when it reaches Heysham harbour, everything will 

be okay. 

Yet there they were, and to this day, not a single one has turned up and rod and line, which in some 

ways I'm not that surprised about as it does help to specifically target them, while on the other hand, 

enough are caught along the south coast all the way around Cornwall up into Welsh waters to suggest 

that at least an odd accidental encounter should have taken place. But it hasn't, which poses the obvious 

question of just how numerous and widespread the trigger fish actually is. 

Reports from as far east as Sussex of a few showing up in lobster pots date back to the 1960's. The same 

is true of other locations to the west and around the Channel Islands. But still, by that stage, these were 

rare news-worthy fish, remaining so until the early 1980's, when increasing numbers of accidental 

angling encounters started persuading people to work out just what their requirements were and have a 

go at specifically targeting them. 

This eventually lead to the catching of specimens from the shore where the water was reasonably deep, 

and from boats fishing close in to the shore during the summer and autumn months, the start time of 

which would be affected by how soon the spring and summer got under-way, and whether or not the 

winter had also been mild enough to give things an extra early season boost. 

It was also quickly sussed out that trigger fish like to congregate and patrol around specific features 

with shelter, such as wrecks, piers, and suitable rock marks, examples of which include the wreck of 

the Royal Adelaide along Chesil Beach, and the mark where I first encountered them in South Wales 

back in 1995. 

Dave Lewis has long had a similar species target objective to my bucket list. I'm not sure what his 

specific criteria are, but racking up as many species as possible is certainly a central part of it, and from 

time to time in that regard we lend each other a helping hand. 

I took him char fishing for example, and he reciprocated with a session after trigger fish around a mark 

I already knew quite well, though if I'm honest, wasn't aware was a trigger fish hot spot. 

I'd dinghy fished out of Oxwich Bay in South Wales on quite a number of occasions, and not too far off 

on the way out I had noticed the wreck, which at low water is clearly visible above the waves, and for 

high water fishing, there was a large white letter 'W' as I recall painted on the nearby cliffs to line up 

with. 

I stayed down at Dave's place and we fished from his orkney longliner, casting peeler crab baits around 

the outer edge of the wreck rather that fishing over it. But you have to be quick as they hit hard and are 

soon gone if you don't react accordingly, as I was to find out. 

I can't remember what we finished up with, but it must have been something like a dozen triggers, plus 

of course other fish which will crop here and there under their appropriate species headings elsewhere 

in the book. 

274

Trigger fish are not overly demanding 

fish, but they do still make some 

demands, particularly in terms of bait 

size, hook size, and snood material. 

That guillotine like set of teeth can 

make very short work of monofilament 

hook lengths unless they are at least 

twenty to thirty pounds breaking 

strain. 

Dave Lewis, Oxwich Bay Trigger Fish 

Going off at a slight tangent, I found a 

whole heap of triggers around a small 

pier in Mexico where I'd gone with my 

little telescopic rod and fixed spool 

reel loaded with eight pounds bs 

monofilament which also had to 

double up as a trace. 

I wasn't expecting much, and that was all I had with me. The problem was that most of the triggers 

nipped through the mono a few seconds in and were gone. In fact, some even managed to bite the hook 

off without even registering a rattle. 

The following morning I went back and added a couple of inches of very fine wire to the trace, but they 

simply wouldn't touch it. Switch back to just nylon and they were on the bait immediately biting off the 

hooks. I did land a few when I managed to hook them in the scissor. But a very rapid learning curve. 

So heavy mono or even fluorocarbon for the hook lengths with small size one or size two hooks in the 

strongest patterns you can find. As for filling the hook, I don't think I've found a bait they wont take, 

though crab and squid are probably the most consistent takers. 

PUFFER FISH Lagocephalus lagocephalus 


Puffer fish are said to be one of the 

most poisonous vertebrates on the 

planet. I assume this applies only to 

the eating, because on a number of 

occasions I've been both spiked and 

nipped by various puffer fish species 

around the world while trying to get 

my hooks back, thinking they were 

harmless to handle, and so far thank 

goodness I've suffered no ill effects. 

I was however aware of their rather 

dubious culinary qualities, which if not prepared and presented properly for sale as they like to do in 

certain Japanese restaurants, can lead to paralysis and death. So I think I'll give that one a miss thank 

you. 

The name comes from this fishes ability to pump its body size up by taking on water in the hope of 

being too big to be taken by predators, which when they later relax, squirts back out again from what 

275

appears to be a smiling face as their lips are pulled back revealing the four guillotine like teeth from 

which they take their family name tetraodontidae, tetra being the Greek word for four. 

A rare fish in northern European waters, though the odd specimen is reported from time to time in the 

western approaches to the English Channel. These are thought to be occasional migrants encouraged by 

a combination of high water temperatures and passive distribution on favourable currents. 

Evidence of this distribution, and their willingness to take an angler's bait has been shown with 

specimens taken as far north and east as Chesil Beach on the Dorset coast. The fact that it is a pelagic 

feeder when in coastal waters may however be artificially suppressing the true picture, though very 

likely, not by any great margin. 

Visually, the puffer fish should be an interest raising catch with its rather flat dorsal profile and deeply 

rounded abdomen which is covered with distinct spines up to a line from the anal fin to the chin, unlike 

the upper part of the body which is spine free and feels smooth. 

When alarmed, as the name suggests, it will inflate its body to some degree (though not as much here 

as with some tropical varieties) causing the spines to stand off erect. 

Both the anal and dorsal fins are short and placed well back towards the tail. The mouth has two teeth 

in each jaw giving the impression almost of a beak. Feeding is mainly directed towards small fish, 

crustaceans and squids. Colouration is deep greyish blue over the upper surface, giving way suddenly 

to a distinctive white below. 

A very rare fish at our latitudes, though increasingly common further to the south. My only personal 

experience of this particular species is from specimens we caught on small baits while boat fishing off 

the coast of Gambia in west Africa. 

LUMPSUCKER Cyclopterus lumpus 


This is another of those species which 

nobody is really likely to confuse with 

anything else. A fish with an almost 

pre-historic look. The body shape is 

not unlike that of a mis-shaped, scaleless, 

over inflated rugby-football 

armoured with bony plates, the largest 

being arranged into four distinct rows 

on each side of the body, one of which 

is sited on top of the hump in front of 

the dorsal fin in mature fish. 

On the underside between the pectoral 

fins, the pelvic fins have fused together 

to form that famous and highly efficient sucker disc from which the species takes its well deserved 

name. 

Colouration is usually a dull deep greyish green with paler lower regions when offshore. However, 

during the breeding season, which is when most lumpsuckers will be seen by anglers, the males become 

more blue on their back and upper flanks, shading to orange-red on their lower flanks and underparts. 

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Distribution extends throughout all home waters, though it is said to be sparser in the English Channel, 

with the females having the greatest growth potential and a weight capability of maybe as much as 

twenty pounds. 

A curious, yet strangely interesting fish to scientists, if not to the angler, the lumpsucker with its misshaped 

body profile, abdominal suction pad, and unusual parental habits, is not something out of the 

regular fish mould. 

Essentially, it is an offshore fish which makes predictable annual migrations into the rocky coastal 

shallows where specimens not infrequently become stranded and die. 

The north east coast in particular used to see a lot of them, and indeed, Whitley Bay angler Ken 

Robinson once collected a whole load casualties for me in that area a number of years ago where the 

driving force behind this phenomenon in the late winter-early spring time is to reproduce. 

Lumpsuckers live out most of their lives in deep water often well beyond angling range, with depths 

well in excess of a hundred and fifty fathoms recorded. 

Their reproductive cycle however brings them to the other extreme, with the mature fish coming right 

up to, and at times inside of the spring low water tide line, which can over a tide cycle, leave them 

vulnerable to attack by sea birds and possible stranding. 

After a period of courtship, the male persuades his mate to deposit her clump of eggs in a rock crevice 

or other similar nesting site which he will then stand guard over. 

After depositing the eggs, she immediately heads back to the safety of the depths, leaving her mate to 

anchor himself to an adjacent rock where he will stay put for perhaps several weeks until the eggs are 

ready to hatch. 

Aggressive advances by other inshore fishes are defended with bold retaliation from the devoted parent. 

Invertebrate predators such as sea urchins are also shown short shrift, and throughout the incubation 

period, the eggs are guarded diligently. 

At times of reduced water movement, the male will even fan the eggs with his pectoral fins or tail, both 

to deliver oxygen, and to prevent suffocation by sediments coming out of suspension. Jets of water may 

also be blown over the eggs from his mouth. 

Only when the eggs eventually hatch and the emerging fry are blown clear of the site will the male head 

back into deep water where the females have been for perhaps a couple of months. 

On the one hand, such parental attention can reap high rewards with perhaps a full one hundred percent 

hatch, while on the other, losses due to parental stranding and persistent attacks from bands of small 

fish such as wrasse, can easily wipe out a whole family in a way which free floating pelagic eggs would 

not be subjected to. A lesson to some extent taken onboard by the emergent fry, which take up sanctuary 

in rafts of loose weed. 

So the next time you fish out a clump of floating weed offshore, take a closer look at it. On quite a 

number of occasions, I've found tiny half inch long lumpsuckers tucked away between the fronds where 

they feed initially on plankton, later switching to small crustacea and anything else that is available. 

Later, they become demersal, where their bottom feeding again takes in more or less anything that is 

available, with molluscs, worms, crustaceans and small fish featuring regularly. This means they will 

take virtually any sort of a bait put in front of them. 

277

In the egg guarding period, baits would need to be dropped 

quite literally on a fish’s nose where mainly it will be the 

smaller males which are hooked, and perhaps more regularly 

than anglers are actually aware of. 

Some of those `snags' encountered during the spring over 

heavy ground might actually be a nest guarding lumpsucker 

attached to a rock. In fact, I once read a report of one boat 

angler cod fishing in Scotland who thought he was into a real 

monster, only to haul up a small lumpsucker firmly anchored 

to a big rock. 

Those fish collected by Ken Robinson I mentioned earlier 

were individuals that had for various reasons died during nest 

guarding, and were so regular an occurrence that we 

confidently arranged to make the collection the year before. 

I don't know to what extent it still happens. But not being of 

any real commercial interest will, hopefully, see numbers 

holding, making all rocky areas, and in particular small rocky 

harbours at least worth a look. 

Phill Williams Lumpsucker, Iceland 

Unfortunately, that can't be said of everywhere, with my 

most vivid memories of the lumpsucker coming from 

Akranes in southern Iceland. 

I was over there fishing when I was introduced to a man who seasonally gill netted them inshore at 

spawning time for their eggs which was marketed as a cheap caviare. 

Not exactly an ecologically sustainable fishery. He had literally dozens of them on the boat, and to 

demonstrate their eating qualities, he turned one upside down, trapped it between his knee's, then opened 

up its body cavity and scooped out some eggs which he started eating raw his bare hands before passing 

the thing to me so that I could do the same. 

JOHN DORY Zeus faber 


278 

A bizarre looking and therefore very 

easily identified fish with a deep oval 

laterally compressed body, 

exaggerated fins, and a single large 

dark spot circled in yellow on each side 

of the body just below the lateral line 

and to the rear of the pectoral fin. This 

supposedly is the apostles thumb print, 

hence the occasionally used alternative 

name of St. Peters fish. 

The head is large, as is the mouth 

which is protrusible. The first spiny 

section of the dorsal fin is tall with

exaggerated long filaments stretching from the connecting membranes. Down on the underside, the anal 

fin starts off with four very sharp spines, and along the sides at the base of both the anal and the dorsal 

fins runs a series of short double spines. 

The thumb print spot which I've already mentioned, is placed onto a background colour of dirty 

brownish yellow which becomes lighter towards the lower part of the body. This may or may not be 

lightly patterned with yellowish lines, which if they are present, will follow the outline shape of the 

body. 

A fish capable of reaching weights into double figures, potentially found anywhere from the eastern 

English Channel to the Pentland Firth from where the British and Scottish records respectively were 

taken. 

Just because anglers don't regularly catch a particular predatory species of fish doesn't mean its rare. A 

prime example of this is the john dory. A fairly widespread fish north to south from the shoreline down 

to a hundred fathoms fathoms. Yet the average person will probably never see a single specimen 

throughout their entire angling life. 

The reason why so few turn up on the end of anglers lines is down to the way in which they feed. These 

are solitary, slow stalking stealth predators, which make full use of their laterally compressed thin body 

profile to slowly edge close to their victims, skilfully manoeuvring whenever necessary to remain edge 

on in order to conceal their true size and intentions. 

Prey can be any fish small enough to fit in what is actually quite a large cavernous mouth. But that's not 

all. The whole mouth is protrusible and can quickly be shot forwards bridging the gap between predator 

and prey when an unsuspecting sandeel, small pollack or whatever fails to recognise the danger and 

allows the john dory within striking range. 

In a nutshell then, this is a specialist predator of small live fish, and therefore anything other than live 

prey, or some item of bait or lure which fails to convince the dory that it is grabbing at a live fish, will 

usually be ignored, thereby perpetuating the illusion of the species being rarer or less widespread than 

in reality it actually is. 

Mike Thrussell, John Dory 

Reports, often showing quite sizeable 

fish, are not that uncommon in the 

angling press from marks ranging 

between offshore wrecks, banks, and 

reefs, to all things in between. But 

never it seems actually from the shore, 

a fact also reflected in the various home 

waters record lists, which surprises me, 

as the base of harbour walls attract so 

many small fish. 

Maybe it's a live bait thing again. I 

don't doubt that the odd will have been 

taken by shore anglers, but that isn't 

what the facts are saying. 

When fishing from a drifting boat 

over an offshore bank with sandeel for bass or turbot, or working a wreck with small fish imitating 

lures, feathers, or moving baits, the illusion of a living fish straying within striking range, is often more 

than any john dory worth its salt can resist. 

279

But it would have to be virtually on the fish’s nose. There won't be any sort of predatory chase. Slow 

painstakingly deliberate movements are the evolved mode of attack here. 

As for personal experiences, I've seen an odd one here and there in the Channel Islands take a small live 

sandeel baits fished around the edges of offshore and inshore sandbanks. 

We also had one in my dinghy on a mackerel baited silver tinsel feather being fished over mixed broken 

ground quite close to the shore while looking for bait during one of the Wexford small boat festivals. 

But, like most anglers, my experiences of this fish are limited. 

Other than seeing half a dozen small ones come up together in a trawl while collecting diseased 

flounders along the edge of Lune Deep off Fleetwood, plus a few quite sizeable specimens trawled up 

off the Scilly Isles, I'm as much in the dark as the next man. And while it is a fish I would dearly love 

to catch, if only because they are one of the best eating fish ever, not one I expect to be putting a tick 

against any time soon. 

BOAR FISH Capros aper 


From personal handling experience, I 

have to say that I am very surprised at 

having to cover this particular species 

here. I remember having dozens of 

specimens to examine and all 

afternoon to examine them in one 

bright sunny day spent trawling just a 

few miles off Peninnis Head in the 

Scilly Isles aboard Dave Thompson's 

boat 'Swan Dancer'. 

Lots of other goodies too, more of 

which in their appropriate slots. But 

the boar fish, or zulu as it is also 

sometimes called, was especially 

intriguing, particularly as we also had 

quite a few john dory onboard too which they kind of superficially resemble to make a direct comparison 

to. 

Nobody would ever confuse the pair, but they do share a similar rounded, laterally compressed body 

profile with a protrusible mouth which shoots out forming a bridging tube. In this case a very small tube 

for sucking in tiny crustaceans. 

Obviously, they must also take a bait, though getting one in front of a feeding specimen would be quite 

another matter altogether. 

Getting back to the identification, the first dorsal fin is both tall and spiky, joining directly on to a 

second soft dorsal fin. Similarly on the underside, the anal fin starts off with a few short sharp spines 

then a softer section. There is also a single strong sharp spine at the front of each pelvic fin, in addition 

to which the eye is noticeably very large denoting a deep water life style. 

Colouration to some extent depends on water depth, being yellowish at the shallower locations around 

the fifty fathom contour, becoming yellowish red, then completely red with several faint darker or 

280

sometimes lighter vertical bars on the flanks as the depth increases to around one hundred fathoms or 

more, usually over mixed ground and coral with even deeper water close by. 

So you see what I mean about getting a bait in front of them. But seemingly not impossible as the record 

list shows. The western approaches to the English Channel, which includes the Scilly Isles, and the 

extreme south west coast of Ireland where the species is landed commercially for fish meal, probably 

offer the best opportunities, though it needs to be pointed out that at the time of writing, a Porthleven 

fish is the sole representative across all the four home waters national record lists. Grows to around six 

inches. 

NORWAY HADDOCK Sebastes viviparus 


A mis-leading and somewhat unfortunately named fish, the 

norway haddock neither looks like nor is related to the true 

haddock, which is a member of the cod family. Norway 

haddock, along with bluemouth, belong to a family known 

as the scorpion fishes, which again is unfortunate as this is 

not the same family as the sea scorpions. 

Confusing I know, so perhaps it's best if I refer to them as 

the red fishes, which does at least reflect their physical 

appearance, all of which prefer very deep water where red is 

actually the best colour of camouflage, as that is the first 

wave-length of colour filtered out of the light spectrum as it 

enters the water. 

Below around thirty feet red appears as black, which at 

depth, with little if any light penetration, is exactly what you 

need for camouflage. 

Phill Williams, Norway 

A perch-like fish in general shape and body layout, with 

large eyes, and for its size, quite a large mouth. Colouration 

and patterning is red with some darker patches, again 

sometimes forming perch-like vertical bars on the upper 

back. 

A row of very noticeable backwards pointing spines mark the edge of the pre-operculum or first gill 

cover, and unusual amongst bony fishes, as its scientific name viviparus suggests, a fish which gives 

birth to live young. 

Norway haddock are the smallest, commonest, and most shallow living of the red fishes. At one time 

they were not too uncommon offshore in the North Sea down into English waters, occasionally even as 

far south as Essex, with both the British boat and shore records coming from Southend back in the 

1970's. 

I would add though that I can't ever recall any reports from English waters, and with climate change 

now pushing most species up to even higher latitudes, I doubt if we will do ever again. 

My own personal encounters have all been in the deep water around Shetland on small fish strips fished 

on hooks with shiny metallic bodies fitted to them which were popular back in the 1970's. Not that that 

probably matters, as I've caught them on just plain baits fished on short droppers like mackerel feathers 

over in Iceland too. 

281

I even had quite a big one on a pirk in the northern Norwegian fjords which came as something of a 

surprise. And while the species has occasionally also been caught from the shore, don't expect to see 

this repeated any time soon. 

BLUEMOUTH Helicolenus dactylopterus 


Bluemouth are both related to and in 

many ways also visually similar to 

norway haddock, but with a preference 

for very much deeper water, where if 

you find them, they can be about in 

plague proportions. 

A red, spiny, large eyed, big headed 

fish. The main point of difference 

between it and the norway haddock is 

that as the name suggests, the interior 

of the mouth is blue. 

Sean Palmer, Dingle Bluemouth 

There are other easily checked out 

features too, one being that the 

connecting membranes of several of 

the lower pectoral fin rays do not 

extend to the end of the rays, giving 

the fin a sort of 'gurnard-like' quality. 

Colouration and markings, which are a lighter shade of red with more obvious darker banding, can also 

help set these two fish apart, though unless you have both species to hand for comparison, this might 

not always be immediately obvious. 

In home waters, fishing not necessarily in, but certainly very close to deep water is an absolute must. 

At the time of writing, the British record is held by a Stornoway fish, which if my memory serves me 

well is a port that has turned a few others up over the years. 

In Irish waters, the west facing Atlantic coast offers the best prospects. Back in 2009 I had a report and 

pictures sent through from Irish angler Sean Palmer who caught good numbers of them well out from 

Dingle. 

Further support for this area being a 'hot spot' comes from the Irish record which was taken just the 

other side of the bay out from Caherciveen. 

As for my own personal encounters, these have all come from southern Europe, showing the huge range 

of distribution this fish has, providing the depth is right. 

I picked a few up in seventeen hundred feet of water on small fish baits off El Hierro in the Canaries 

while fishing for six gilled sharks. But far and away the most I have ever seen fell to the same tactics 

off the southern tip of Gibraltar where we were specifically targeting them. 

282

GREATER WEEVER Trachinus draco 


A long, narrow, somewhat laterally 

flattened fish, which unlike its smaller 

relative the lesser weever, has a smaller 

mouth and its eyes set into the sides of 

its quite small head. 

An incredibly beautiful fish when 

plucked straight from the water, with 

grey, yellow, and even purple narrow 

angled lines on its back and flanks, plus 

of course that venomous short black 

first dorsal fin, the spines of which, like 

those on the gill covers, can pack quite 

a nasty punch. 

These are hollow and connect to venom sacks, which when handling pressure is applied to the spines 

causing a puncture wound, forces venom into the blood stream with painful, though very rarely fatal 

consequences, unless the venom ends up exacerbating some other dangerous pre-existing medical 

condition. 

They say that immersing the wound in water as hot as you can bare it can help break the toxin down. 

What they (medical advice columns) also say is that if the pain persists for more than an hour, then 

medical assistance should be sought. The same advice is also true for the lesser weever. 

The key physical differences between the two species are the greater body length and side positioning 

of the eyes, plus the black pigmentation of the first dorsal fin not reaching the back of the membranes 

in the greater weever. In the lesser weever the pectoral fins are rounded at their tips, whereas those of 

the greater have a concave notch missing from their upper edge. 

Greater weever have a preference for moderately deep water starting at around ninety feet, which makes 

it quite a rarity on rod and line from the shore. They are not however a rarity from the boats. Where 

they are abundant, such as out in Cardigan Bay, they can be especially numerous. Some would even 

describe it as nuisance proportions. 

Drop a set of feathers, baited or otherwise too close to the bottom and they will invariably be grabbed 

by greater weevers, which on occasions have tipped the scales at a couple of pounds. 

Aberystwyth for me was always the number one location while feathering for bait out over clean ground, 

though any of the ports in that area could just as easily put you over them. 

The Cornish coast is another noted producing area, though not so much from the boats as some of the 

deep water rock marks looking out onto sand. 

An easy fish to catch on marks where they are found, but despite supposedly having a widespread 

distribution, from an angling perspective, they are patchy and rarely seen elsewhere. Also a fish with 

quite a high price on its head for the table in other parts of Europe. 

The French I'm told have a particular liking for them, though that's no recommendation for a nation that 

savours frogs legs and snails. I did once eat a greater weever though. The back end portion at least, well 

away from the venom sacks. It was okay. A bit like whiting, but nothing to get excited about. 

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LESSER WEEVER Echiichthys vipera 


A small, short, but still rather elongate 

bodied fish with a large up-pointing 

mouth and quite large eyes situated 

almost on top of the head, typical of an 

ambush predator that likes to almost 

totally conceal itself in the soft 

substrate and attack from below. 

The edge of the tail also has a dark banding. 

Colouration is probably the key to 

instant recognition. When alarmed or 

threatened, its black first dorsal will 

repeatedly shoot up erect. Otherwise, 

the back and upper sides of the body 

have a very fine mottled patterning of 

yellow, black and brown, while the 

lower body is quite a striking white. 

The lesser weever differs from its bigger relative by its eyes being set higher up on the top of the head, 

an entirely black first dorsal fin, and by having completely rounded pectoral fins. 

A locally abundant small fish in inshore waters where it poses as much risk to bathers as it does anglers. 

Because of its relatively large mouth, also a fish that many anglers are likely to encounter over clean 

sandy ground at some point or other. 

I come into contact with them quite regularly off Blackpool when feathering with shrimp rigs or sabiki's 

too close to the bottom when after mackerel for bait. 

We also pick up a lot at the entrance to the River Ribble on worm baits, and again see quite a few out 

in Morecambe Bay when flattie bashing. 

So expect them anywhere over shallow clean ground, around estuaries, and over offshore banks the 

length and breadth of the country both east and west when the hook sizes and baits are small enough 

for them to manage. 

A common fish, and one which everyone should familiarize themselves with as they can so easily be 

mistaken for a small whiting and grabbed by un-suspecting hands, with painful, though rarely fatal 

consequences. This causes venom to be injected into the wound up the hollow spines of the first dorsal 

fin and gill cover, forced through by handling pressure applied to the fish, or by inadvertently standing 

on one. 

Hot water supposedly helps the body break this toxin down, or hot coffee in the case of my boat parter 

Dave Devine who got spiked by one close to his thumb as a passing shot while the culprit was swinging 

about on the end of his line. And very painful he said it was too. So much so that if it persists, the advice 

normally given is to seek medical assistance. 

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SHORT SPINED SEA SCORPION Myoxocephalus scorpius 


As with the dragonet, another unfortunate fearsome sounding name given to two otherwise quite 

harmless inshore fishes, the long and the short spined sea scorpions. 

Granted, they do look a little handler un-friendly, but they're not. But even the sharp spine on the gill 

covers from which they derive their name is nothing to worry about and is easily avoided. And while 

the two species may look very much alike, they don't take a lot of separating, and will most certainly 

stand-out from anything else caught. 

Both species have large mouths and heads, often made to look even bigger when agitated as they flare 

out their gill covers. 

Colouration and patterning depends on a range of factors including terrain, sex, and breeding condition, 

but will be some mix of greens, browns, yellows, creams, and even purples, arranged into patches, 

saddles, spots, and at times broad vertical bars. Ripe females will also be orange along their underparts. 

Size is another potential consideration. Long spined sea scorpions rarely get to more than a few ounces, 

whereas short spined sea scorpions can achieve weights of a few pounds. 

To clinch a positive ID, the short spined sea scorpion has a flap under its throat formed by the joining 

together of the gill cover membranes, whereas the same membranes in the long spined variety are joined 

to the throat leaving a slight gap, and therefore fail to create a flap. 

Short spined sea scorpions can be caught at a wide variety of suitable locations, which means heavy 

ground, usually offshore, but not too deep, and predominantly in the northern part of the country, 

starting at a line drawn across from The Wash to the Bristol Channel. 

From personal experience, while I've seen the odd one caught in the Menai Strait, the inner Clyde, and 

off both the Lancashire and Cumbria coasts, far away the biggest concentrations of rod caught 

285

specimens seem to come when fishing baits over heavy ground in maybe twenty to fifty feet of water 

from around Whitby, right up the North Sea to the very northern most tip of eastern Scotland. 

The last big one I saw was while bait fishing for cod over the inshore reefs around Coquet Island out 

from Amble where they call them granny fish. 

I've no doubt many of the deep water rock marks, and certainly some of the large concrete piers up and 

down the east coast borders region also regularly produce a few, particularly to LRF tactics on account 

of their quite predatory nature and the size of their mouth. An amazingly beautiful though slightly 

bizarre looking fish. 

LONG SPINED SEA SCORPION Taurulus bubalis 


At a glance, a very much smaller but 

quite similarly coloured and patterned 

fish to its near relative the short spined 

sea scorpion above, the main 

distinguishing feature being the gill 

cover membranes under the chin, which 

in this case are joined to the throat 

leaving a slight gap between them. 

Those of the short spined sea scorpion 

do actually meet forming a very obvious 

flap. 

A fish barely able to achieve six inches 

in length with a nationwide distribution 

found very close to the shore over mixed to heavy ground. But because of the size of the mouth, a small 

fish which can and will readily take most small to medium sized baits, and which no doubt would also 

respond to LRF, providing the lures are small enough. 

Any rock mark could potentially turn one up. That said, the best concentrations I have seen have come 

from the base of bouldery weedy harbour walls where kids tend to drop their baits. There is however 

one particular encounter that sticks very clearly in my mind. 

I caught a cod of several pounds off Rossall one winter, which immediately before taking my bait had 

also eaten a long spined sea scorpion that had in true fashion flared out its gills and got itself lodged in 

a stalemate position at the back of the cod's throat. 

So I pulled it out, and as it was clearly still alive, put it back in the water and watched it swim away. 

One very lucky little fish delivered quite literally from the jaws of death. 

BLACKFISH Centrolophus niger 


In terms of body profile, this is quite an elongate fish with a blunt rounded face. The dorsal fin, which 

begins further back than the origin of the pectoral fin below it, starts off low in height, building quickly 

before losing height again more gradually in its single quite long run towards the back of the fish. 

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The anal fin follows a similar pattern 

but is shorter, starting further back, 

and ending at the same point as the 

dorsal fin above it. 

Colouration can vary from russet 

through to deep brown, and even a 

dull bluish black on the upper flanks, 

back, and fins, becoming more 

silvery beneath. 

fish, ctenophores (Comb jellies) and medusa (jelly fishes). 

So far as food goes, blackfish are 

thought to eat more or less anything 

that comes along, which is known to 

include items such as crustaceans, 

Unfortunately, there are a number of factors potentially working against anglers seeing more of this 

fish, the main one being its favoured life style. 

Something of a lone wanderer, the blackfish is variously quoted as having an epi-pelagic, a mesopelagic, 

and a bathy-pelagic life style, meaning that it can live out in open water down to a hundred 

fathoms; from one hundred to five hundred fathoms, or from five hundred to two thousand fathoms, 

depending on which version is correct, and always well up off the bottom. 

So for the blackfish to be reported as being potentially not that un-common over the deeper areas of the 

European continental shelf, it is likely going to be an epi-pelagic fish, that is to say found within the 

one hundred fathom band, which is a rarity for anglers to be fishing in around the British Isles. 

But, as can be the case, deep water vagrants across a wide range of species do occasionally stray closer 

to shore than the scientific wisdom suggests they are supposed to, and when that happens, the odd 

specimen is occasionally caught on rod and line. 

CORNISH BLACKFISH Schedophilus medusophagus 


At our latitude, the cornish blackfish is a 

much scarcer species than the blackfish 

Cenrolophus niger, being classed as a 

very rare inshore vagrant, though not 

uncommon well out over deeper water to 

the south west of Britain and Ireland along 

the edge of the continental shelf. So 

unusual in fact, that when one was caught 

in a gill net in twenty feet of water off 

Guernsey in 2010, it even made the news. 

Even more unusual is the fact that the rod and line specimen responsible for placing it on the bucket list 

here was taken from Cefn Sidan Beach in Wales. So not a fish that is likely to create identification 

problems on the basis that the vast majority of us will never see one throughout our entire lives. 

287

But just in case, this species is almost identical fish to the blackfish Cenrolophus niger detailed above, 

though with a narrower body profile, and most important of all, the dorsal fin starts a lot further forward, 

pretty much in line with the outer edge of the gill cover and the base of the pectoral fin, whereas that of 

C. niger starts at a point half way back along the pectoral fin. Colouration, though still very dark, tends 

more towards greenish brown with some darker mottling. 

BARRACUDINA Paralepis coregonoides 


Like one or two of the weird and 

wonderful inclusions here, the 

Barracudina is a fish I had never even 

heard of prior to drawing up this 

species list, so your guess is as good as 

mine. It sounds like it should be related to the barracudas. It even looks like it might be too, though it 

isn't in any way related to them. 

A long slender fish with a large mouth full of teeth, but whereas barracuda's have two dorsal fins, the 

barracudina's have just the one, plus a tiny fleshy flap on the back just in front of the tail known as an 

adipose fish, a feature very few fish other than Salmonids possess. 

There are actually something of the order of fifty similar related species worldwide belonging to the 

family paralepididae, so just in case, count the pectoral rays, which should number fourteen to sixteen, 

and the anal fin rays, of which there should be twenty three to twenty five. 

A silvery grey fish which can grow to around twenty inches, most commonly found leading a 

bathypelagic life style in the upper water layers along the edge of the Atlantic continental shelf. Yet 

amazingly, the catch that placed it on the bucket list came from Newton Shore at Ayr in Scotland. 

BUTTERFISH Pholis gunnellus 


Identification here should present no 

problems at all. An extremely elongate 

laterally compressed little fish with a 

single long dorsal fin, shorter continuous 

anal fin, and small tail. 

A fish which when handled shows a 

blatant refusal to keep still, continually 

forcing itself into a letter `S' shape, that is 

if you can keep hold of it for long enough, 

hence the name butterfish. 

It's tiny embedded scales have given it a 

very smooth slippery feel, which coupled 

to that refusal to keep still, also help make it a very difficult fish to collect as bait. 

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Colouration is sandy brown with a series of a dozen or so black blotches circled with white along the 

upper back just touching on to the base of the dorsal fin. Darker vertical bars may also be present along 

the length of the flanks. 

Rocks and boulders from the mid shore down to around fifteen fathoms are its preferred terrain, where 

it will force itself into tightest of crevices to avoid predation, though not always successfully if the 

number taken by larger predators is anything to go by. Feeding is predominantly on small worms, 

crustaceans, and molluscs. 

My personal encounters have always come either when turning rocks over looking for crabs, or in the 

stomachs of cod when I gut them to see what they've been feeding on. 

It has never even crossed my mind that anyone either could or would catch one on a baited hook, but 

the LRF lads certainly seem to pick up a few, so it can be done, though not something I will be looking 

to repeat, tick or no tick on my species list. Grows to around ten inches. 

CONNEMARA SUCKER Lepadogaster candollei 


I once made quite a concentrated effort 

to find and catch suckerfish or clingfish 

as they are also known. Not on rod and 

line, but by turning over scores of huge 

back breaking loose boulders and 

popping any fish I could find into a 

bucket for transfer into a marine 

photographic tank. 

Weeks of low tide searching spent at 

Guernsey, the Scilly Isles, and around 

Anglesey, and the only species I ever 

came up with was the cornish sucker 

Lepadogaster lepadogaster. 

I've never seen either a two-spotted 

sucker or connemara sucker. Yet it's the latter that's found its way onto a baited hook, and therefore 

onto the bucket list, which is surprising on two counts. 

The first is being so small that it has ever happened at all, the other that when one was eventually caught, 

it's the rarest and most localised of the three regular home water species that has turned up. 

Quite a scarce fish found mainly around the western approaches to the English Channel, and south or 

west Ireland, and even there in localised pockets. The lower shore and shallow water down to perhaps 

fifty feet with areas of big stones, boulders, and kelp, are its principle domain. 

This particular species has a somewhat elongate shallow wedge shaped head. The dorsal and anal fins, 

though finishing very close to the base of the tail, do not quite reach it, whereas those of the cornish 

sucker are joined to the tail, and the two-spotted sucker's dorsal and anal fins are both noticeably very 

short ending well clear of the tail. 

Colouration in all three species is some shade of red, which doesn't help here. However, the cornish 

sucker also has a very conspicuous single blue spot edged in red behind each eye which the connemara 

289

sucker lacks, while the two-spotted sucker often has flecks of blue, brown, and yellow, though the 

layout of the fins should be sufficient to avoid confusion. Grows to around three inches. 

DRAGONET Callionymus lyra 


290 

Quite a common little fish over clean 

to lightly mixed ground in shallow 

water all around the British Isles. Yet 

despite its relative abundance, its 

growth potential of twelve inches for 

males and eight inches or so for 

females, plus a willingness to eat the 

kinds of things anglers like to put on 

hooks, providing they are small 

enough, it is still none the less a 

species in my experience that is rarely 

caught. 

A fish with a rather flattened body 

giving the appearance of its eyes 

being located well up on its head. 

Male Dragonet 

Colouration is particularly striking in 

mature males which are sandy brown 

with irregular blue blotches and long blue strips on the extremely tall first dorsal fin, which when 

flattened down almost reaches to the tail. These markings will also be present on the long second dorsal 

fin. 

Females and immature males on the 

other hand are far less eye catching, 

being marked with three brown 

saddles on the upper back, and lacking 

the exaggerated height of the first 

dorsal fin. 

In both sexes there are four small 

tightly grouped spines on the preoperculum 

or first gill cover reaching 

out towards the operculum or outer gill 

cover itself. 

As with the sea scorpions, a rather 

fearsome name for such an innocent, 

Female Dragonet 

attractive little fish. The mature males 

in particular with their tall blue and 

yellow striped fins. But for the most part, not a fish you really get the chance to deliberately target. 

I've picked a few up, including some quite large male fish, while drifting worm baits for cod out over 

the mixed to bouldery ground along the seaward side of Walney Island. 

I've also had them in Wales. In fact, my first ever specimen came from Aberystwyth, and more recently 

I have seen the odd one caught around Anglesey when baits and hooks have been small enough.

By far the biggest numbers I have ever seen came on tiny baits after a straight drop down the side of 

the inner harbour wall at St. Mary's on the Isles of Scilly. 

I was fishing for wrasse and plaice, leaving my son Ian and daughter Dawn, who couldn't have been 

much more than seven or eight at the time, amusing themselves catching all sorts of mini species there, 

except that one afternoon, Dawn suddenly started shouting for help, and when I got there she had a 3¼ 

pound plaice at the surface on a tiny fixed spool outfit. 

Fortunately, I was able to hand lift it up the side of the wall, and later back at the tent we had it for tea. 

GREAT PIPEFISH Syngnathus acus 


A long, eel-like fish, whose body 

appears to be made up from segmented 

body rings with an elongated trunk for a 

mouth. As the name suggests, one of the 

larger, though not the largest species of 

pipefish species on the home waters 

scene, with a potential length of around 

eighteen inches. Colouration is mid to 

light greeny brown, with small 

noticeable brown spots on the snout and 

head. 

This particular species has pectoral and anal fins as well as a complete tail which not all pipefishes have. 

The main species it could be confused with is nilsson's pipefish. To help ease that confusion, the great 

pipefish has a bump on its head just behind the eyes and lacks a ridge along the top margin of the snout, 

which comprises more than half of the overall head length. One of the pipefish species in which the 

male has a brood pouch. 

Having seen and handled many pipefish species over the years, including some quite big great pipefish, 

I have to say that I just can't imagine either how or why anybody would catch one on rod and line. Like 

so many of the smaller fish species, this must be the result of deliberately targeted effort with the 

smallest of hooks and baits. 

Probably best to be looking around deep water harbour walls or jetties, though to be honest, as with 

many of these smaller species which very few people other than fishery scientists are normally 

interested in, in truth I'm only guessing. 

A coastal fish found out over sand, mud, and even amongst sea weeds, where it feeds on tiny crustaceans 

including small shrimps and crabs, plus small fish species and fish fry of an appropriate size throughout 

the English Channel northwards in the west right up to the very top of Scotland. 

SNAKE PIPEFISH Entelurus aequoreus 


As with the other pipefish species, all of which are related to the sea horses, the snake pipefish is a long 

eel-like fish whose segmented body rings in this case are barely detectable in live specimens, though 

they are still present. 

291

Again, the mouth comes in the form 

of an elongated trunk or snout. This 

particular species has no pectoral or 

anal fins, but does have a slight trace 

of a tail fin if you look hard enough. 

No other potential home waters 

pipefish species has this fin 

combination. Male snake pipefish 

can carry up to a thousand eggs on 

their abdomen. 

By all accounts, a very much rarer species than the great pipefish and the rest of the clan, with less of a 

tendency for anglers to come across it due to its favoured deep open water life-style, only rarely making 

it into inshore waters, and usually only then when caught up in weed rafts that are themselves delivered 

inshore by the wind or the tide. 

Not exactly a collection of facts which should make any difference on the angling front. Again, I'm 

absolutely amazed it appears on the list in the first place. But as ever, if it's included there, then it also 

has to be included here. Grows to maybe sixteen inches. 

POGGE Agonus cataphractus 


An unusual fish in appearance, having 

a complete external body armour made 

up from overlapping bony plates. At the 

tip of the snout there are two upward 

facing hooks, while the underside of the 

head has many short barbels extending 

from the bottom jaw to the operculum 

or gill cover. Colouration is generally a 

drab brown with distinct wide slightly 

lighter coloured vertical hoops around 

the body. 

Now this is one small fish I as very 

familiar with. We see lots of them up 

here along the Lancashire coast, both in the shrimp nets and in the stomach contents of cod, suggesting 

they are just as much at home over mixed as well as clean sandy ground where they are quite active 

little predators in their own right taking small crabs, shrimps, worms, and even fish fry or eggs. 

A common fish throughout all home waters from the English Channel up to the Shetland Islands and 

beyond, ranging from the coastal shallows during the summer, seaward to depths in excess of a hundred 

fathoms over the cooler winter months. 

Not a fish which anglers in the normal course of events are likely to pick up. With a growth potential 

of at best six inches, any catching would need to be deliberately done with tiny hooks and equally tiny 

baits. 

292

RED BAND FISH Cepola rubescens 


Most people winding in and finding a red band fish on the 

end of their line, while they probably wouldn't have a clue 

as to its actual identity, would still be very much aware that 

they had caught something well and truly out of the 

ordinary. The lone representative of the family cepolidae to 

be found in our home waters, where throughout the entire 

region, it rates as rare to non-existent. 

A striking little fish whose long thin laterally compressed 

dark red to orange body has a single long anal and dorsal 

fin tapering out at a point close to what purports to be a tail. 

The eye is noticeably large, as is the mouth which points 

upwards, suggesting a hunting technique which involves 

ambush from below, as would be the case when hiding in a 

mud burrow which these fish like to construct. 

So, orange to red on the upper parts with a silvery sheen 

along the flank giving way to a more yellowish red 

ventrally, usually with a single red blotch on the dorsal fin. 

A length of around two feet represents its maximum growth 

potential, fed by a diet of small crustaceans and their larvae. 

The south west corners of Britain and Ireland present the best opportunity of finding one of these 

amazing yet enigmatic fish, though it does increase in abundance further to the south throughout the 

Biscay area. 

Having said that, where you find one, chances are there will be more of them. Many more in fact. 

Particularly at or beyond depths of thirty fathoms over soft substrates of fine sand or mud into which 

they can burrow. 

The whiting Grounds off Rame Head on the Devon–Cornwall border are known to have produced a 

few over the years. Andy Jackson also tells me that there is an odd one or two in the depths of Scotland's 

Loch Sunart, while divers report seeing them quite regularly in around twelve to fifteen fathoms of 

water over the mud around the eastern fringe of Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. 

If you want to catch them virtually to order though, then get down to Weymouth, where Colin Penny, 

who operates the charter boat 'Flamer', has a patch of muddy ground that is virtually alive with the 

things 

A case of small baits, particularly ragworm at Weymouth, or either plenty of patience and an incredible 

dose of good fortune elsewhere is what is called for, none of which I personally have had in any measure 

when it comes to this particular species. 

GREATER SANDEEL Hyperoplus lanceolatus 


Despite their small size, sandeels are fish which anglers do regularly target with small feathers such as 

shrimp rigs and sabiki's as a very important source of bait for a huge range of predatory admirers, 

293

anging from pollack and bass through to turbot, brill and rays. Live, dead, whole, or cut, they make 

excellent baits, particularly when kept alive in aerated or sea-water pumped live-well systems. 

They can get quite big at times too. I've 

had a few real 'snakes' over the years 

when drifting offshore banks and sandwaves 

fishing specifically for them as 

you can around the Channel Islands and 

Isle of Man. 

Easy fish to catch by the bucket full if 

you choose the right areas to feather. 

Less so when they come up as odd ones 

out of the blue mixed amongst mackerel, 

which they fairly regularly do around the 

Mull of Galloway, Anglesey, and a few 

other areas I've fished. 

This is the largest growing sandeel species, which can on occasions exceed twelve inches in length, and 

as such is the one most likely to be caught on rod and line. 

In fact, at that sort of size they become active predators in their own right, well capable of and willing 

to take smaller sandeels. A species with a coastal distribution throughout all home waters, though 

nowhere is it as abundant as some of the other smaller sandeel species. 

A long slender fish of typical sandeel layout with a long continuous single dorsal and anal fin, forked 

tail, and noticeably protruding lower jaw. 

Apart from its potential size, the main distinguishing feature of this species is a distinct dark spot on the 

snout in front of the eyes. The upper jaw is not protrusible. Colouration is bluish green above, becoming 

silvery below. 

CORBIN'S SANDEEL Hyperoplus immaculatus 


Exactly the same as for the greater sandeel in terms of catching and basic elongate appearance, but a 

species with a much more localised distribution, favouring the western approaches including the 

Channel Islands, extending northwards to the southern tip of Ireland, then re-appearing along the west 

coast of Scotland, where in all cases it is an offshore species usually found well away from land. 

Like the greater sandeel, the upper jaw is not protrusible, which is what sets these two species apart 

from all the others. Then to separate it from the greater sandeel, there must be no dark spot on the snout. 

Colouration is greenish blue on the back, and silvery white ventrally. Grows to around twelve inches. 

A species I have caught and identified mixed in amongst greater sandeels around the Channel Islands 

on odd occasions. 

294

FIFTEEN SPINED STICKLEBACK Spinchia spinachia 


A small, elongate, wholly marine 

species, with fourteen to sixteen short 

spines on the upper back ahead of its 

short dorsal fin. Other features include 

a rather thin elongate caudal peduncle 

(tail stalk) with a very small rounded 

tail. 

Colouration varies and can be matched 

to the type of terrain it lives in, though 

usually it will be either green or brown, 

perhaps with darker markings. 

A fish predominantly found in shallow 

weedy areas where a diet of small fishes, fish eggs, crustaceans, and any other small invertebrates is 

pursued. 

As with its freshwater relatives, this is a nest builder which makes use of available vegetative material 

bound together with kidney secretions. Again, the eggs are guarded and fanned by the male. 

Though common, this is not a fish frequently seen either by anglers or caught by children with nets, in 

the main because of its somewhat solitary lifestyle, particularly along west facing coasts from around 

the Isle of Wight up to Scotland's Cape Wrath. 

Some call it the saltwater stickleback, but this isn't strictly true. It is a stickleback in every sense of the 

word, and it does live in saltwater, but it's not the only one. The so called freshwater three spined 

stickleback is also equally happy in both brackish and fully saline waters. I've even seen them netted 

many miles out from the shore. 

As ever with a lot of the smaller species of fish, I find it difficult to get my head around the fact that not 

only has somebody caught one on a baited hook, but that somebody probably actually wanted to. 

I wouldn't even call it a LRF target. With a maximum length of eight inches at best, plus a tiny mouth 

only capable of allowing it access to the smallest of food items or baits, it's going to take a particularly 

determined and deliberate angling shot. 

As for my experience of the species, that comes from dabbling around in the deeper weedier rock pools 

on Holyhead Island with the kids and their little nets collecting specimens of anything and everything 

with fins to set up in my marine tank for photographic purposes. 

ARGENTINE Argentina sphyraena 


The argentine is a member of a prestigious group of fishes which have a small fleshy fin-like lobe on 

their back just in front of the tail known as an adipose fin. All salmonids and related species have this 

feature. 

Quite where this places those totally marine species such as the argentine and smelts in terms of 

relatedness is difficult to ascertain, though I did read somewhere that the adipose finned fishes are a 

group in transition, either from freshwater to the sea, or in the other direction. 

295

The reference wasn't specific, the 

suggested link being that on the one 

hand you have totally freshwater 

species such as the grayling, while on 

the other there are fish such as the 

argentines living offshore in very deep 

water along the edge of the continental 

slope, plus all stages in-between, with 

smelt which like to enter estuaries, and 

salmon and sea trout which alternate 

between saline and fresh, though 

always returning to the upper 

tributaries of the rivers in which they 

were spawned to breed. 

Just how related these species all are, and how much credence should be given to that particular 

suggestion, I don't know. But it does pose some interesting, if not a little speculative questions. 

So the argentine is a small deep water fish which on occasions comes close enough to the shore to find 

itself on a small baited hook. Arrochar on Loch Long is the only home waters rod caught record I can 

find, which in some ways isn't surprising, as the Clyde sea lochs are deep(ish) water venues with even 

deeper water close at hand outside. So as inshore venues go, that part of Scotland probably deserves a 

mention on the home waters 'most likely' list. 

Otherwise, an elongate silvery fish prone to readily losing its scales when given any sort of rough 

handling. The eye is quite large in proportion to the head, hinting at its deep water life style. 

The fact that it has that adipose fin will automatically set it apart from 99.9% of other saltwater species. 

The only remotely possible confusion could come from the smelt, which is a coastal species with an 

adipose fin, a large head and mouth, and a first dorsal fin set well back pretty much directly over the 

pelvic fins, unlike that of the argentine which starts well forward of the pelvic fins. 

Colouration in the argentine is a greenish grey on the upper back becoming greyish white below, with 

a silvery stripe along the flanks separating the two other colours. 

My own experiences here are rather limited. I have caught a few when fishing small hooks baited with 

tiny fish strips in very deep water when curious to see what was might be down there. In the main this 

has been around the Canary Islands, and in particular at the bottom end of El Hierro where water depth 

was typically around 1,700 feet or more. 

SMELT Osmerus eperlanus 


Another species, as with the argentine, that has a small fleshy adipose fin on the upper back just in front 

of the tail which is characteristic of salmonids. A further feature it also shares with some freshwater 

salmonids, grayling and schelly in particular, is a distinct cucumber smell after death. 

A small marine species rarely found too far away from the influence of freshwater, particularly in and 

around large estuaries where it mixes with saltwater, creating the type of brackish environment to which 

the smelt has become adapted, and to which adult smelt migrate from the nearby coastal shallows at the 

height of winter in preparation for a more concerted push on to the higher reaches, maybe even as far 

up as the brackish limit, to spawn as winter gives way to spring. 

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After spawning, the adults drop back, 

with the smaller fish following on after 

their first summer, though they don't 

actually need saltwater to survive as 

there are completely land-locked 

populations in Scandinavia, and once, 

many years ago, also in Rostherne 

Mere in Cheshire, before going extinct 

in the early part of the twentieth 

century. 

As the smelt and the argentine are 

almost certainly never going to end up 

in each others company, suffice to say that the smelt has a small eye, a large mouth, and its dorsal fin 

is situated directly over the top of its pelvic fins, plus of course, that adipose fin to avoid confusion with 

pretty much everything else that swims in the sea. 

Colouration is green on the back and upper flanks becoming silvery white below, with a distinct silvery 

stripe from head to tail along each flank. 

The combined home waters record lists show only one inclusion taken by Geoff Idiens in the Wyre 

Estuary out from Fleetwood at just under seven ounces, a fish I witnessed and helped get through the 

recording process, and which I have to say, I was surprised to see still there having been caught way 

back in 1981. 

SAND SMELT Atherina presbyter 


Other than both being fish with a 

name suggesting they could be 

taxonomically close, the two sand 

smelts and the smelt Osmerus 

eperlanus have absolutely nothing in 

common, as they belong to two 

completely un-related families. 

Sand smelt are at their most abundant 

in and around the western English 

Channel, with some degree of 

northerly migration, perhaps even as 

far up as western Scotland is warmer 

years. 

A small shoaling species attracted to water of low salinity where it can at times be found in huge 

numbers, particularly in docks and harbours built on estuaries. 

On Guernsey, the islanders specifically catch them for eating in St. Peterport Harbour, and at St. Mary's 

on the Isles of Scilly, my own children caught them by the bucket full straight down the side of the 

inner harbour wall on tiny pieces of worm fished on size six hooks. 

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When they were present, it was quite literally a fish a drop. Then we wouldn't see them for days, or 

even all on some of our visits. Aberystwyth harbour in West Wales has also produced them in the past. 

A long narrow little fish that will struggle to exceed six inches in length, with a blunt face and quite 

large mouth in relation to its overall size. Both dorsal fins are short and well separated, the first of which 

starts just after the pelvic fins below it, with the second more or less directly over the anal fin. 

Colouration however is a much more reliable identifier, it being green on the back and upper flanks and 

silvery white below, separated by a narrow bright silvery line running the whole length of the fish from 

its gill cover to its tail. Tiny black dots may also be found edging the scales around the head and back. 

Almost identical to it is the very much rarer big scaled sand smelt Atherina boyeri which has a slightly 

bigger head and eye, facts only of value when a direct comparison can be made between the pair. 

Otherwise, it's a case of counting the scales in the lateral line between the base of the pectoral fin and 

the tail, which in A.presbyter number fifty three to fifty seven, and in A. boyeri should be between forty 

four and forty eight. 

BIG SCALED SAND SMELT Atherina boyeri 


Everything that has been said about the sand smelt Atherina presbyter above applies here, right down 

to the basic identification features. Only a scale count along the lateral line from the base of the pectoral 

fin to the tail can reliably be used to separate the two, it being fifty three to fifty seven in A. presbyter, 

and forty four to forty eight in A. boyeri. 

Both share the same love of low salinity harbours and docks. But, we are talking here of a species which 

under normal circumstances shouldn't be found at out latitude, primarily because of our lower 

temperatures, though with global warming, that may now be starting to change. 

It seems that at the few isolated locations where the species is known, man-made factors may well be 

coming to its aid in the form of artificial warming of the water due to certain industrial processes. These 

locations include Cavendish Docks at Barrow-in-Furness, Swansea Dock, Pembroke Dock, and the 

Leys at Aberthaw. 

Just how it got to these locations in the first place is another matter, one suggestion being its sticky eggs 

becoming attached to the hulls of boats, though more likely, it has made its own way into our home 

waters in favourable years and found it possible to stay on and breed at specific locations. 

COHO SALMON Oncorhynchus kisutch 


Bucket list status not achieved, and in home waters probably never will be. Like the walleye in the 

freshwater list, a on-off incident resulting from introductions coming here from across the Atlantic. In 

fact, across the entire continent of the America's, as this is a Pacific species normally ranging from 

California to Alaska, and from Japan to the former Soviet Union. 

That said, when the current record was caught from the rocks at Petit Port on Guernsey back in 1977 at 

the comparatively small weight of one and a half pounds, there were others caught of similar size in the 

same area at the same time, suggesting some sort of escapee incident from a fish farm perhaps rearing 

them for the table, probably somewhere in France just across the way from the Channel Islands. 

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So not a likely repeat prospect for the future. But for completeness, positive identification is quoted as 

being achieved from an internal examination and count of the pyloric caeca, these being finger like 

projections located close to the junction between the stomach and the intestines, of which in this case 

there should be forty five to one hundred and fourteen. 

The same source quotes Atlantic salmon as having forty to seventy four, which means that unless a 

specific individual has more than seventy four, the degree of over-lap is such as to be of absolutely no 

help whatsoever. 

Thankfully, the gums at the base of the teeth are also said to be noticeably white. Not that any of this 

matters, because unless there is another mass break out, a repeat catch just ain't going to happen anyway. 

FRESHWATER SPECIES 

As a specialist sea angler, and in particular a boat angler, it would be both unwise and unrealistic for 

me to offer advice in any measure on a branch of fishing I frequently take advice on myself, for which 

reason I intend to do nothing more than recount my own personal experiences here, such as they are. 

There will however also be some observations and comments which strike me as being relevant at the 

time, in addition to which, cross referencing is made to a number of species related audio interviews 

with a range of nationally renowned experts in their various fields in which tactical information is 

provided. 

There are however two specific exceptions to this, both fish with adipose fins, and to my way of thinking 

therefore both game fish species, where I feel I have sufficient expertise to offer a more definitive 

account, these being the char and the schelly. 

All record listed freshwater species are discussed, including those which for whatever reason are 

currently suspended from further claims. But not within species coarse fish variants such as mirror and 

299

common carp as shown in the Welsh record list, both of which are Cyprinus carpio; ghost carp also 

listed by the Welsh which is a hybrid, nor any of the roach-rudd-bream hybrids listed by the Irish. 

It will be true species only, with just a passing mention of the sea trout, and no mention at all of the 

lake, river and slob trout listed by the Irish, all of which again are Salmo trutta, and as such within 

species variants of the brown trout Salmo trutta, and therefore not separate species in their own right, 

despite what purist game anglers might have to say on the topic. 

CARP Cyprinus carpio 


Carp need little in the way of identification detail, particularly when they get over five pounds in weight, 

which tends to rule out our other similar indigenous species. I say indigenous species, but actually, carp 

are an introduced Asiatic species which were initially tended by monks in the middle ages for their 

traditional eating of fish ritual on a Friday. 

What is particularly important about this piece of information is that the British Record Fish Committee 

not only would like to see all none native species removed from their record list, but also from the 

country, and that includes carp. Whether that would ever be achievable, or more to the point, tolerated 

by a tackle industry so heavily reliant on the species is another matter. 

Only really the crucian carp should present any potential for identification confusion, which besides 

having a slightly different shape and colouration, lacks the two barbels either side of the mouth which 

are present in Cyprinus carpio. 

300

As for mirrors, commons, leathers and all the rest, these are just scale variations of the same fish which 

some record lists for whatever reason include separately, while others with more of an interest in 

accuracy, don't. 

Several years ago, Graeme Pullen and I decided to put together a short series of carp fishing videos for 

YouTube, demonstrating a range of techniques on small still day ticket waters in Hampshire, Surrey, 

and Devon, where anybody could simply turn up and repeat the same. 

The first of these was entitled 'Close Encounters', and to make it work, we deliberately left it until mid 

afternoon before turning out, the intention being to get there a short time before people traditionally 

start packing up to see exactly where they'd been fishing and with what. 

It wasn't specific tactical guidance that we were looking for. The idea was to allow them to do all the 

costly work of conditioning the fish into taking certain baits and to concentrate them up for us, but in a 

way few anglers are likely to have witnessed, by virtue of the fact that the fish we were after had become 

suitably aware of anglers habits, one of which was that they instinctively knew when people were 

packing up and leaving. 

They also knew the sound of surplus particle baits going in at the end of a session, and that if they 

waited for the people throwing them in to go home, they could safely get in there afterwards to clean it 

all up. 

All we needed to do was see what was being dumped, where it was being dumped, then have a wide 

enough selection of similar particles ourselves to 'match the hatch', which was everything from hemp 

and sweetcorn through to hot-dog sausages and maggots. 

When we first arrived we did a quick 

sweep of the banks chatting to 

everyone, singling out the likely 

candidates simply by looking at the 

baits they had on display. Obviously 

there were a few of the high protein 

boilie brigade there too, which besides 

catching very little if anything at all, 

would be doing us no favours either. 

Phill Williams, Hampshire Carp 

baits had been dumped into the margins. 

Eventually, at maybe five or six in the 

evening, we pretty much had the 

fishery to ourselves. Time to walk the 

banks, again at a safe distance so as not 

to spook those carp which were 

starting to gather up in discrete 

pockets where the surplus particle 

We're not talking about an odd fish here, or necessarily all small ones either. It involved a good cross 

section of the population, often dozens at a time, and so close in to the margins that their backs were 

well clear of the water as they grubbed about nosing under the stones eager to grab every last available 

morsel. Except of course earlier on in the day when anglers were present and there were hooks in the 

baits. 

Graeme then stealthily crept down the bank with a single maggot below a small split shot and lowered 

it literally onto the noses of the fish which took it pretty much instantly, then on feeling the hook would 

dart off into deeper water leaving the others completely un-phased still grubbing about. 

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I can't remember how many fish we had in that last couple of hours, but it was measured in dozens, with 

weights probably just about into double figures. 

Our next trip took us to a small multi-lake complex on the Hampshire-Surrey border. This time we 

chose to fish a quieter period to give us more scope to have the type of peg we wanted. Thankfully there 

weren't too many other anglers about, and those that were there had already set up camp in their bivvies 

with their boilies out and their bite alarms switched on. 

What we did was try to get away from everybody else in a nice little swim with fringing reed beds just 

either side of a wide enough gap between some tree's and bushes where we could put some feed in, then 

drop the hook baits quite literally in over it with little or no casting involved. 

We would be float fishing with the baits just at the bottom along the reed margins, Graeme on one side, 

me on the other, and the bait would be bread flake. 

We did have a few other options 

with us just in case, particularly 

hot-dog sausages which also 

caught a few fish later on. But it 

was using the bread flake that was 

the primary objective, this time 

with the whole day in front of us, 

and it didn't take long to get the 

first few fish in close and 

interested. The start of a chain 

reaction in fact that resulted in 

sheer carnage. 

At one point I was trying to film 

as my rod was disappearing into 

the lake which I had to put my foot 

on or risk losing. On other 

occasions, we couldn't film each 

other at all, simply because there 

was so much going on. 

Mike Winrow, 25.14.0 Carp 

As with the previous session in the margins, I couldn't say how many fish we ended up with, but again 

it was many dozens into low double figures. Meanwhile the boilie lads sat across the way watching us 

and waiting for their alarms to sound off appeared not to catch anything at all, never thinking to ask 

what we were doing or attempting to switch tactics. 

The third session wasn't a pre-planned carp fishing trip at all. We'd trailed the boat down to Boscastle 

in Cornwall to fish for porbeagle sharks, but due to technical difficulties, didn't go afloat. So 

appreciating that we wouldn't be going out over the subsequent days, and having already travelled all 

that way, as you do, we started looking for alternatives. 

What we came up with was Anglers Paradise owned and operated by a friend of Graeme's, Zyg 

Gregorek, offering so many lakes to choose from and so many different species that we spent the first 

couple of hours just walking and talking, trying to get a feel for what we should try and do, and more 

to the point, try to film. 

Again, we came across the obligatory bivvies and boilies. Then late afternoon on one particular lake we 

saw quite a few carp topping, picking up bits of floating bait that somebody long gone must have put 

in. 

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That was it. We would film a demonstration on fishing floating crust and dog biscuits, which we 

concentrated on over the next couple of late afternoons and evenings, and as previously, with stacks of 

fish into double figures. 

It was fantastic, and for me the most exciting aspect of freshwater fish going. Real edge of the seat stuff, 

particularly when you can see fish working their way through a scatter of freebies in the direction of 

your bait. 

And when those ripples or that bulge in the water suddenly appears under your offering, followed by a 

great big pair of lips to suck it in, the old adrenalin pump really starts working in hyper-drive. Surely 

there is no better way of catching carp. 

Okay, so we're not talking here of monster fish. Mainly fish in the high single to mid double figures 

category. But it's all relative really, and on light tackle, fish of that size are still well capable of giving 

fantastic sport. 

I can see the attraction in catching monster fish and having 

Warren Harrison, 87 pound Carp trophy shots that may have come as the final reward for days of 

sitting around playing the percentages game. Unfortunately, I 

don't have that sort of patience, and on balance would go for the numbers rather than individual weight. 

But each to his own. 

As nice as it would be to catch that carp of a lifetime, for my money, they don't have to top twenty 

pounds to be worthy of bothering to tackle up for, or over thirty pounds to warrant getting the camera 

out. Fishing is a challenge to be met and enjoyed, whatever the opponent might be. 

With that in mind, in the final analysis, other than three very different days of end to end arm aching 

enjoyment, as a none carp angler, the main thing I took away from what I'd seen was if there was a 

common thread here, it has to be the futility of simply lobbing out high protein baits, probably on self 

hooking rigs, then endlessly waiting around when there is alternative action to be had. 

303

Carp need not be difficult fish to catch. Often it's anglers who make it difficult. On the one hand by 

bombarding them with more high quality food than it's healthy for them to be eating, while on the other, 

as a result of being caught repeatedly on those baits or similar, failing to show flexibility, not so much 

to think outside the box, but to try other tested approaches which may have slipped from favour over 

the years. 

Let me quote a couple of examples. Graeme and I once spent a week on Lundy Island exploring the 

shore and boat fishing options there for the Landmark Trust. 

One particular day, we'd yomped over the peat encrusted tops to try for wrasse from some rock ledges 

on the far side. Being so rocky, steep, and wild, bait was always a problem, and all we could muster 

was a few limpets prised from the rocks and a couple of soft mackerel from the previous day out in the 

boat. 

On the way back we must have taken a 

slightly different route, because we 

stumbled across a craggy little 

indentation filled with pea green water 

on top of the cliffs that we hadn't seen 

previously. Obviously it was 

freshwater, and the colouration was 

due to algae. Then we saw something 

create a bulge under the surface. 

some sort of fish. 

Lundy Island cliff top pond 

Unable to see exactly what it was due 

to the discolouration, we sat down and 

watched, and it happened again. In fact 

it happened several more times, but 

still without giving away what was 

causing it, though surely it must be 

Intrigued to know what they were, we dug out the lightest monofilament we could find and tied a length 

to the end eye of our shore rods, then using the smallest hooks we could muster, baited up with mackerel 

strip on one and limpet on the other, we laid down on the rock edge and lowered them in. That afternoon 

we finished up with around thirty small carp. 

The next example is a video made by Graeme himself. This wasn't the first time he'd done what I'm 

about to recount. In fact, I recorded an audio interview with him on the topic, then persuaded him to 

repeat it on camera, which he later did. 

It involved popping into a super-market and buying a roast dinner ready meal comprising all the usual 

stuff such as slices of meat, potatoes, veg and gravy. This was then taken to a local carp water where 

every element of that meal was used as bait to catch carp, including even the serviette which he'd soaked 

in the gravy. 

Okay, so it isn't serious fishing. It's a joke. But what it does is very clearly demonstrate, as with the 

Lundy example, is that carp need not be difficult fish to catch and are there to be enjoyed rather than 

get all secretive and serious about. 

What Dick Walker might have made of the current 'serious' carp scene is anybody’s guess. Talking to 

carp historian Chris Ball, who probably has a better handle on what the great man might have made of 

his legacy than most, the suspicion is that Walker would probably have been appalled. 

304

Granted, Richard Walker was from a 

very different era, but is still held in 

sufficiently high regard even by 

today's anglers to be taken note of. 

So much so that having had the 

privilege of handling the original 

Mark IV No. 1 carp rod used by the 

great man himself to catch Clarissa, 

when later that evening I mentioned 

this fact to a couple of carp fanatics, 

they wanted to shake my hand. As 

they put it, to touch the hand that had 

touched the legendary rod. 

Graeme Pullen, Lundy Carp 

Don't get me wrong. I'm in no 

position to criticise anybody for the 

way they go about getting their angling enjoyment. As a sea angler who merely dabbles in freshwater, 

though I can still have opinions, it would hardly be fitting for me to poke my nose into a business I 

know so little about. 

In addition to that, and rather ironically, my biggest carp have all come to either boilies or tiger nuts 

while fishing some of the larger irrigation reservoirs on Gran Canaria with carp fishing guide Dave 

Beecham. 

We didn't break any pots. The biggest would have been in the high twenties, though it's always nice to 

catch a PB. But not nearly so nice as picking out individual fish which you can see actually taking your 

bait at the surface, then having to deal with them on suitably light tackle. To me that's what carp fishing 

is all about. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 79, 89, 94, 134, 135, 160 and 185. 

GRASS CARP Ctenopharyngodon idella 


Though I've never caught a grass 

carp, I do have some experience of 

the species, both as an angler and as 

a scientist. First the angling. Graeme 

Pullen hooked and landed one of 

around fourteen pounds on a piece of 

floating bread crust from one of the 

weedier lakes on Zyg Gregorek's 

Anglers Paradise complex a few 

years back while we were there 

doing some filming. 

Despite having a deformity towards 

its tail, it still went like stink. So I can 

fully appreciate what anglers love about the species, which despite it being an alien, is no major threat 

to anything else because it can't breed at our low temperatures, and can therefore simply be allowed to 

305

die out through natural wastage if people don't want it in a water any more, which brings me very nicely 

on to my scientific involvement. 

When I teamed up with Rod Taylor back in the 1980's to work on perfecting coarse fish farming 

techniques for the then National Rivers Authority, during my initial guided tour of the site, I was taken 

into a long poly-tunnel with an equally long narrow pond inside it which contained grass carp. 

Apart from feeding them on a regular basis with dandelion leaves and lettuces, we didn't do anything 

with them for ages. Then one day a directive from above said that we needed to get them to spawn. So 

into the quarantine tank they went, and later, after a great deal of hard work catching them again, into a 

preparation tank where artificial lights were set up on a timer to increase the day length by four minute 

increments, while at the same time slowly cranking up the temperature to simulate the onset of summer. 

This obviously took some time in which we were always careful to lift the lid just sufficiently to throw 

some food in and do our regular water quality checks in case they tried to escape, which we managed 

well enough. Until that is the day came to anaesthetize and inject them with pituitary hormones to 

encourage their eggs and testes to fully ripen. 

We're talking here of a dozen fish averaging between maybe five and eight pounds apiece which needed 

to be caught in a large landing net and dropped into a bath of MS222 to quieten them down. 

Sensing something was about to happen, they started racing around the edge of the circular tank like 

wall of death riders, then having built up speed, when the lid was fully opened and the net went in, out 

they shot like a volley of polaris missiles. 

One actually hit the breeze block wall leaving a small blood stain on it. What a fiasco. We obviously 

were doing all within our powers to ensure their wellbeing, but they weren't having any of it. 

Eventually we did get them all into the MS222, injected, and back into the big tank for a few days where 

normally, injected fish are checked on a daily basis for progress, but not this lot. 

When we thought they'd had long enough, we plucked up courage, and with our previous experience to 

fall back on, gingerly managed to get them into the MS222 again for checking, where would you believe 

it, they all turned out to be males. 

The first large scale introduction of 

grass carp in the UK as a biological 

control agent was to the Lancaster 

Canal just up the road from where I 

live, where the idea was to have them 

control weed growth. 

Following on from what was 

perceived to have been a success 

there, they started to be introduced 

elsewhere, attracting the attention of 

anglers for a variety of reasons. 

Initially it was thought they couldn't 

Virginia Rushmer, Grass Carp 

be caught on rod and line. But that 

myth was very quickly dispelled, as 

it's now known that they are 

receptive to all the usual baits and tactics employed to catch carp generally, though particle baits it 

seems do tend to have an edge, with surface baits also very popular when the weather has warmed up, 

bringing the fish well up in the water column. 

306

Anglers however tend to have mixed views on the species. Not only with regard to introducing them or 

their potential for over-cropping the weed, but also as a sporting fish. 

Some argue they don't fight at all, least ways not so much in the water, though they can suddenly come 

to life at the net and on the bank. Conversely, others concur with my experience at the fish farm of an 

out of control sub surface missile taking to the air. 

Either way, The British Record Fish Committee as part of their displeasure regarding alien species, 

closed this particular record to further claims back in 2007. 

The record at the time, which was 44½ pounds, still stands, though it could well be that bigger 

specimens have subsequently been taken, but for obvious reasons not claimed and recorded. 

While it's no longer possible to make a record claim, positive identification is still of value, particularly 

to species hunters like myself. 

Here, we're looking for an elongate torpedo shaped fish in carp terms. Having a slightly under-slung 

mouth and dark greenish brown back fading gradually to silvery white on the under-parts, plus its 

potential size should set it apart from other similar fish. But to be certain, the lateral line scale count 

should be between 40 and 42. 

CRUCIAN CARP Carassius carassius 


From a visual perspective, I love 

looking at crucian carp. I don't tend to 

catch too many of them these days, 

generally on account of the types of 

freshwater locations I fish and how I 

approach things. But I've had my days. 

Mine mainly have been small fish in 

ponds and small lakes. So if I find fish 

of that calibre impressive, I can only 

imagine what it must be like to get 

amongst some real specimens, both 

visually, and in terms of the account 

they give of themselves. 

bronze bream. 

Bill Rushmer, Crucian Carp 

A powerful looking, deep bodied, 

laterally compressed fish with a 

humped back, though not as 

obviously humped as that of say the 

As with the other carp species, the dorsal fin is quite long, in this case with slight serrations on the third 

spine. Crucian carp also lack the barbels either side of the mouth which are characteristic of Cyprinus 

carpio. 

Some sources quote the colouration as ranging from olive green through to reddish brown. My 

experience has always been at the redder end of the scale with more of a golden colour from the mid 

flank down, and a darker bronze wash over the fins. 

307

There is also a rounded dark spot near the base of the tail, but often this will be indistinct as it merges 

in with the other colours present, and in some fish, it may not even show at all. 

BROWN GOLDFISH Carassius auratus 


The brown goldfish, prussian carp, or 

gibel carp, call it what you will, is 

another Asiatic import now common 

across Europe, and the closest living 

wild relative of the many dozens of 

different breeds of goldfish you see in 

garden ponds and aquarium shops 

today. 

In some ways it's like the relationship 

between wolves and the many 

modern breeds of dog whose form has 

been engineered by specific trait 

selection during mating. 

Lundy Island Prussian Carp 

Record Fish Committee for you. 

Personally, I prefer the term prussian 

carp, as brown goldfish is a two word 

contradiction. But that's the British 

As regards identification, simply imagine a typical fair-ground prize goldfish in a dark olive brown 

livery. Adding a bit of fine detail to that, a fish with a slightly more elongate and less heavily built body 

layout than the crucian carp to which it is related. 

The key points to look out for are strongly serrated spines at the start of the dorsal and anal fin, plus no 

diffuse dark mark towards the base of the tail which the crucian carp, certainly at the smaller to midrange 

sizes typically has. 

A fish known to do well in poorly oxygenated waters, which links in very nicely to my experiences of 

the species. 

While discussing the common carp earlier, I recalled a day when Graeme Pullen and I stumbled across 

a small rocky hole filled with pea green water on top of a cliff on Lundy Island where we saw evidence 

of fish, though not the fish themselves, and allowed our natural curiosity to take over. 

The problem was that we were on Lundy investigating the sea angling potential, and at that stage on 

our way back from wrasse fishing a rock ledge with just a few limpets and day old mackerel left overs, 

coupled as you might expect to a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling freshwater 

terminal tackle. So we cobbled together what we could and ended up catching around thirty small carp 

which amused us greatly. 

So much so that we laughed about it with some of the islanders back at base who then told us of another 

even bigger pond and drew us a map, which the following morning, still armed with our shore tackle, 

because it was all we had, we followed up on, taking with us some bread rolls from breakfast, and a 

wicker bin from the room which we lined with a plastic bag to act as a keep net. 

308

It took us some searching to locate it. 

Then suddenly, there it was. Quite a 

healthy looking piece of water with 

shallower margins and even a few low 

wind swept bushes dotted around it here 

and there. 

Again our approach was Heath 

Robinson to say the least, but as at the 

other pond the previous day, we quickly 

caught lots of fish, with some of the carp 

going up to around the five pound mark. 

One in particular I remember because it 

had a deformed back-end and could 

Typical wild Goldfish 

barely swim. And it wasn't only carp. 

Least ways, not only common or mirror 

carp. Mixed in amongst them were golden orfe, and some small dark brown carp-like fish which we 

later found out were prussian carp. 

I'd never heard of them before. Yet there we were with a lined wicker bin full of the things. Where they 

came from and how they got there is anybody’s guess. And until I looked at the British record list in 

connection with this project, I never heard mention of them again from that day to this. 

So obviously not an important fish on the freshwater angling scene. But important enough for me to 

place another tick on the species list. 

ROACH Rutilus rutilus 


309 

Superficially similar to a rudd in 

appearance, there are key indicators to 

readily set the two species apart, the 

most available of these being the 

positioning of the dorsal fin in relation 

to the pelvic fins beneath it. In roach 

the dorsal fin begins directly above 

start of the base of the pelvic fins, 

whereas in rudd, it starts well behind 

the pelvic fin base. 

There are other features too such as 

fin ray counts which are not good in 

that they require keeping the fish out 

of water for longer than might be good 

for it, plus comparisons of the 

pharyngeal teeth, these being the crushing teeth found in the throat which require intrusive investigation 

that would definitely not good for the fishes wellbeing. 

Colouration can also be very helpful. Not so much the basic body colouration, which in roach is bluish 

to greenish on the back fading to silvery white below with a noticeable golden wash over the flanks, 

but the iris surrounding the pupil in the eye.

In the case of roach this is very obviously red, whereas in rudd it is yellowish orange. However, the lads 

on the bank just need to look at the mouth to make an at a glance identification. If its up-pointing it's a 

rudd and if not it's a roach. 

When I first started fishing back in the 1960's, roach were the iconic freshwater angling species in much 

the same way that carp have become in more recent times. 

Big roach were the stuff of dreams, and specializing in roach fishing was the crème de la crème. A fish 

that completely epitomised what coarse fishing was all about in the true Mr. Crabtree style. So what has 

changed. 

Roach as a species generally have not suffered in the way that rudd have, and big roach are still available 

on some rivers and certain still-waters for those who care to seek them out. 

For my money it comes down to two factors. A move away from large scale interest in matches and the 

smaller silver fish species, and linked to this, the rise in fortunes of the stock controlled commercial 

fishery where other species such as Ide are used for bulking up match weights, or carp for those more 

inclined to pleasure fish. 

It would inaccurate to say that as a result of changing angling trends, roach have suffered. That would 

be the wrong choice of words. More like 'slipped off the radar', though I am quite sure they could very 

easily slip back onto it again if interest levels were re-kindled. 

There are still some very knowledgeable and successful big roach specialists out there, one of whom is 

Professor Mark Everard who I put all of these questions and more to during a recorded interview 

recently. 

For reasons given already, the main one 

of which is my tendency to target carp, 

barbel, and the larger predatory species 

when I dabble in freshwater, roach are not 

a fish I would normally expect to catch, so 

my experience with the species over the 

years has been mainly with small 

specimens as a source of live-bait from 

rivers and canals. 

That said, I have both seen and collected 

some excellent specimens to over two 

pounds in weight from the River Ribble in 

Lancashire for use as fish farm brood 

stock in my National Rivers Authority 

days. 

Mark Everard, Roach and Rudd 

which were well appreciated and enjoyed. 

Two exceptions to all of that are a day 

spent trotting with maggots and casters on 

the River Trent at Burton Joyce, and a day 

trotting maggots through a number of 

slower swims on the upper Avon in 

Wiltshire, both of which produced quite 

a number of small to medium sized roach 


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RUDD Scardinius erythrophthalmus 


Superficially similar to roach in appearance, there are key indicators to 

Shawn Kittridge, Rudd 

readily set the two species apart, the most available of which being the 

positioning of the dorsal fin in relation to the pelvic fins beneath it. In 

rudd the dorsal fin starts well behind the base of the pelvic fins, whereas in roach it begins directly 

above the pelvic fin base. 

There are other features such as fin ray counts which are not good in that they require keeping the fish 

out of water for longer than might be good for it, and comparisons of the pharyngeal teeth, which are 

the crushing teeth found in the throat, and therefore require intrusive investigation which would 

definitely not be good for the fishes wellbeing. 

Colouration can also be very helpful. Not so much the basic body colouration, which in rudd is bluish 

to greenish on the back fading to silvery white below with a noticeable golden wash over the flanks and 

orange red on the fins, but the iris surrounding the pupil in the eye. 

In the case of rudd, this is yellowish orange, while in roach it is very obviously red. However, the lads 

on the bank just need to look at the mouth to make an at a glance identification. If its up-pointing it's a 

rudd, and if not it's a roach. 

Talking to coarse anglers who would, given the chance, expect to see decent rudd in the normal course 

of their fishing, it seems that the species has suffered a marked decline over recent years. And for this, 

small commercial fisheries with their controlled stocking policies it seems must shoulder some of the 

blame. 

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Carp colouring up the water preventing rudd successfully breeding appears to have been a major 

contributor. But even in the less controlled environments where rudd once thrived and should still be 

readily available, their appearances have become fewer and further between. So much so that I struggled 

to get the necessary photograph to use here. 

I personally have a rather contradictory angling history with the species. Although I've probably caught 

many thousands of the things, my experience of them is still none the less limited in the extreme. 

This is because I used to catch them from small farm ponds, firstly as a kid getting in to fishing, then 

later for use as live or dead-baits for pike and zander. 

To be honest, outside of that, this isn't a species I've come across much, and I dare say that a lot of 

today's serious coarse anglers are in a similar position. 

Probably the quickest fix would be to fish some of the larger still-waters and canals over in Ireland, 

where the species seems to be making something of a comeback. Otherwise, a fish you need to identify 

specific locations for, then target in much the same way as you would with roach. 

BRONZE BREAM Abramis brama 


A deep bodied laterally compressed 

fish with a noticeable hump on its back 

just ahead of the dorsal fin. Here the 

anal fin lies around a third of the way in 

to a line dropped down from the end of 

the dorsal fin, whereas in the silver 

bream, the anal fin starts just behind the 

dorsal fin. 

A greenish brown to greyish brown fish 

on the back and upper flanks, becoming 

paler lower down, with a silvery sheen 

and white on its underparts. Also a fish 

with a slimy feel to it which I 

personally don't particularly like. 

If I was to say I have a soft spot for bream, that would probably be defined as being a hole in the muddy 

margins where I would bury the lot of them. Either that or my tackle if there was nothing else left to 

catch. 

Perhaps I'm being a little bit unkind here, but for such a potentially large fish, they put on a particularly 

poor show when hooked, coming in little better than a raft of weed. 

Needless to say then that all my bream encounters, except for the earliest ones when I didn't know any 

better and needed one to put another tick on my list, are now accidents, usually while carp fishing, 

which allows a direct comparison between the two on the day, further emphasising the extent of 

disparity in fighting ability between the pair. 

Yet from a photographic perspective, I can understand the attraction in perusing specimen bream, 

particularly when they get up around the high teens to twenty pound mark, and I know a lot of people 

do make a speciality out of targeting them. 

312

Match anglers love them too, as all they are interested in is bulk on the scales at the end of a session. 

For my part, I needed to catch at least one which I've done on many occasions, so it wouldn't bother me 

now if I never caught another in my entire angling life, which means that I probably will. That's sods 

law for you. 

SILVER BREAM Blicca bjoerkna 


Duncan Charman, brace of 3 pound plus Silver Bream 

Due to its rather patchy and often localised distribution, a fish I have rarely ever seen let alone caught, 

though there was a time when I had plans in the making to find a suitable location and see if I could 

tick it off my species list. 

Appearance-wise, not as deep bodied, and definitely not as hump backed as a bronze bream. A fish with 

noticeably larger eyes than any other species resembling it, and with the start of its anal fin behind the 

last ray of the dorsal fin above it. 

In the bronze bream, the anal fin lies around a third of the way in to the dorsal fin, and in the bleak, to 

which it also bears some resemblance, the anal fin starts on a line with the last three rays of the dorsal 

fin. 

A greenish brown to greyish brown fish on the back and upper flanks becoming paler lower down, with 

a silvery sheen and white on its underparts. 

313

TENCH Tinca tinca 


One of the most readily recognisable 

coarse fish species, tench are powerful 

fish, aided to no small degree by having 

such a wide 'wrist' to the tail which itself 

is equally wide and well able to generate 

a great deal of paddling power. 

and tall. 

A small scaled fish with both looks and 

feels slippery and slimy, with a small but 

noticeable barbel at each corner of the 

mouth. The dorsal and anal fins also 

catch the eye in that they are short based 

Colouration too is a major factor, which while it can be quite variable according to location, still greatly 

differs from that of its close relatives, ranging from dark green or brown to almost black at times with 

a golden sheen on the flanks. 

It's also rare to find tench living in running water. Another species we used to induce to spawning 

condition in my National Rivers Authority days for re-stocking purposes. 

At around the age of twelve, a small group of us used to cycle with our fishing rods fastened to the bike 

cross bar from Leyland to Bamber Bridge to fish the now extinct terminal of what I assume was the 

Leeds and Liverpool canal. 

Known locally as the summit, this was where the canal came to an end in the form of three weedy 

prongs, rather like a table fork, which we'd heard were good for bream and tench, two species we rarely 

if ever bothered fishing for, but which for some reason we had got into our heads that we wanted to 

catch. 

I can't remember how many visits we 

made, but it wasn't many, and it was 

there that I caught my first ever tench. 

My only tench in fact until 2011, when 

Graeme Pullen and I spent a few days 

at Anglers Paradise in Devon after 

abandoning a porbeagle shark hunt at 

nearby Boscastle due to problems with 

the boat. 

Each day we would target something 

different in the hope of coming away 

with a short series of angling video's, 

one of which by pure chance turned out 

to be fishing for golden tench. 

We were sat in a swim on one 

Mike Winrow, 11½ pound Tench 

particular lake where we could see 

fish flashing in the margins close to 

the weed fringes quite literally less than a rod length out. Curious to see what they were, Graeme put a 

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ait on their heads and immediately came up with a golden tench. A farmed genetic colour variation on 

the standard tench in the same way that fish farms turn out golden rainbow trout. 

That was it, our video target for the day. A session which produced literally dozens of the things, 

sometimes at the rate of a fish every drop on float fished maggot. A very enjoyable session and reacquaintance 

with the species, even though it was over fifty years in the waiting. 

GOLDEN ORFE leuciscus idus 


Bill Rushmer, Golden Orfe The species leuciscus idus is known to coarse anglers in two 

forms, one being the golden orfe, the other being the ide. Two 

visually different presentations of the same fish. 

Golden orfe have long been popular with anglers, particularly on some of the Cheshire waters for as far 

back as I can remember. Ide on the other hand, which are the none golden variety and looking 

superficially more like a roach, are a more recent phenomenon. 

Ide have exploded in popularity with both anglers and commercial fishery owners due to the way they 

feed, the ease with which they can be caught in matches, and their resilience, making them a tough 

hardy fish which has to be good news for everyone concerned. 

Quite a heavily built fish too with a noticeable hump between the top of the head and the dorsal fin, 

though nowhere near as deep bodied as the bronze bream or crucian carp. That said, the feature which 

most stands out to me is the snout, which is particularly rounded and blunt. 

In terms of colouration and markings, the Ide version is greyish on the upper flanks and back becoming 

more silvery below, with all the fins other than the dorsal having a reddish tinge. 

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The golden version on the other hand will be more immediately recognisable, having a very bright 

reddish pink wash over an under lying silvery background, and very obvious bright red on the fins. 

Some specimens might even look yellowish orange. Either way, a million miles away from anything 

else. 

Though I don't coarse fish much, I have caught both varieties. The golden orfe was one of the species 

Graeme Pullen and I picked up on Lundy Island back in the 1980's while fishing for carp and prussian 

carp with our sea fishing gear, because it was all we had with us at the time. 

We had some very nice specimens there too. Beautiful fish. But it would be a good thirty years before 

I would encounter the species again, this time in its silvery form as the ide. 

I'd read about a huge match weight of ide coming out of a small commercial lake called Highfield not 

too far from me over on the Fylde Coast at Hambleton, so I decided to take a ride over there to see what 

I could gather in terms on information for my website Fishing Films and Facts. 

Fishery manager George Wilson recorded an audio interview on the topic, then introduced me to match 

angler Nathan Lumb who held the fishery match record with 138 pounds of ide taken in five hours. 

Nathan also agreed to record an audio interview, then later, we met up again to film a video on stillwater 

match pole fishing for YouTube, where again, ide were the main featured fish. 

Loose feeding casters from a pole cup 

and allowing the hook bait to do a slow 

natural drop was the killing technique, 

sometimes lifting it for a second drop 

if it wasn't taken first time, as he had 

them feeding just under the surface and 

was knocking them out for fun. 

Ide 

Video demonstration over, I asked if I 

could have go. Technically, I had 

caught the species before, but as I've 

said, only the golden variety. So having 

watched very intently while I was 

filming, and never having previously 

tried it, I also wanted to feel what pole 

fishing was like first hand, so Nathan 

and I swapped places. 

Watching is one thing. Doing it yourself is very different matter. The pole Nathan was using at just 

short of £3,000 was one of the best. Even so, with sixteen metres out, and hardly a breath of breeze, I 

still found it not as easy in practise as it had looked to me as an observer. So what it would be like to 

handle on a windy day I can only guess. 

Still, it worked, and I bagged myself a few nice ide, coming away from the place well satisfied on a 

whole range of fronts. 


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BARBEL Barbus barbus 


Sheer size alone should separate the barbel from any other species even remotely similar to it in 

appearance. But just in case it doesn't, this is a long powerful streamlined fish designed to do well in 

fast moving shallow water, with a strongly serrated first spine to its dorsal fin, which as anglers will 

know only too well can be a pain when it gets stuck in the mesh of the landing net. 

There are four barbels present around the mouth. One in each corner, and a further one either side of 

the snout. Colouration is typically greenish brown on the back becoming lighter on the flanks, with 

hints of a golden sheen. The base of the pectoral, pelvic and anal fins is red. The eye of the barbel has 

a gold coloured iris. 

Ten minutes up the road from where I live runs the River Ribble, which in my adult life-time had been 

devoid of barbel and is now one of the best barbel rivers in the country. 

To qualify that remark, last season, the man who coached me on the how, where, and when of Ribble 

barbel fishing, Mike Winrow, had fifty seven out in a single session typically averaging between six 

and seven pounds apiece. 

There have been quite a few doubles too, though top weights do seem to have dropped away slightly, 

having levelled out in recent times. 

The reason why the Ribble is now a barbel producing river at all is solely down to illegal introductions 

by anglers, particularly during the late 1960's and early 1970's, when some of them were actually caught 

in the act and later prosecuted by the then North West Water Authority fishery bailiffs for releasing 

them at the M6 bridge close to the Tickled Trout at Preston. 

317

Ironically, these fish had been transported north from the River Severn, which had itself been given a 

helping hand as part of a project promoted by Angling Times back in the 1950's to see more barbel in 

that river too. 

The barrister representing North West Water in their prosecution described the barbel as a vile and 

useless coarse fish. In light of where we are today, I wonder if he would still see those words as being 

appropriate. 

After the first few early spawning years, as so often happens with an alien introduction, even of an 

otherwise indigenous species, initially there were small fish everywhere, and it was around that time, 

fishing up near Samlesbury, that I managed to tick the species off my wanted list with a brace of around 

a pound apiece. 

Since then, the correct level of balance between the barbel and the rivers other co-inhabitants has been 

achieved. Yet still the Ribble is a major producer both in terms of numbers and of size. 

Obviously there must be something about the length from Preston through to Ribchester that particularly 

suits the species. Generally speaking, it's quite a shallow stretch over rocky substrate with a good mix 

of shallow banks and glides, the exact position of which changes all the time as water levels fluctuate 

according to how much rain falls over the Pennines further inland. 

Not that long ago, barbel topping 

fifteen pounds were coming out, with 

plenty of other doubles and a good 

healthy younger population waiting in 

the wings. More recently however, 

those ceiling weights seem to have 

declined. 

Jack Bingham, River Ribble 

There are still good doubles about, but 

not so the fifteen pounders, which 

Mike Winrow puts down to an ageing 

population from that initial 

introduction being followed through by 

a completely different balance in 

which more five to ten pound fish 

sharing the resource could well be 

tending to keep replacement top 

weights in check. 

No doubt there will still be the odd monster either already out there or coming through. But the days of 

high expectation may well be giving way to more moderate expectation, with lots of good sized average 

fish to make up the sport short fall. 

So I caught my first Ribble barbel shortly after they went in, and despite having them on my door step, 

for the next thirty five years I did nothing about trying to catch one again. Nothing that was until I was 

introduced to Mike Winrow with a view to recording an audio interview on the Ribble population, 

which sparked my current interest. 

Here I thought was a useful alternative to beach fishing on those days when there was too much wind 

to get the boat out on the sea. The perfect alternative to fishing controlled by the weather. Or so I 

thought, little appreciating how the river can change so quickly, and the knock-on effect this would 

have on the fish. 

318

In addition to that, Mike also had the freedom to fish pretty much the entire barbel stretch through his 

membership of both Prince Albert and Ribchester and District Angling Clubs, whereas I would be 

confined to a handful of day ticket pegs to the east of the Tickled Trout. 

I did however get to fish some of the club stretches on a day ticket where I was shown how to identify 

potential barbel swims, plus all the tactical stuff, after which I was on my own. 

Armed with a few mental pictures of where to put baits around fast shallow glides where barbel 

potentially lie, and after putting my hand deep in my pocket for a suitable outfit, it was off to the 

Gregson's Farm stretch of the river, where on my first visit the farmer came along in his tractor, and 

after a bit of a chat, sat me in the cab and drove me to pegs I would otherwise never have found, pointing 

out where all the best fish had come from. 

Tactically speaking, though the approach used on the Ribble will be widely used elsewhere, unlike 

barbel fishing I have seen on parts of the Severn and Hampshire Avon, plus what I've read about on the 

Wye, our tactics up here are very simple, and rarely if ever stray away from the same basic pattern. 

As I've already said, the Ribble is a 

rocky river. No place then for finesse. 

It's twelve to fifteen pounds breaking 

strain line straight through, with an 

open end cage feeder free running on 

the reel line, and a two to three foot 

tail to a size eight to ten hook. That 

way at least if you do snag up, or if a 

fish runs the line under a rock, there 

is half a chance of staying in touch. 

Obviously, the feeders vary in weight 

according to conditions, with fifty to 

eighty grams being the typical range. 

Trout pellets are put into a small 

Mike Winrow, 12.1.0 Ribble Barbel 

bucket immediately on arrival and 

covered with water, allowing them 

to suitably soften as you tackle up. The excess water is then drained off and these are used to load the 

feeder, with a ten to twelve mm halibut pellet located by a band on the hook. 

My preference is for the John Roberts pellet bands with the small lip though which the hook is inserted 

rather than a plain band looped over the hook which you tend to loose every time the pellet comes free. 

Otherwise, it's very much like beach fishing. The rods are propped up high either on their rests, or better 

still, due to the rocky ground, using a tripod, and you sit back until the tip is dragged over. 

There have been occasions when takes have been so violent that the rod rest has actually gone over, and 

rod itself has started creeping along the bank. 

As result, my best fish weighed ten pounds six ounces in the head of the landing net, which while it's 

no world beater, is a very good fish considering all the limitations that such a small number of day ticket 

opportunities imposes. 


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CHUB Leuciscus cephalus 


Graeme Pullen, 6.4.0 Chub River Kennet 

I've described dace below as looking like small chub, 

so it goes without saying that chub look like big dace. 

The problem comes when they are both the same size. 

Both are elongate fish, and while it will be possible for regular catchers familiar with the pair to 

recognise the difference at a glance, the rest of us will need to look at the positioning of the dorsal fin 

on the back relative to pelvic fins below to help sort things out. 

If the dorsal fin has a convex upper edge and starts behind a line dropped down to where the pelvic fins 

start, then it's a chub. If however it starts directly above the origin of the pelvics and has a concave 

upper edge, then its a dace. 

Chub also have a larger mouth. Colouration is usually a dark green to brown on the back, fading down 

the flanks to silvery yellow underneath. 

I have fished deliberately for chub, and I have caught them in good numbers in the past on the River 

Ribble, River Trent, and occasionally in some of the small commercial still-water fisheries where they 

can be particularly popular. 

Indeed, the current record of nine pounds five ounces is a still-water fish. These days however, chub 

are a bit of a by-catch for me, and if they are half decent, a bonus by-catch at that. 

This normally happens when I'm fishing for barbel with ten to twelve mm pellets and a large open ended 

cage feeder loaded with softened trout pellets. But bear in mind, I'm trying to pick out barbel swims, 

not hot spots for chub. 

320

More towards the back-end however, on the River Ribble at least, bread in the feeders and on the hook 

can bring some quite good chub sport, and in the summer months, a lot of very good chub are caught 

further up on the fly, particularly sedges in the evenings by anglers fishing for brown trout. 

DACE Leuciscus leuciscus 


To me at least, looking like a small 

chub, dace fortunately are not easily 

confused with the other riverine 

coarse fish species, so it should be a 

straight forward 'either-or' 

identification. They can readily be 

distinguished from chub by having 

a much smaller mouth, and a dorsal 

fin which starts directly above the 

base of the pelvic fins below it. 

In chub, the dorsal fin begins behind 

the start of the pelvic fins. The top 

edge of the dorsal also offers 

another clue. If it's convex then it's 

a chub, or concave then it's a dace. 

In addition to this, dace tend not to be as darkly coloured as chub either, with more of a leaning towards 

bluish green on the back and silvery down the flanks becoming off white underneath. 

Some years ago, I spent a day videoing a friend of mine Mick Southworth putting on a demonstration 

of catching winter dace on the River Ribble just upstream of the bridge on the bend at the Shaws Arms 

going in to Preston. 

At the end of the session there must have been a good sixty to seventy pounds of dace in his keep-net. 

A recollection that I would put to good use some years later when we needed dace brood stock during 

my fish farming days at the National Rivers Authority. 

Looking to draw together data and experience across a wide range of coarse fish species, I went back 

to the Shaws arms cadging mature dace from anglers. We didn't need a lot. But we sure as hell got a lot 

of eggs out of them. 

So many eggs in fact, that I decided to run a series of small batch experiments taking the incubation 

temperature up by 1 degree increments above the norm to see if we could bring them through quicker, 

thereby freeing up capacity in the future for other things. 

Unfortunately, pushing them too far led to weaker fry, which at the highest temperatures could barely 

break out of their egg cases. So some limited scope for re-thinking the previous wisdom, but in the 

knowledge that things hadn't been too far away from ideal in the first place. 

Normally when I fish rivers it's with a specific objective in mind. I'm not one for big bags of small silver 

fish. I would much rather target say big chub or barbel, which means that dace are always going to be 

an unusual and occasional by-catch for me. 

To my knowledge, the only dace I have caught came during a match on the River Trent, and during a 

session Graeme Pullen and I had on the upper Avon at Durrington in Wiltshire where we were given 

321

the whole stretch to do with as we pleased for a day, including the famous stretch where legendary fly 

fisherman Frank Sawyer developed and perfected his upstream nymphing technique. 

We were told that we could even trot maggots through the various swims, which amongst a nice mix of 

roach, grayling and brown trout, also produced some very good dace. 

BITTERLING Rhodeus sericeus 


An invasive alien, though probably 

harmless cyprinid species, easily overlooked 

on account of its very small size, 

but at the same time, readily identified by 

anyone wanting to know what it is they 

have just caught. 

In terms of body shape, it follows the 

silver bream-bleak general body profile 

and layout. The key distinguishing 

feature, other than its small size of 

course, is its very short lateral line, which 

barely runs the length of the pectoral fin. 

Colour-wise, the back is greenish grey 

becoming lighter on the flanks and silvery below, with hints of orange on the fins, and an almost neon 

metallic diffuse stripe where the lateral line should be towards the tail end of the body. 

At breeding time, these colours will be enhanced, particularly in the males, which is what originally 

made it such a popular aquarium fish, some of which, either deliberately or by accident, found their 

way into the wild, the earliest observations of which were around the 1920's, where at the time they 

were confined to one specific area of Lancashire and Cheshire. 

I first became aware of the species when a match angling friend of mine, in the company of many other 

match-men in our area, started catching a small unidentified fish in the Lancaster Canal just to the north 

of Preston. So I went along and caught a few myself. 

Mostly they were up to around an inch or so in length, but very obviously not one of our indigenous 

species on account of the short length of lateral line and the metallic sheen mentioned above. 

A quick check with my fish ID books confirmed them as being bitterling. As a result, it seems I may 

have made a few queries with fishery scientists. I don't know. It's that far back I can't honestly 

remember. 

I must have said something though, because before long I was collecting specimens for the British 

Museum, and later putting a large plastic dustbin fitted with an aerator carrying quite a few bitterling 

and swan mussels on to a train at Preston station, labelled for the attention of the BBC Natural History 

Unit in Bristol who wanted to film their amazing life cycle. 

The female deposits her eggs by way of a long ovipositing tube into the gill chambers of swan mussels 

which are then fertilized by sperm inhaled by the same swan mussel which the male releases adjacent 

to it. 

322

Looking at recent reports of catch locations, it seems that bitterling are either much more widespread 

or simply recognised for what they are than they were forty years ago. 

With such a small fish it's often hard to know. For the same reason, it seems unlikely that anyone would 

either want or be bothered to go to the trouble and risk of prosecution of deliberately spreading them 

for angling reasons. 

Most likely they are spread inadvertently by anglers fishing for tench with swan mussels that have 

already been used by bitterling for brooding purposes, the unused living left overs of which are thrown 

into the waters in question, ultimately seeding them as an accidental consequence. 

That's my take on it anyway, backed up by observation on at least one fishery near me where I know 

swan mussels from the Lancaster Canal were used as bait, and which has subsequently developed a 

bitterling population. 

GUDGEON Gobio gobio 


Probably one of the more readily 

identifiable freshwater species, 

particularly to a novice coarse angler 

like myself. Quite a long narrow bodied 

little fish, the most striking feature of 

which is a conspicuous barbel at each 

corner of the mouth. 

Shawn Kittridge, Gudgeon 

Colouration is typically green to brown 

on the back shading to more of a bluish 

hue on the mid flank region, with a row 

of darker blotches running along each 

side which can be very obvious in some 

specimens, but indistinct in others. 

In terms of distribution, a widespread commonly caught species in canals, ponds and rivers. But as with 

several other small freshwater species, only if you fish for them, which generally speaking I don't. 

If I'm putting time in on a river, it's usually for something I consider worthwhile, and as such, small 

species rarely come in to the reckoning. But there was this one time many years ago when I did find 

myself fishing for smaller fish with deliberate intent. 

A very successful match angler, Dave Trafford, who back then I worked with, and his cousin John 

Roach who I also worked with, were giving me a hard time about sea fish being stupid and easy to 

catch, and with a similar dose of gullibility, I took the bait myself and somehow managed to get drawn 

into accepting a challenge to fish a full length coarse match between the three of us at Burton Joyce on 

the River Trent. 

Not only did I not fish in freshwater much back then, I also had absolutely no concept of trotting a float 

from a closed face fixed spool reel, or of loose feeding a swim. 

Thankfully, Dave give me a talk through what was going to happen. He also explained how the reel 

worked, how to keep the float travelling properly, and how to feed little and often. 

323

In fairness too, he loaned me the tackle, and even set it up for me. After that I was on my own, pegged 

between the pair of them, with five hours ahead of me in which to put up or shut up, and a steeper 

learning curve I have yet ascend. But ascend it I did. 

As expected, Dave far and away led the field. But amazingly, I somehow managed to come second, and 

interestingly, gudgeon along with small roach and dace helped give me quite a respectable weight, not 

to mention lots to mouth off about all the way home from Nottingham back to Preston. 

BLEAK Alburnus alburnus 


If you read the account above about 

the coarse fishing match I was duped 

into taking part in on the River Trent 

at Burton Joyce, amazingly, amongst 

the many small roach, gudgeon and 

dace I somehow managed to catch, I 

equally amazingly managed not to 

catch a single bleak, despite the fact 

that the other two anglers I was fishing 

against and had positioned either side 

of me taking several each. 

Lee Armishaw, Bleak 

can probably be picked out at a glance. 

That is the only time I have ever even 

seen a bleak, and had Dave Trafford, 

one of the anglers I was fishing against 

and a River Trent regular not been 

present, I wouldn't have realised that 

there were even bleak in the catch, 

which for a Trent regular like Dave 

For the rest of us, identification features to look out for are a small quite narrow bodied fish whose body 

profile tapers gradually and continuously from its widest point to the snout, giving it a rather pointed 

head, with the lower lip slightly more prominent than the upper. 

The anal fin is also longer than in the most likely candidates for confusion such as small dace, and there 

is a sharp scale-less keel between the pelvic fins and anal fin. The back and upper flanks are blueish 

green lightening to silver on the underparts, with hints of orange present in some individuals on a set of 

otherwise greyish fins. 

PERCH Perca fluviatilis 


Arguably one of the most recognisable freshwater fish species in the British Isles. So much so that it is 

regularly used for comparative purposes, even amongst marine species such as the comber and norway 

haddock which are described as being 'perch like', plus species generally with dry rough scales which 

are said to be percoid. 

324

Let's start with the feel of the fish on 

account of those scales which are known 

as ctenoid or toothed scales because they 

feel quite dry and are noticeably rough 

to the touch when brushed against the 

grain from tail to head. 

These are a key feature of the family 

percidae, which for our purposes here 

also includes the zander and the ruffe, 

and I suppose for completeness the 

walleye too, which for reasons explained 

elsewhere is unlikely to be caught in 

home waters ever again. 

Perch are deep bodied fish with an almost humped back, and a sharp, spiny, to be avoided at all costs 

first dorsal fin, followed immediately by a softer second dorsal fin. That said, colouration and patterning 

are the more usual key identifiers. 

A fish that is typically greenish brown becoming much darker on the back and lighter below, with hints 

of golden yellow, plus a series of very obvious darker vertical bars on its flanks. 

Red is another colour which features strongly on the pelvic fins, anal fin, and lower part of the tail. 

There is also a dark blotch to the rear edge of the first dorsal fin. 

As a school kid fishing back in the 1960's, along with rudd, perch were the species I was brought up on. 

They were everywhere; they were easy to catch, and they were necessary, because in the learning phase, 

youngsters need to be catching fish regularly to keep their interest levels high, which back then, with 

no electronic distractions, was far less of an uphill struggle than it is today. 

Even so, we had to specifically go out looking for perch. Fortunately, the north west of England is 

blessed with a good canal network, lots of reservoirs, and of course the vastness of the Cumbrian Lakes. 

At that time, all strong holds of the perch. 

I remember, along with a school friend Maurice Wynn, having fishing as my hobby for the Duke of 

Edinburgh's Award Scheme, and regularly catching the train to Windermere where we would float fish 

worms from the wooden boat jetties, catching perch as fast as you could throw baits at them. Then 

suddenly they were gone. 

I'm not sure as to the exact timing nor how long it took to go from prolific to the brink of extinction, 

but it wasn't long. Shallow ulcer disease took out a good ninety five percent of the UK's entire perch 

population, and had it not been for a few isolated pockets and some inevitable genetic resistance which 

you get in any epidemic, it would quite literally have taken out the lot, and for many years, that 

continued to the case. 

During the 1970's I became obsessed with fishing for char and schelly, which while this is a story in its 

own right, also gave me a first hand insight into the extent of the perch problem and the subsequent 

painfully slow recovery that followed. 

This regularly took me to Windermere, and more especially to Coniston, both of which are in south 

Lakeland. Also to Ullswater in the north where perch had previously been abundant in the extreme, and 

where in the early days after the outbreak we didn't see a single one. 

Granted, we weren't specifically fishing for perch. Char fishing would see us placing our baits pretty 

much at the limit in terms of depth where chance perch encounters were likely to occur. But not so 

325

fishing for schelly from the bank. 

Yet not even a single lone straggler 

showed up at either lake for many 

years. 

Then, possibly in the late 1980's or 

early 1990's, we finally started to 

pick up a very occasional small 

pressure blown perch out over the 

deep water boat marks on Coniston, 

though oddly enough, still nothing 

from Ullswater, where you would 

have had more of an expectation of 

seeing a few. 

Obviously then, the different lakes 

Bob Fitchie, Bassenthwaite Perch 

were hit and subsequently went 

about their recovery in different ways, all of which today are back to their pre-disease levels, allowing 

us to pick perch up now pretty much every visit. More so even than the trout, char and schelly, whose 

population levels have also changed, possibly in response to the shift in balance brought about by the 

increase in perch numbers once again. 

The balance of power on the specimen scene between perch and other competing species has also most 

definitely changed. Lakes and rivers which were once renowned for their big fish, even record fish, 

which while they retained the theoretical capability of re-establishing those reputations, have not in all 

cases come out of the ranking process as strongly as their pre-disease perch history might suggest they 

should. 

Now there is a new kid on the block in the guise of the small commercial mixed fishery. These have 

grown in popularity to such an extent that many of the more traditional waters have either been 

neglected, or turned over to other aspects of fishing such as carp, catfish, or fly fishing. 

One common thread here is that for most people, perch these days are quite a low interest species, which 

has pretty much allowed them to go about their business as something of an unknown quantity. 

This is particularly true on small commercial fisheries, where feed of all descriptions, and particularly 

high protein feeds, are pumped into the place continuously, followed by baits targeting anything other 

than perch, which has at some waters both allowed and encouraged the perch to grow big. Very big in 

fact. Some even to record size. 

England more so than Ireland, Scotland or Wales is the home of the small commercial fishery, and it is 

only England that has so far managed to produce perch in excess of six pounds. 

Wales has a few commercial waters. But Scotland, and in particular Ireland, less so, being more reliant 

on large natural water bodies, which while they might have less of a propensity towards producing those 

truly huge fish of English specimen proportions, to a lot of people offer more creditable catches because 

they are wild fish. A debate which as a sea angler I have no intention of becoming embroiled in here. 

The fact that lots of high quality feed is being put onto the plate of fish that few people seem overly 

interested in perusing, coupled to the greater conversion rate of food intake to growth in the warmer 

south of England, has to give perch anglers down there a clear edge. Or at least you would think so. But 

others up here in the north west might want to take issue with that, and not only local anglers. 

There are big perch specialists who are so inspired by the quality of perch fishing here in the north west, 

and so convinced that the record is also up here waiting to be taken, that they are willing to travel huge 

326

distances on a regular basis to fish one lake in particular, that 

being Bassenthwaite, also known as Bass Lake, just outside 

the Cumbrian town of Keswick. 

So, keen to see what all the fuss was about, and equally keen 

to bag myself a big perch, as a birthday present in 2013, my 

wife Dawn booked me a fishing day on Bassenthwaite with 

professional fishing guide Eric Hope, a day I shared with my 

long-time freshwater fishing pal Bob Fitchie, who like me 

was up for seeing some big stripeys, and we weren't to be 

disappointed. 

Without wanting to give too much away, the first mark was 

within casting range of a shallow submerged weed bed 

where water was exiting the lake. 

A large split shot was placed onto the line maybe a yard up 

from the hook. A small red worm was then nicked onto that 

hook, cast towards the weed bed, and slowly twitched back 

to the boat in the same way you might do at sea with a soft 

lure for pollack. 

Contrasting slightly with this, the second hot-spot was 

Phill Williams, Bassenthwaite Perch 

alongside a gravel bar, this time where a small stream was 

coming into the lake. Tactically, we approached this mark 

in the same way as previously, and while it produced more fish, these typically were of smaller size. 

Total catch for the day was somewhere in the region of seventy perch spread across a roughly equal 

three way split in terms of size, with fish up to a pound, fish between one and two pounds, and fish over 

two pounds, the best of which would have been approaching three pounds. Eric and his clients had 

previously also had fish to well over four pounds. 

Other than catching them in situ over the years to use as live-baits for pike, that is my personal 

experience of perch fishing. I did however record a very interesting audio interview on the topic of big 

perch and tactics, particularly for the south of the country and from rivers, with Mike Winrow. 

Winter fishing and fishing after dark on small commercial fisheries also get a bit of a looking at. 

Particularly how to pick the right fishery, and the required tactics to be in with the best chance of 

success. 


RUFFE Gymnocephalus cernuus 


A small perch-like fish not capable of bettering around five to six ounces in weight, and frequently far 

less than that, in which one of the most obvious differences between it and the perch, which has 

distinctly separate first and second dorsal fins, is that in the ruffe the two fins merge one into the other, 

with a spiky taller first section followed by a softer second section. 

Colouration and markings generally comprise of a greeny brown back and upper flanks becoming 

marginally lighter below, with numerous irregular dark spots, particularly on the dorsal fin and tail. 

327

Not a fish most people other than 

perhaps match-men and pike anglers 

would be interested in catching. But as 

they are abundant in the Lancaster 

canal heading northwards out of 

Preston, a species I was able to target 

and tick off the list in a single visit 

where a bloodworm fished under a 

light float close in to the weed margins 

did the trick. 

For match anglers, anything that contributes to their overall weight is fine by them. With pike anglers 

it's a slightly different story, and not one with such a happy ending, because ruffe make excellent livebaits, 

which in the good old days before the EA imposed restrictions on the transportation of live fish, 

was a species which would be hauled all around the country, including to that legendary Scottish big 

pike water Loch Lomond, and as such, either as escapees or deliberate releases, suddenly found itself 

as an alien species in a system that had not evolved to cope with it. 

As small as they are, ruffe are predators, and one of the things they will eat with great relish is the eggs 

of other fish, which in the case of Loch Lomond unfortunately includes the powan, a species which is 

protected as endangered under the Wildlife & Countryside Act. 

So a lesson there for all of. As important as this is, the ban on the transportation and release of live fish 

isn't only about disease control. Noncompliance can have other, more sinister consequences, and once 

the genie is out of the bottle, it the case of Loch Lomond, there really is no way of every getting it back 

in again. 

ZANDER Sander lucioperca 


Not long after their initial release into 

the Fens when zander were really just 

starting to spread, pile on a bit of 

weight, and grab the attention of a few 

budding would be specialists, I 

contacted John Watson who would go 

on to do great things on the pike and 

zander scene. John was still living in 

Blackpool at the time and commuting 

to the Fens at weekends. 

In equal measures of wanting to tick a 

new species off my list, and see this 

alleged 'terror' in the flesh, I asked him 

to point me at a spot where I might be in with half a chance of zander success, and he came back saying 

I should try the Middle Level Drain at Outwell. 

I'd obviously never seen a zander up to that point. But with such a readily recognisable fish with its 

elongate body, large mouth armed with very obvious canine teeth and upper jaw extending to the back 

of the eye, plus its spiny first dorsal fin followed immediately by a softer second dorsal and its lightly 

barred markings along each flank, I couldn't wait for the opportunity. 

328

I'd never been to East Anglia before either, so I looked it up on the map, caught the recommended small 

rudd dead-baits, then headed off down the motorway at four in the morning with a list of road numbers 

to follow as there was no GPS back then, arriving at the designated spot sometime around eight am. 

I remember looking along this long straight featureless cut in the ground thinking to myself, where do 

you start. At some point obviously I put the tackle box down, sliced off a rudd fillet, then lobbed it out 

along the margins as a free-lined offering. 

Not being a freshwater angler, sophisticated tackle was non-existent. An open bale arm and a piece of 

paper looped over the line with a coin on it placed on top of a rusting tin box was my bite indicator. I 

then sat back and promptly nodded off. 

At some point shortly afterwards I was very rudely awoken by a sort of scraping noise which turned out 

to be the coin being dragged along the rusty tin lid. Minutes later I had my first cast first ever zander on 

the bank. A fish of at best two pounds, after which we didn't see another thing all day. 

I later somehow managed to lock my car keys in the boot, hot-wired the car to get it to start, then found 

that the steering lock was still active, though that's another story. But with regard to the fishing, in the 

words of Julius Caesar, veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw and I conquered. So many thanks to John Watson 

for that. 

I've done quite a bit of zander fishing in the years since, ironically with a similar sort of background 

story to it. I was sat at home one evening when John Wilson rang. He needed some photographs of char 

for a book he was working on. So, never one to miss an opportunity, I quizzed him about some decent 

'X' marks the spot zander fishing in return to cut out any long range trial and error time wasting, and he 

came up with Three Holes where the Sixteen Foot and Middle Level Drains come together close the 

road bridge. 

Anywhere up along the Middle Level would do fine he said for pike or zander in the day time, and more 

specifically for the zander as the light started to fade late afternoon on into the evening. So down again 

we went. 

It must have been back-end, because although the day was beautiful, come evening time I remember it 

was very cold. Eel portions were the bait, and while we tried to free-line them, on some of the several 

subsequent visits, this wasn't always possible due to the water flow if the pumps were operating after 

heavy rainfall. 

Fishing two rods, one close in to the 

margins of each bank, we took literally 

dozens of zander to maybe six pounds, 

plus quite a few nice pike. In fact, on 

one day in particular I had pike of 

seventeen and nineteen pounds in 

successive casts. 

Steve Loades, Middle Level Drain 

Later that afternoon, we also saw a 

zander of thirteen pounds six ounces 

caught just up from where we were 

fishing taken by Steve Loades. The 

biggest Zander I've ever seen in fact, 

and a very creditable fish back then, as 

was anything making it into double 

figures. 

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Over the years, zander have come in for a lot of stick – some of it absolute rubbish, some of it 

circumstantial, and some of it probably deserved. The local coarse fishing world down in that neck of 

the woods was very clearly divided between those who couldn't get enough zander, and those couldn't 

cull enough Zander. 

Allegedly, they were supposedly going to wipe out all the smaller coarse fish species, ripping them to 

pieces in merciless gang attacks, and just as worrying to the haters was the fact that regardless of culls, 

they were most certainly going to spread. 

Well they were right in terms of the spread concerns, but in hindsight, wrong with regard to the total 

decimation of the smaller silver fish. 

Looking at it from a fishery science perspective, if zander had wiped out all the other fish their food 

source would be gone, and not even the most aggressive predators can afford to do that to their 

supporting hosts. 

So as in all situations in which a new alien predator comes onto the scene, after an initial explosion in 

numbers at the expense of other species, a balance is eventually found, which is the position we find 

ourselves in today. 

What was unfortunate about this particular saga is that the coarse fish were already slipping into decline 

anyway due to poor agricultural practises leading to nitrification through run-off, a practise the 

Environment Agency was just getting on top of as I retired from visiting farmers in my own area to 

ensure their spreading activities were properly monitored and controlled. 

Now with the Fenland coarse fish back, and the zander having found a workable predator-prey balance, 

with hindsight, the whole early zander controversy looks to have been something of an un-necessary 

storm in a tea cup. 

What I'd like to do next, if for no other reason than historical record, is detail the zander introduction 

itself and the events leading up to it, and in that regard, I am in something of a privileged position. 

A few years ago I met up with and recorded both an audio as well as a video interview with John 

McAngus, John being the last surviving member of the Great Ouse River Board fisheries team 

responsible for introducing the zander in the first place, though he was not a part of the team at the 

actual time of the introduction itself, on what he describes as "that fateful day". The day when the zander 

genie responsible for today's situation was let out of the bottle. 

There had been previous attempts at zander introductions over the years, mainly to still waters, the most 

successful of which had been a consignment of German fish introduced to Woburn Abbey Lake 

sometime in the late nineteenth century. 

Ironically, it was Woburn that provided the hundred or so six to nine inch zander netted in March 1963 

by Cliff Cawkwell and others, the ninety seven survivors of which were introduced by Cliff to the Great 

Ouse Relief Channel on the express orders of fishery officer Norman MacKenzie, about which Cliff 

was told to say nothing to anyone. 

Unlike today where there is complete accountability, fishery teams in the 1960's were autonomous, and 

fishery officers very much a law unto themselves. Teams were run military fashion, so Cliff Cawkwell 

did exactly what he was told, despite having strong personal reservations, and even complicity later in 

trying to reverse what had been done. 

Despite ordering that nothing be said regarding the introduction, Norman MacKenzie then popped up 

on the radio the following day announcing to the world that an exciting new angling sport fish had been 

released in to the Fens, believing it would be contained within the drainage system, all of which slipped 

by fairly quietly with few if any eyebrows being raised at all. 

330

Phill Williams, small Zander 

locations where they are currently absent. 

It wasn't until the mid-1970's when the zander had very 

clearly bred and spread, and with coarse fish numbers 

throughout the Fenland system in free-fall, that the proverbial 

really started to hit the fan. 

From the Relief Channel, the zander had pushed out into the 

River Ouse and on throughout the linked system to the point 

where, when John McAngus and the rest of the team 

conducted fish surveys, there was pretty much only pike and 

zander left. 

Coarse anglers and clubs who would previously spend 

heavily throughout the area were up in arms demanding that 

action be taken, and after a study by Cliff Cawkwell and John 

McAngus, in 1981 through on into 1982, a pike and zander 

cull was called for, and reluctantly in many cases carried out 

by anglers throughout the middle system, resulting in many 

thousands of zander and a smaller number of pike being 

removed, which, in hindsight made absolutely no difference 

whatsoever. The zander was here to stay. 

What this story hopefully does is under-score the need for 

anglers to think very carefully and ultimately pull back from 

making alien introductions, even of indigenous species, to 

Yes, in terms of disease. But more especially in terms of balance, because as the zander has 

demonstrated, in open systems, there really is no going back. 


WALLEYE Stizostedion vitreum 


A fish not unlike the European zander, distinguished from it on the basis of subtle colouration and 

patterning differences, and not a fish I intend devoting anything in the way of time to here other than as 

a passing mention for completeness, as it should never have been here in the UK in the first place, and 

under current legislation, is unlikely to ever again. 

A mistaken release as part of a batch of black bass eggs imported from America for a failed experimental 

release of that species into the Fens in Norfolk almost a century ago, containing the lone walleye we 

see in the British record fish list, a slot that has now officially been closed to claims, very likely as it 

had been the only surviving outcome of that whole sorry affair. 

PIKE Esox lucius 


The perfect example of a well-designed predator. Eyes high up on the head for forward vision and attack 

from below; large mouth full of sharp teeth; long sleek body profile for short burst speed, plus a colour 

331

Alex Wilkie, Pike on fly 

and patterning scheme guaranteed to break up the fishes outline when 

hiding amongst weeds. A single rounded dorsal fin is placed well back 

towards the tail. 

Colouration and markings are quite variable, though usually some shade or mix of green and brown, 

with golden yellow mottling, spots and even short stripes to help the camouflage work. 

Not being a specialist freshwater fisherman, and with such a wealth of informed knowledge on the 

subject of pike out there available from people who do actually fit that definition, it's difficult to know 

where to start on this one. 

I've caught literally hundreds of pike over the years, including lots of good doubles. But only ever one 

over twenty pounds, when, ironically, I wasn't actually fishing for pike. So I suppose that's as good a 

place as any to kick things off. 

I had my ferox trout fishing head on that particular day and was slow trolling a small char dead-bait 

rigged up with a stiff wire inserted in through its mouth running the full length of its body, which I then 

bent like a banana to give it an exaggerated rotation. In in the past this has been good for big 

cannibalistic trout. 

It never stopped raining all day as we trolled the western margins of Coniston in my small open boat. 

This eventually took us into Allen Tarn, which isn't really a tarn at all but the narrowing exit of the lake 

into the River Crake where you get quite a few yachts moored up along the reed fringed margins. 

This was our turning around point ready for heading off up the eastern side of the main lake, when 

suddenly, the rod tip was dragged over resulting in a nice pike of twenty pounds two ounces. 

332

Not exactly a fish to set the world alight. But sometimes we can all get a bit too carried away by the 

size of other fish we see in the press to the point of almost being apologetic at only managing a twenty 

pounder. 

Twenty pounds is still a very good fish, and a PB is a PB. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I still am very 

pleased with it, though an even bigger one certainly wouldn't go amiss. 

Rather than get involved in the tactical specifics of pike fishing, what I intend to do now is high-light a 

few interesting incidents and observations made here and there on a take it or leave it basis, and with 

that in mind, I'd like to start with fly fishing. 

Long before fly fishing for pike became fashionable, having seen a low double figure pike take a small 

fly in a trout competition on Esthwaite, I thought it might be interesting to see if it could be done 

deliberately. 

With absolutely no information to be found to nudge me in the right direction, I tied up some gaudy 

lures to pennel rigs, got myself a ten weight rod, loaded up with a floating line tipped of with quite a 

beefy mono leader to beat the teeth, and off I went to a reservoir which I knew had lots of small pike in 

it where hardly anybody else ever seemed to fish. 

The dam wall was my chosen mark because it had fairly deep water close in, and seemed to attract quite 

a few small perch and the like along its base which some pike would obviously prey on. 

The floating line was selected 

because of the snaggy, bouldery 

nature of the wall down to the base. 

Ironically, this turned out to be one 

of the few times I ever saw anybody 

else fishing there, and when he got 

around to where I was, even more 

ironically, he too was fly fishing for 

pike. 

His name was Craig Turner, and not 

unexpectedly, a sort of instant bond 

was there, so we talked. This wasn't 

his first visit, and he'd previously 

had a fair amount of success. So as 

Jack Pike on fly 

you do, I took particular note of his 

set up which I was pleased to see 

was broadly similar to mine, though his lures were slightly longer and predominantly yellow and green, 

presumably to suggest perch fry. 

Both of us caught a few jacks and arranged to meet up again. However, United Utilities who owned the 

water had a small office close by used by some of their field staff, who through my work for the 

Environment Agency, I knew quite well. So I quizzed them about the depths and general bottom features 

of the reservoir, and to a man nobody had much of a clue. Time then for a bit of opportunism. 

Being the owner of a small boat fitted with an echo sounder, I offered to survey the lake depths and 

features for them in exchange for permission to also use the boat to fish from, and they agreed. 

Being a public drinking water reservoir, they did however insist it would be by oar power only, which 

was fine by me, and on the allotted day, Craig and I set out across the lake taking soundings and casting 

pike flies, this time on sinking lines as the water was deeper and we were well clear of the snags. 

333

If I'm honest, I doubt if there are any really sizeable pike in this place, but it was full of jacks, the best 

of which might creep up towards double figures. Even so, we had an absolute field day taking well over 

forty fish. Far and away the most pike I had ever seen in a single session by any method. 

The next couple of experiences relate to Scotland's Loch Ken. We had a spell of spending back-end and 

winter weekends up there when we couldn't get out to sea. And again, as with the United Utilities 

reservoir, the place is stuffed with lots of small to mid-range fish, though it also has some very big fish 

too, particularly when fishing from boats. 

The problem we found was that not 

knowing the water too well, we 

struggled to find the drop off's within 

casting range of the shore, and always 

seemed to be fishing shallow, fairly 

featureless pegs, the result being plenty 

of pike, though always the smaller fish. 

But, you can still learn things from 

experiences at the bottom end of the 

size range too. 

Phill Williams, Coniston Pike PB at 20.2.0 

Always we would fish with dead-baits. 

By that stage, catching your own baits 

and moving them between waters was 

frowned upon, so we tended to buy in 

from the Ammo frozen sea baits range. 

Garfish was always kind to me. But on one occasion which we'd decided on suddenly out of the blue, 

the only frozen bait I had in was a couple of packs of Launce – jumbo sized sandeels, which I had no 

alternative but to try. 

Having pike take them wasn't a problem, and fortunately due to the size of these launce, I was able to 

get three baits out of each. 

Predators generally like to take their prey head first. It makes passage down the gullet that much easier 

as it runs with the grain of things like fins, scales, and spines, which might otherwise impede the flow. 

This also appeared to be true of my sandeel portions. If I didn't present them with what would have 

been the head end of the fish at the bottom treble, in other words with the scales pointing the right way, 

the pike became finicky, sometimes playing with it, possibly even trying to turn it, I don't know, and as 

a result, a lot of those takes were missed. 

It's as if they knew from the layout of the scales, as tiny as these are, that the grain wasn't right, which 

certainly seemed to put them off, though obviously, with only a small amount of data to work with over 

one weekend, other factors may also have been making them skittish. 

Another trip to Loch Ken was as a journey break on the way back from the Sound of Mull with the boat 

in tow after calling time on a common skate trip that hadn't really turned out all that well. With a day 

still to go before we were expected home, we decided to call in at the loch on spec, knowing we would 

still have to fish from the shore. 

Unfortunately, as this had not been our original plan, we were forced to use the lightest sea tackle we 

could muster, and grub about in the cool-box for whatever bait we might have left, which was lugworm, 

mackerel, and small whole calamari squid. 

334

Dave and Paul went straight for the mackerel. But curious to see what might happen, I put on a whole 

calamari, and amazingly that produced the first fish of the day. 

So I quickly learned to expect the unexpected, such as those occasions when good double figure pike 

are fairly hooked in the mouth by fly anglers fishing the smallest of imitative patterns, including tiny 

nymphs. 

Then there was the day I was trolling a very small spinner on Coniston for char. As we passed a ridge 

of rock protruding out into the lake which obviously shallowed the water off and provided a very good 

ambush point for predators, I hooked up a pike which must have been high teens to low twenties. 

I even managed to get it up to the landing net, which considering I was fishing four pounds bs line and 

no wire trace wasn't bad going. 

The loss, when it finally did come, was at the net. Trying to bend such a big fish into such a small net 

at the surface was the final straw. All that thrashing and crashing, then it was gone. 

Perhaps the most unusual pike fishing I've ever come across, more of which in Part 2 looking at venues 

outside the British Isles, was in the Baltic Sea. 

Without giving too much away here or 

repeating myself later, in the Baltic, the 

less dense freshwater floats on top of 

the more dense saltwater, which in the 

shallower areas brings two very 

different worlds closer together to the 

point that on the same day within a very 

short distance you can catch pike, cod, 

garfish, salmon and sea trout. How 

amazing is that. 

Releasing Pike Coniston 

different then to stimulate the appetite. 

For us, not big pike unfortunately. But 

some of the boats and guides who were 

specifically targeting pike were seeing 

fish which in anybody’s book were 

truly monstrous. Something a little 

And something a little different back on home soil was a recorded conversation I had with Somerset 

pike enthusiast Danny Parkins, who talks in great detail about lure fishing for pike after dark, which in 

his opinion is a better option than fishing the same marks during in daylight. 

Similarly, a very detailed interview looking at tackle and tactics for big pike on the fly with pike guide 

and multiple world fly fishing champion John Horsey. 


SILVER EEL Anguilla anguilla 


Not a fish that is going to trouble freshwater anglers in terms of identification, though it might lead to 

a bit of confusion with small conger eels at sea. Conger have a large eye, an upper jaw that is longer 

than the lower, and a dorsal fin which starts pretty much level with the tip of the pectoral fin. 

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Mark Everard, 4.6.0 Silver Eel In the silver eel the reverse is true. The eye is small, the lower jaw 

protrudes beyond the upper, and the dorsal fin starts way back 

behind where the pectoral fin ends. But while there shouldn't be a problem pinning the correct name to 

it, silver eels can most certainly be a problem to freshwater anglers in other ways. 

Like most people, I've endured the repeated misfortune of having eels take my bait then wrap 

themselves up into a snotty knot, completely destroying the end tackle in the process. Is it any wonder 

then that so many anglers hate them, and that only a very few specialize in deliberately trying to seek 

out the bigger specimens. 

The only time I have ever consciously fished for eels, and I've done this on a number of occasions, is 

in the River Gilpin in Cumbria just before it passes under the main A590 above its confluence with the 

River Kent close to Arnside. 

It's still a narrow muddy small river at that stage, probably devoid of all species other than eels. We 

would spend the whole day there legering worms to catch as many as we could to freeze down in 

sections for pike and zander baits so that we wouldn't need to go back again for a while. 

336

For a whole range of reasons you couldn't do that 

these days. For one thing, they are no longer about in 

the numbers they used to be. So much so that the EU 

has compelled all member states to enact protective 

measures, which in the UK means that it is illegal to 

deliberately catch eels, and as such, all eels taken by 

anglers, including those at sea, must be immediately 

returned to the water unharmed. 

Another reason for not repeating our eel activities on 

the River Gilpin is that it is now against the law to 

fish with fresh water dead-baits transported to a water 

from elsewhere in an effort to prevent the spread of 

disease, which I can understand. 

The fact that there are so few eels about is another 

matter, and just one more example of locking the barn 

door after the horse has bolted. I mean, it's not like 

nobody saw this coming. It's rare for any animal to 

decline to the point of needing Europe-wide 

protection over a single generation. Surely then 

somebody must have anticipated it. 

Commercial over-cropping, as is the case with so 

Charlie Pitchers, Arnside 

many species on the slippery slope towards oblivion 

these days, is a major factor here. What can you expect when licenses were being issued by the 

Environment Agency to commercially catch them at a couple of inches in length as 'fry' in effect, as 

they arrive on our shores many years before they even think of heading back to the sea to reproduce. 

It's madness, and not unsurprisingly, elver catches, which feed the highly lucrative aquaculture trade, 

have crashed to the point that the eel is now classed as a critically endangered species by the 

International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

It is believed that in Britain alone, numbers are down by around seventy percent, with a global decline 

of nearer ninety five percent. 

That to me goes beyond the definition of decline. It sounds more like the brink of extinction. But overcropping 

is not the only factor here, though aquaculture is again in part to blame. 

When commercial quantities of European elvers started declining, the aquaculture industry brought in 

supplies of the Japanese species Anguilla japonica, some of which were infected with the parasitic 

nematode Anguillicoloides crassus which infects the swim bladder and can lead to it rupturing and 

ultimately death. 

This is now a widespread problem in eels all across Europe, in addition to which, hydro-electricity 

dams, flood defence systems and other barriers to upstream migration have exacerbated an already 

serious decline, not to mention global warming and its effects on the direction of the Gulf Stream 

coupled to natural changes to how the Gulf Stream affects northern Europe, which as we will see shortly, 

plays a major role in the life cycle of the European silver eel. 

The reproduction and life cycle of silver eels has long been a source of fascination, misunderstanding, 

and study. Today the picture appears to be reasonably clear. But the story took much pains taking 

unravelling. 

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Throughout their lives, eels make just two migrations, one of which is passive, the other driven by 

reproductive motivation. 

The passive migration is their distribution from their spawning grounds in the Atlantic to colonise 

Europe's freshwater systems, with the reproductive aspect reversing that journey as a onetime only 

return to those spawning grounds where they reproduce and die. 

This takes place in a slowly rotating slack eddy of the western Atlantic to the east of Florida, south of 

Bermuda, and to north of Cuba, known as the Sargasso Sea. It's from this rotation that the ocean current 

known as the north Atlantic Drift or Gulf Stream originates. 

In the Sargasso, eel eggs are shed during the spring and early summer months at depths of around two 

hundred to three hundred fathoms, where on hatching, the larvae maintain that level within the water 

column before undergoing a deep lateral body flattening process. 

At this stage, they are known as Leptocephali, which was at one time thought to be a completely 

different species of fish known as Leptocephalus brevirostris. 

As Leptocephali they rise closer to the surface where over the next couple of years they grow 

progressively longer as they are slowly carried around by the rotation in an ever increasing radius from 

the point where the eggs were initially shed. 

The north Atlantic current eventually leaves this rotation at a peripheral tangent. When the Leptocephali 

become caught up in this they are carried passively towards northern Europe, the Iberian coast, and 

some to the Mediterranean. 

On approaching the European land mass at a length of around three inches, a metamorphosis takes place 

transforming the deep bodied leaf shaped fish into a miniature transparent replica of its parents. This is 

the elver stage, by which time the young eel could be between two and three years old. 

Millions of elvers used to enter Europe's river systems via their estuaries under cover of nightfall. 

Around the British Isles, this was usually over a couple of sets of big tides during the spring, though the 

actual timing is staggered according to latitude, starting towards the end of the year in the Bay of Biscay 

and getting as late as April in Scandinavia. 

Soon afterwards, and in some cases even before actually running the rivers, a second metamorphosis 

takes place caused by the activation of pigment cells which give the tiny transparent elvers their more 

typical olive green colouration ready to start their migration upstream. 

Actually, not all eels make this leg of the migration. Some, usually males, choose to remain close to or 

even in the sea. 

Those that do press on upstream face many dangers from predation, netting, and obstacles, navigating 

ditches, streams, and even short stretches over-land after dark looking for a more permanent home 

where they can grow on to maturity, which for males can take up to twelve years and females as much 

as twenty years, at which point the distant Sargasso beckons, bringing with it certain physical changes. 

At this stage, colouration becomes more silvery and the gonads begin to grow, as do the eyes for vision 

in the dark distant depths. Then, after leaving coastal waters, the jaw begins to weaken and the gut 

atrophies or wastes away, both of which point to a cessation of feeding, after which on reaching the 

Sargasso Sea, they complete their cycle and die. 

Much as many anglers despise eels, nobody I'm sure would wish the current situation upon them, if 

only because it is symptomatic of so many other commercially viable species, particularly at sea, and 

the live for today sod tomorrow mentality of those who see fish as little more than a commodity to be 

used and abused for financial greed. 

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Let's also not lose sight of the fact that 

there are anglers out there who are 

fascinated by eels, devoting themselves 

to understanding and fishing for big eels 

to the exclusion of all else. 

One such a person is Brian Crawford, 

who I have talked to at length and 

recorded an audio interview with on the 

subject of specimen eels, in which he 

talks about what makes a good eel 

water, and more importantly, what 

leads to certain waters being more 

inclined to produce monster specimens 

than others. 

Mick Duff, upper Mersey 

More often than not, these are going to 

be female fish which have a maximum 

growth potential of around twenty 

pounds, though the current record is much nearer half that weight. There have however been bigger rod 

caught fish, which for reasons best known to the British Record Fish Committee, have failed to satisfy 

all of their rules. 

It's said that lakes and ponds, which obviously are easy for an eel to get in to, but when the time comes 

potentially more difficult to get back out of, make for the most promising big eel locations. 

Fishing these waters, in fact all eel waters, is best done after dark, as there is a very definite nocturnal 

feeding preference here. So not the easiest of pursuits putting in all those hours after night fall. 

Dedication is a word that is so often over used these days, but one which would certainly be appropriate 

here. And if that's what people want to do, we should take all the necessary steps to ensure they have 

that opportunity at a political level, by learning to recognise impending disasters long before they occur, 

instead of reacting to them as is the current norm, usually on the verge of it being too late. 


WELS CATFISH Silurus glanis 


Not a fish anyone is going to struggle to identify. For starters, being a specialist introduced species, 

chances are you will be already well aware of its presence long before even thinking of putting a bait 

of any sort into the water. 

An elongate fish with a proportionately tiny dorsal fin starting on a line close to the edge of the pectoral 

fin, and a long low profile uniform anal fin spanning around half of the fish’s total body length leading 

up to a small rounded tail. 

There are of course more obvious features. The eyes for example are particularly small, which for a 

nocturnal ambush predator is not a disadvantage. Then there are the barbels or whiskers around the 

mouth area. Wels catfish have six in total, the longest of which, located just in front of the eye, can 

stretch almost as far back as the end of the pectoral fin. 

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Colouration can be variable dependant on location, typically with some shade of green through to brown 

on the back becoming lighter underneath, with a hint of mottling possible in some specimens. 

I am told there are in excess of five hundred waters currently dotted around the British Isles containing 

wels catfish, well up from the handful in the Bedfordshire area when I first became aware of the species 

as a bucket list target. 

The majority of these are in England. Such is the level and spread of interest in the species. Yet its 

record has now been suspended by the British Record Fish Committee (BRFC). 

Such is the arrogance of this organisation, who instead of being there to serve have become self-serving. 

Relict's from a bygone era. Meanwhile, the catfish scene suffers.......or does it. 

Thinking about it, possibly not. Catfish enthusiasts will still go about their business of targeting large 

specimens. The only people who might suffer are some of the more reputable fishery owners as the 

whole catfish scene comes under closer scrutiny due to the shenanigans of a perhaps shadier side to the 

catfish scene. 

The problem is that unlike in many of the warmer parts of Europe where there is a better food intake to 

growth conversion ratio, our catfish are unlikely to reach the hundred pound mark without a substantial 

dollop of help, which means that many big cat enthusiasts, either totally or in part, are spending their 

money elsewhere. 

Having said that, a report in Angling Times dated July 2015 credits River Severn barbel angler Neil 

Bridges with a surprise catch of a 94 pound specimen taken during an over-night session. So not that 

far short of the magical target ton. 

Allegedly, according to the BRFC, to counter the lack of home waters natural growth, and satisfy the 

demand for big cats, specimens were being smuggled into the country from abroad, with all the health 

risks and elitist opportunities that entails, which is hardly a new phenomenon. 

340

You only have to look at the wider game and coarse fish record lists to see a whole array of imports. 

And as for smuggling and elitism, what about the carp and trout fishing scenes. 

Big carp are regular targets for theft and smuggling, while monster trout have been grown on for years 

for introduction into waters at record sizes on days when only selected 'high value' anglers are invited 

in order to get maximum press coverage. 

So either reinstate the wels catfish or suspend the others. We need consistency here, hopefully 

introduced by a committee more in touch with what anglers want instead of being dictated to by a bunch 

of bureaucrats, many of whom are completely out of touch. 

To date, I have only ever fished for 

wels catfish on two occasions. The 

first was a visit to Spain. 

Unfortunately at the time when the 

Icelandic volcano saw air travellers all 

over Europe stranded. 

I was over there for reasons other than 

fishing, but as we'd flown in to 

Barcelona, with Tortosa on the River 

Ebro en route to where I needed to be, 

a two night stopover was inserted into 

the itinerary for a couple of days 

guided boat fishing on the lower Ebro 

for catfish. 

Terry Pilling, Anglers Paradise 

Unfortunately it was April, which is 

perhaps a bit on the early side anyway, and especially so that year, which followed quite a severe winter 

with snow melt still affecting water temperatures. It was so cold in fact that at the end of the first day 

of sitting frozen rigid and bite-less in a small boat, I nipped into town and bought myself some extra 

warm clothing. 

The second day wasn't much better, though we did have a half hearted take on squid which eventually 

came to nothing, while close by I saw a cat being hauled in by another boat, and that was pretty much 

was it. 

A complete, though in some ways not unexpected blank. Then there was the fiasco of getting back home 

by bus, train and ferry, which cost me a planned trip to fish the Baltic. But we made it back, eventually, 

and some weeks later, myself and Graeme Pullen were down at Boscastle dinghy fishing for porbeagle 

sharks. 

That at least was the plan. Unfortunately, technical problems put paid to going offshore, so we spent a 

few days at Zyg Gregorek's Anglers Paradise instead, where amongst many excellent fish, I saw a few 

catfish in the thirty to forty five pound bracket caught. 

Very impressive. So much so that I went back down to one of the lakes after dark fishing with a couple 

of twenty two mm halibut pellets on a hair rig, and within the hour I had my first and only wels catfish 

on the bank. 

A mere fifteen pounder, but still big enough and strong enough to give me a few tense moments. Again, 

very impressive, and I can totally see why people become addicted to catching them. 

One of those people is Simon Clark, who besides owning 'Tackle Up' in Fleet, Hampshire, is also 

secretary of the catfish conservation group, and is an out and out big catfish specialist. So, on a 

341

subsequent angling visit to Graeme 

Pullen's place just a few miles down 

the road from Fleet, I paid Simon a call 

to record a pre-planned audio 

interview on all things wels catfish, 

and in particular tackle and tactics for 

the home waters scene. 

What surprisingly stuck in my mind 

from that conversation was his top bait 

recommendation, which was 

lobworms. Something I will most 

definitely be trying when next I visit a 

UK catfish water, a couple of which 

I've recently discovered are not too far 

away from me up here in Lancashire. 

Graeme Pullen, 122 pounder River Ebro 

Associated audio interview numbers: 

75. 

BULLHEAD CATFISH Ameiurus melas 


I can't understand why anyone would want to go to the expense and effort of introducing this particular 

fish to the British Isles, when there are so many other more favourable, bigger growing, and harder 

fighting species to choose from. 

The Environment Agency has been working hard to develop strategies and implement actions to 

eradicate unwelcome finned visitors to England and Wales which they see as being of high risk, and 

the American bullhead catfish is most definitely on that list. 

So much so that EA fishery staff undertook a rapid response eradication operation at the only fishery in 

the country known to have the species, that being Lake Meadows Fishery at Billericay in Essex. 

At the time of writing, the record is still shown as open for further claims, though that should change, 

which is academic anyway if the only 

known population in the country is no 

more. For that very reason therefore, 

identification information is irrelevant. 

The only other comment to add is a brief 

account of my own personal experience 

of the species. A small, slimy, greedy 

little fish with a particularly sharp nasty 

spine at the start of each pectoral fin and 

the first dorsal fin, all of which combine 

to make handling something of a 

problem as I very quickly discovered. 

I was fishing a small surface water 

collection pond at the rear of a Florida 

342

villa I stayed in. Using worms bought at Wal Mart, I'd fish for an hour or so every morning until 

everybody got up. 

Under the float it would be a mix of bluegills, tilapia and bass, whereas on the bottom it was guaranteed 

bullhead catfish. The freshwater equivalent of catching dogfish all day when trying for better things 

back home at sea. Need I say any more. 

STONE LOACH Barbatula barbatula 


Not a species I've ever come across on 

rod and line. I've never seen one caught 

either, though obviously, somebody 

catches them, hence the inclusion here. 

I have however caught quite a few in 

my hand net in some of the deeper 

streams when collecting sticklebacks 

for research. And for me, that pretty 

much sums the species up. 

A fish of clean streams and rivers, and occasionally found around the margins of lakes, just so long as 

there is plenty of cover in the form of rocks to hide under or weed to tuck into. 

A small, long, narrow fish with its eyes placed quite high up on the head to aid peering upwards from 

under stones on the lookout for predators. 

Three pairs of barbels are present under the lower lip, one pair of which is situated at the corners of the 

mouth, obviously with just the one at each corner, which readily sets it apart from all other indigenous 

species. Well, almost. 

There is a second similar though rarer species of loach known as the spined loach Cobitus taenia which 

has a smaller head and three pairs of noticeably very much shorter barbels. It also has a sharp spine on 

its cheek just below the eye. 

Stone loach can be quite variable in colour dependant on location, with yellowish brown to dark brown 

being the typical range, sometimes with blotches and also spots on the tail and pectoral fin. 

In contrast, the spined loach is usually a much lighter colour with lines of spots along the flank and 

upper back as well as on the fins. 

BULLHEAD Cottus gobio 


A freshwater relative of the saltwater sea scorpions, this is a rather elongate little fish with a short first 

dorsal fin, immediately followed by a longer second dorsal fin leading to a rounded tail. The eyes of 

the bullhead, or millers thumb as it is also known, are situated quite high up on its flattened down head, 

suggesting a life style which involves looking upwards from cover, which in fact is the case. 

Colouration and patterning is usually dark and dull with mottling to provide camouflage, sometimes 

taking the form of darker bars along the sides, again to help break up its outline and keep it hidden from 

predators, including birds. 

343

Not a true anglers fish. Not even of 

value as a live or dead-bait, and not a 

fish most freshwater anglers will see on 

a regular basis unless fishing moderate 

flowing, well oxygenated bouldery 

streams or upland rivers, plus some 

reservoirs or lakes with a bouldery base, 

providing refuge for this often skittish 

little fish. And in those locations, if 

hook and bait sizes are small enough, it 

will feed quite readily. 

MINNOW Phoxinus phoxinus 


A small fish in which both the dorsal 

and the anal fin are noticeably rounded 

at their highest point. Other key 

features include very small scales and 

a lateral line that is incomplete, though 

shape, colouration, and markings are 

probably better key identifiers for 

anglers. 

A narrow bodied little fish which is 

dark olive green to brown on the upper 

back, giving way to a lighter, often 

golden sheen from the mid flank 

downwards, with darker blotches 

along the mid to upper flanks, which may even present as stripes. 

Even more impressive is the colouration of the male fish at spawning time, when all the different 

previously mentioned colours seem to become enhanced, with the addition of patches of red on the 

under belly, and black around the throat. 

A common little fish in clean upland areas, both still-water and flowing, which from an angling 

perspective I don't think I need spend too much time on here. 

That said, it is a fish which some freshwater anglers not only will have caught, but often will have 

deliberately caught, particularly in large lakes and streams such as in the Lake District where you can 

see them, catch them, then use then as small live-baits for perch and trout. 

You frequently see them knocking about in the margins and quieter pools of rivers, where a small 

maggot or piece of worm will usually suffice, though quite why anyone would want to pursue them or 

any of the other smaller freshwater species for record purposes is beyond me. 

344

THREE SPINED STICKLEBACK Gasterosteus aculeatus 


With, as the name suggests, its three 

dorsal spines, the first two of which are 

tall, sharp, and well separated from the 

dorsal fin with a smaller third spine 

butted tight up to the front of it, plus 

another long sharp spine below forming 

the pelvic fin, this is not a fish likely to 

cause naming confusion. As such, all 

the other physical features become 

irrelevant. 

More interesting is the fish’s versatility 

in respect of habitat, which is the main 

reason why I chose the species for my 

Ph. D research, on account of its ability not only to survive, but to thrive in water quality ranging from 

pristine to grossly polluted, which for me was vital in establishing it's credentials as a sub-lethal 

indicator of environmental stress. 

When I was investigating fish kill incidents with the Environment Agency, if sticklebacks showed up 

in the body count, then you knew you had something particularly serious to get to the bottom of. 

Not only that, they can also survive in both brackish and totally marine environments. In fact, I once 

picked one out of a shrimp trawl off Ainsdale on Merseyside which is many miles from the nearest 

freshwater. 

One of the standard questions I tend to ask in most of the audio interview recordings I do is for the 

interviewee to give us a flavour of how they got into fishing and their progression through to the present 

day. 

Most will refer back to being young kids tiddler snatching in some local pond or stream, which 

invariably means catching sticklebacks. We've all done it, and in that regard, this is a species which 

carries with it a great deal of nostalgia. 

I'm not sure if was my first fish, but I do recall an early days trip to a canal with my dad where a lone 

stickleback was the only catch of the day. 

Little did I know that some fifty years on I would devote several years of my life both to catching and 

studying the species for my research, an account of which is given in Part 4. 

So other than to say that tiny baits on small hooks in most ponds, lakes, and slow moving streams or 

rivers will ultimately produce sticklebacks, that's it. 

Fortunately for my studies, electro-fishing and a small hand net were far more efficient at catching the 

numbers I required. 

PUMPKINSEED Lepomis gibbosus 


Another small and seemingly pointless American import for the British Record Fish Committee to look 

down upon, and one which worryingly, could end up doing quite well out of climate change. 

345

A species, I personally haven't come across in home waters yet, but one which I may well have caught 

in Florida, where I had all sorts of weird and wonderful small bright coloured freshwater fish out of the 

pumpkinseed – bluegill mould. 

Had I wanted to target this fish in the UK, then Tanyards Fishery in Sussex was the location I had in 

mind. However, on further investigation, I started finding other suggested locations dotted around here, 

there, and everywhere, all the way from Hampshire to Derbyshire, and Cambridge through to Somerset, 

which suggests to me that its threat as an invasive species is already well under-way. 

Whether that's down to fishery owners stocking them, which is doubtful, or the irresponsibility of 

anglers spreading them, is not for me to say. 

The world record stands at less than two pounds, and the British record under a pound, so what is the 

attraction here. Granted, they are highly colourful fish, but that's about all they have going for them. 

Any easy fish to identify then, and certainly a fish which will stand out from the crowd, even if you 

don't know what it is, with its deep bodied perch-like profile, spiky first section to its dorsal fin followed 

by a softer section, and its ctenoid scales, which again like the perch have a dry rough feel to them, 

particularly when rubbed against the grain from tail to head. 

But it's the colouration and patterning here that are key, which when compared to our indigenous 

species, is spectacular in the extreme. 

The base colour can be anything from green or brown through to blue or even orange, with prominent 

vertical bars containing lots of spots. There can also be orange spots on the dorsal and anal fins too, 

plus the tail, in addition to a bright orange spot on the edge of a larger black spot on the gill cover, with 

blue lines radiating out from the eye on to the head, cheek, and gill cover. 

NOTE: The remaining freshwater fish in both the record lists and on my bucket list are all game species. 

That is, fish with a small fleshy blob on their back just front of the tail known as an adipose fin. All 

home waters freshwater game fish species have this feature, and in freshwater, here in the British Isles 

at least, no other fish does. 

346

Included in the adipose finned species is the grayling, which for some reason has been referred to as a 

coarse fish species in the past, not to mention how some purists continue to think of it today. 

Another is the schelly, which though its record has been suspended by the BRFC because of its protected 

status, still appears in the coarse fish list, even though it doesn't belong there. 

It isn't a coarse fish, and neither is the grayling, which for the moment at least is managing to maintain 

its current status in the game fish species list. So what follows are the adipose finned game fish species. 

ATLANTIC SALMON Salmo salar 


Christian Bruckmer, 22 pound Salmon taken deep trolling 

If my bucket list was based on DNA sampling, then the answer here would be yes, I have caught an 

Atlantic salmon in home waters. But it isn't, so pride won't let me do that. 

A session spent dry fly fishing a pool on the River Hodder when a sudden hatch of olives brought the 

entire waters surface to life with hungry salmon par where it was virtually a fish a chuck isn't exactly 

what I had in mind for my entry into the world of salmon fishing success. 

On the other hand, despite their humble size, it's a lot more salmon DNA than many dyed in the wool 

regular salmon enthusiasts fishing worms, lures, or flies produce in an entire season these days. 

So if the 'real' salmon won't come to you, then you must go to them, which could mean one of many 

things, such digging deep to buy that trip of a lifetime (if you can get in) at the best time on one of the 

famed Scottish salmon beats, then crossing your fingers for river conditions to be right on the day, or a 

flight over to Iceland or even to Norway. 

347

I decided to take the flight option, but not to Scandinavia. I have a friend, Sven Hille who lives at 

Rostock in what was a part of the old east Germany. 

When the Berlin wall came down followed by reunification, former east Germans suddenly found 

themselves free to fish from boats, particularly where Sven lives close to the old border, where they had 

previously been restricted in case they tried to escape. 

So like a lot of people in that area, he used the opportunity to buy himself a boat, from which he now 

specialises in the art of offshore deep water trolling. 

Fishing this corner of the Baltic is covered in detail in Part 2 under the sub-heading Germany. To cut a 

long story short, Sven invited me over to compete with him in the annual trolling competition from 

Schaprode on the island of Rügen where he moors his boat. 

That trip unfortunately fell apart due to the grounding of all European flights during the Icelandic 

volcanic ash fiasco of 2010, and had to be re-scheduled some weeks later in the company of Sven of 

course, and Christian Bruckmer. 

By then it was pretty much the effective end of the trolling season, so we weren't expecting much. The 

weather also looked as though it was going to put a spanner in the works. Then suddenly, it changed. 

The sea flattened, the sun came out, and we were away with open access to all areas. 

There is a complete video demonstration of how the trolling is done on YouTube. I have also recorded 

an audio interview with Sven covering the same topic and more. 

With so much specialised kit and so many different elements taking place at the same time to cover the 

greatest range of lure placing options, to try to explain it here in words would be very difficult. It's one 

of those things you really do need to see first-hand by going to YouTube. 

Working so many lures in that way in such a small volume of water is very impressive to say the least. 

Thankfully, salmon to over twenty pounds and sea trout well into double figures were equally 

impressed, allowing me to get my first proper salmon, the best of which weighed in at twenty two 

pounds. 

On the way back to the caravan we 

were staying in one afternoon, Sven 

dropped the biggest sea trout in at a 

restaurant where we would be dining 

later that evening. And joining us 

there was a chap I'd seen down at the 

moorings boarding his own small boat 

called 'dorsch express', which 

translated into English means 'cod 

express'. 

This turned out to be German 

International fly angler Ulrich 

Schneider who we'd previously seen 

coming back that afternoon with three 

Baltic Salmon and Sea Trout 

salmon, the best of which was forty 

two pounds, all caught while trolling 

for pike on light tackle at the back of Hiddensee Island quite close to base. So much then for it being 

the tail end of the season. 

348

Other boats also came ashore with stories and evidence of various mixes of salmon, smaller sea trout, 

pike and cod. Yes, cod. But the important thing here is that they weren't all private boats. Small, fast, 

guided boats offering exactly the same mix of fishing as Sven enjoys are also available, with spaces up 

for grabs even in the trolling competition. 

Theoretically then, anybody could go over there and enjoy the same thing, which despite my views on 

sea trout as a species, and to get around the lack of salmon over here in home waters, would be 

something I would most strongly recommend. 

For identification purposes, in the salmon, the tail is concave at the edge, or put another way, slightly 

forked, whereas that of the sea trout is square cut and straight. The 'wrist' or caudal peduncle just ahead 

of the tail also differs between these two similar looking fish. 

In the sea trout this is broader, and when used as a gripping point to pick the fish up will usually see it 

slip free. Salmon on the other hand are narrower and therefore easier to pick up and grip in this way. 

Sea trout are also often heavily spotted, some of which extend down past the lateral line which is not 

the case with salmon. 

The maxilla, which is the bony plate along the upper jaw, extends beyond the eye in sea trout, which 

again is not the case with salmon. 

A scale count from the adipose fin down to the lateral line is also a potential pointer, though 

unfortunately, this number can over-lap between the pair, with ten to thirteen scales in the salmon, and 

thirteen to sixteen scales in the sea trout. Great if the result is clear cut, but of little value in its own 

right if it comes out at thirteen exactly. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 66, 83, 95, 99. 107 and 155 

HUMP BACK SALMON Oncorhynchus gorbuscha 


349 

The smallest of the Pacific salmon 

species, humpback or pink salmon as 

they are also known, are one of the 

main bread and butter fish along the 

north east coast of the United States on 

into Canadian waters, where they are 

exceedingly common and popular as an 

angling sport fish. 

Just what a specimen might be doing 

visiting the British Isles is anybody’s 

guess, but visit us it has, or should I say, 

they have, as there have been a handful 

of authenticated reports from as far 

Alex Wilkie, Humpback Salmon 

afield as Scotland and Cornwall over 

recent years, dating back to a specimen 

caught in a bag net in the Aberdeen area in 1960, and formally identified at Pitlochry, then later the 

British Museum. 

Other isolated occurrences in Scottish waters have come from Montrose where one was commercially 

caught, and from the River Tweed where a specimen of 3 pounds 8¾ ounces was taken on rod line by 

Louis Hunter in 2007, a fish which holds the current British rod caught record.

Why this should be the record I'm not quite sure, as a four pound humpback taken by Ivan Harris in 

Cornwall's River Camel was officially identified by Environment Agency fishery staff. 

On the basis of all that, you shouldn't really expect to see one in a river near you any time soon. But 

you can't completely rule out the possibility either, as Ivan Harris and Louis Hunter previously 

demonstrated, and more recently, a mini invasion in September 2015 also clearly shows. 

A total of eight Humpbacks were caught by a mix of anglers and commercial fishermen along the east 

coast and in both the rivers Tyne and the Wear. The suspicion is that a massive breeding program 

conducted by the Russians some 40 years ago led to vagrants first finding their way to Norway, then 

Iceland, and now appear to be crossing the North Sea to Britain's east coast. So watch this space. 

Fortunately, a fish which when it runs into freshwater with spawning on its mind is likely to assume a 

physical appearance that will immediately catch the eye. Particularly the males which develop that 

characteristic hump below the dorsal fin, accompanied by a very prominent kype with teeth. 

Both sexes change colour from metallic green with silver sides and a pinkish hue while at sea, to a much 

darker livery when in spawning condition, with the males also showing red and even yellow on their 

flanks. 

Both sexes also have large oval spots on both tail flukes, which is said to be a key distinguishing feature 

between humpbacks and other Pacific species. Not that we are likely to have that sort of identification 

problem. With that in mind, Atlantic salmon typically have nine rays in their anal fin, whereas 

humpbacks have at least fourteen. 

BROWN TROUT Salmo trutta 


350

Theoretically, a very straight forward fish to identify. The one potential area where confusion might 

creep in would be amongst novices on small still-water fisheries where rainbow trout invariably 

dominate. 

Unlike brown trout, rainbow trout have uniform small dark spots, which not only cover their back and 

sides, but also extend onto and cover their entire tail and dorsal fin, along with a characteristic pink 

band along the mid flank area. 

Wild brown trout, more so than hatchery reared specimens, are beautiful fish to look at, with greenish 

brown backs becoming lighter on the sides, which certainly in Cumbrian tarn fish are golden yellow 

from the mid flank region down underneath their belly, are heavily covered with red and black spots on 

their back and flanks, sometimes appearing to have a lighter ring around them. 

Brown trout are our indigenous trout species, and as such we should expect to find them everywhere. 

In that regard, they are actually more widely distributed than many people realise, more of which later. 

Unfortunately, because they are more difficult to hatchery rear and grow on than rainbow trout, on top 

of which they are also often harder to catch, this tends not to endear them to small still-water fishery 

owners and many of the anglers frequenting such waters. 

Yes, most anglers are happy to catch a nice brown trout, and on some waters there is a policy of 

compulsory release to maintain stock levels and availability. But the species is always a bit part player 

or support act. Never, or rarely there in the starring role. 

There are a few exceptions here, both in general numbers terms and fish sizes, Kielder Water and Dever 

Springs respectively being good examples of each. Otherwise, the rainbow trout dominates the home 

patch still-water scene, because they are cheaper to rear, easier to catch, and grow on more quickly, 

which is a real shame. 

Rearing brown trout for anglers, particularly for re-stocking or stock enhancement in rivers has a 

potential environmental down-side too, the main aspect of which is genetic integrity. Is it right to allow 

gene pool dilution with traits brought in from elsewhere between fish that have over time become 

specifically adapted to a particular environment and those that haven't. 

It's one of those debates that has combatants on both sides. On some rivers, gene mixing historically 

reaches so far back in time that it would be a legitimate question to ask, what is the real genetic make 

up of the so-called indigenous population anyway. 

Personally, I'm neither for nor against it. 

There are sound arguments on both 

sides. Fortunately, as a dyed in the wool 

sea angler, most of these are allowed to 

go right over my head. 

Stuart Barrett, Dever Springs 

I hinted earlier that brown trout are 

probably more widespread and 

therefore more available to catch than a 

lot of anglers think, and for that 

statement I dip into a couple of audio 

interviews I recorded with Dr. Paul 

Gaskell of the Trout In The Town 

project, and Mike Weaver MBE of the 

Wild Trout Trust, who between them 

discuss the subject at both extremities 

of the fish’s distribution. 

351

The Wild Trout Trust does a lot of work with small upstream stretches and wild fish populations, often 

located well away from urban and industrial inputs. 

Paul Gaskell's work on the other hand, as the project implies, takes him right into the thick of the urban 

jungle, where the objective is to make urban and metropolitan environments attractive to brown trout, 

then make them accessible to anglers. 

In many ways, both directly and indirectly, the two organisations are inter-linked. For once water quality 

issues are addressed by organisations like the Environment Agency and are not only brought up to an 

acceptable standard, but maintained at that standard, invertebrates and fish will very quickly respond 

and recolonise them. 

A prime example of this is the River Mersey which I worked on with the National Rivers Authority 

during the 1990's. A time period when you would have struggled to find a worse example of historical 

pollution in Europe, and where it took a lot of people plus a lot of effort to peel back the many layers 

of indifference and neglect. 

Like the often used onion analogy, you remove one layer only to find another and another. But 

eventually you get down to core, and within thirteen years, the Mersey went quite literally from running 

sewer to running salmon coming in from the seaward end, while at the same time, coarse fish and brown 

trout from isolated residual pockets in the higher reaches were able to penetrate ownstream. 

So it can be done. But in the case of the Trout In The Town project, local residents and businesses also 

need to be on-board, and stop seeing rivers and their banks as natural free dumping grounds. 

Local anglers too by pressing for better access, with schools also getting in on the act by promoting a 

wider understanding of the aquatic environment. 

After recording the interview with Paul on the banks of the River Irwell near Bury, we headed back to 

the car park where he donned his waders, got out his tackle bag, and prepared to grab an hour fishing. 

The Irwell, despite being a vastly improved river, in places looked at best a tricky venue to fish due to 

the many huge boulders and rapid sections surrounded by tall trees. But one which I was assured had 

enough small pools containing enough small trout to demonstrate how urban angling can work. 

Central to this was the technique of tenkara fishing, which by coincidence I'd recently been given a full 

demonstration of by Tenkara UK director, the late Mike Roden, on the upper River Ribble. We were 

shooting a demo video for his website and for YouTube which we followed up with an audio recording, 

after which I was given a tenkara rod to use and practise the lessons learned. 

Unfortunately, not knowing we were 

about to embark on an urban trout 

tenkara session, I didn't have it with 

me. So I watched Paul picking his way 

up river from pool to pool enjoying a 

spot of wild trout fishing that was open 

to everyone. And therein lies one of the 

fundamentals of the Trout In The Town 

project. 

Accessibility and appreciation for 

anyone and everyone wanting to grab 

an hour or so say at lunch time, or after 

work, which is where fly fishing, and in 

Anthony James, wild Brownie, Red Tarn 

352

particular tenkara fly fishing comes in to its own. 

Tenkara rods are telescopic. Perfect for struggling through town centre crowds, accessing difficult 

locations, and fishing small urban waters. Fly fishing also means not having to prepare bait. Everything 

you need can be there ready at the drop of a hat. 

There is no back casting to be done either in tight or difficult situations, as tenkara is the fly fishing 

equivalent of coarse match pole fishing, with the line attached to the rod end via an elasticated link. 

Switching attention to the Wild Trout Trust now, this organisation mainly, though not exclusively, 

works at the other extremity to the urban trout projects, by dealing with prospective enthusiasts and 

customers who sometimes shy away from this type of organisation on the grounds that these upland 

waters tend to be for rich syndicates, and only ever contain small fish, which is both correct and 

incorrect at the same time. 

Many small rivers and streams on places like Dartmoor and in the Lake District are populated by smaller 

fish on account of the often nutrient poor status of that type of environment. But not all. There can be 

some surprisingly good fish in these waters too, with three pounders not unheard of. 

Yes, they are a challenge requiring small natural 'match the hatch' patterns. Wild fish always are, and 

big wild fish don't grow to those proportions by being reckless in their feeding. 

As regards syndicates or other restrictions on access, recognising this, the Wild Trout Trust can help 

with information on day tickets and free fishing, such as in many of the Cumbrian lakes, tarns, and 

streams, for example, which are the kind of place I regularly enjoy myself. 

Although I do fly fish specifically for brown trout such as with the quality back-end sport to be had on 

lures while boat fishing the reedy marginal areas on Draycote, and have taken brown trout on the fly to 

well over six pounds from some of the smaller still waters too, plus ferox trout in excess of fifteen 

pounds on trolled dead-baits, my favourite brown trout fishing has, and always will be, Red Tarn at the 

base of Striding Edge on the final ascent up to Helvellyn peak. 

Initially I was drawn to this small water filled glacial corrie by the prospects of catching a schelly, 

something we have done there on a number of occasions. But very quickly, as with many other wild 

locations all around the country, the quality and beauty of the brown trout this water also contains very 

quickly became apparent, and more than worth the two hour slog up 'the hill' from Glenridding. 

It's just a pity that the tarn is so 

isolated, so nutrient poor, and so cold 

for much of the time that you never 

see fish taking food from the top. 

There possibly are times when 

hatches of small insects are blown on 

to its surface, but I've never witnessed 

it. So it's bait fishing I'm afraid, 

compensated for by the most 

beautifully marked fin perfect brown 

trout you are ever likely to witness 

anywhere. 

Ian Gaskell, Brown Trout Draycote 

Before closing, I'd like also to touch 

on 'other types' of brown trout. 

Currently, these are all classed 

scientifically as Salmo trutta. This is 

a very plastic species in the sense that 

353

it is highly variable at a number of levels to the point where some would argue that full species 

separation, or at least sub-speciation, has already taken place. 

A prime example of this is the ferox trout, a term first coined by renowned angler Sir William Jardine 

in 1835. Similarly, some of the other large cannibalistic variations found in a number of the larger Irish 

Loughs. 

RN Campbell (1979) offered a definition of ferox trout as being a long lived, late maturing, piscivorous 

brown trout, which in Britain and Ireland are often present in large, deep, glacier formed lakes 

containing arctic char or whitefish species. 

Following a wide range of scientific observations and studies, others also see ferox as a separate species, 

with the name Salmo ferox being suggested. I often think back to a statement made by Ferox 85 cofounder 

and author of the excellent book Ferox Trout, Ron Greer, who in an audio interview we did 

together said that in his opinion, all ferox trout are brown trout, but not all brown trout are ferox trout. 

So make of that what you will. For me the jury is still out. But it isn't with regard to the sea trout, plus 

the slob trout, lake trout, and river trout from the Irish record fish list, all of which are little more than 

variations on the plasticity of Salmo trutta, none of which deserve separate status, either in the record 

list, my bucket list, or for that matter any other list. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 9, 15, 105, 125 and 130. 

SEA TROUT Salmo trutta 


As this is the same species as the brown 

trout discussed above, let me refer you 

to that account for precise 

identification information if required. 

As will become apparent, I don't 

subscribe to separate inclusion here, 

but then again, that's just my opinion. 

The one concession I will make is a 

detailed look at separating sea trout 

from salmon, if only for the case of 

being able to correctly put a tick 

against the Atlantic salmon. 

In the salmon, the tail is concave at the 

Sven Hille, Baltic Sea Trout 

edge, or put another way, slightly 

forked, whereas that of the sea trout is 

square cut and straight. The 'wrist' or caudal peduncle just ahead of the tail also differs. 

In the sea trout this is broader, and when used as a gripping point to pick the fish up will usually see it 

slip free. Salmon on the other hand are narrower, and therefore easier to pick up in this way. Sea trout 

are also often heavily spotted, some of which extend down past the lateral line, which is not the case 

with salmon. 

The maxilla, which is the bony plate along the upper jaw, extends beyond the eye in sea trout, which 

again is not the case with salmon. 

354

A scale count from the adipose fin down to the lateral line is also a potential pointer, though 

unfortunately, this number can over-lap between the pair, with ten to thirteen scales in the salmon, and 

thirteen to sixteen scales in the sea trout. Great if the result is clear cut, but of little value in its own 

right if it comes out at thirteen exactly. 

If the bucket list was a roll call of names based on DNA sampling, then we wouldn't even be discussing 

the sea trout here. It's an artificial classification without any basis in science, put there simply to appease 

some anglers. 

In every way imaginable it contravenes the rules (yet again) that the British Record Fish Committee 

have set for themselves, because so called sea trout are nothing more than one sub section of the brown 

trout population which for whatever reason has decided to run to the sea to feed, later returning to 

freshwater to spawn in the same way that salmon do. 

If this distinction can be justified, then why not do the same for ferox trout which live many times longer 

than 'conventional' brown trout, don't breed as regularly, are reported as breeding true, and have a 

completely different diet based on small shoaling fish species such as char.Some academics even 

support the idea of ferox being a distinct species. They are certainly more distantly removed from the 

classic brown trout than the sea trout is. 

So let's see some consistency here. Or 

better still, for recording purposes, just 

list Salmo trutta regardless of migratory, 

none migratory, or cannibalistic 

tendencies. 

No doubt game fishing purists will 

disagree. If it were down to me, I 

wouldn't even be mentioning the species 

here, but feel compelled to do so out of 

completeness, because it is listed as a 

separate inclusion by the British, Irish 

and Scots, while in the Welsh list the slot 

is shown as vacant and open to claims. 

Tails – Salmon above and Sea Trout below 

Fortunately I once caught one while trolling for char on Coniston, so I'm covered either way. 

RAINBOW TROUT Oncorhynchus mykiss 


Because of the way things are on the home still-water game fishing scene, more often than not these 

days, identification comes down to a straight choice between brown and rainbow trout, which on a 

number of fronts makes for some very straight forward name tagging. 

There are many points of difference you could look for, such as the base colouration, and pink sheen 

on the mid flank region of the rainbow trout, and most critically in both cases, their markings. 

Rainbow trout for example have many small quite tightly packed black spots, whereas brown trout have 

fewer but larger black and red spots over a more yellowish to golden background, particularly in wild 

fish. The clincher however is the presence of spots over the entire tail, which rainbow trout have and 

which brown trout lack. 

355

James Dawber, Sutton Springs Rainbow Both species are regularly bred as triploid fish, which 

as I will explain in due course, is important on a couple 

of fronts in having both a quality comprehensive rainbow trout fishery, and for the brown trout in 

maintaining genetic integrity when stocked hatchery reared fish are put into certain rivers. 

The intensive aspect of rainbow trout breeding and rearing which has facilitated today's still-water trout 

scene boom, actually originated in Denmark, and was introduced to Britain some time during the 1950's. 

The big problem back then was that when these fish were later reared for release into angling waters 

rather than going straight to the table, at breeding time, they would darken up and look grotty, which 

put a lot of people off. 

This actually was a double problem, because two slightly different strains of rainbow trout were brought 

to the UK from America - the Kamloops, and the Shasta, both of which unfortunately coloured up at 

different times of the year. 

This was eventually sorted out by manipulating their normally diploid eggs. These contain two sets of 

chromosomes, one of which is eventually ejected but can be 'persuaded' to stay put by gentle heat and 

pressure treatment, so that when the sperm, which itself contains one set of chromosomes, enters the 

egg to fertilize it, instead of it developing with the usual two sets, it ends up with all three, producing 

fish that are unable to reproduce, resulting in the clean, healthy, even faster growing sexless triploid 

trout used almost exclusively today. 

It has to be said that rainbow trout are to no small extent the bimbo's of the freshwater scene. Attractive, 

stupid, and often way too easy to catch. Certainly they have become more attractive since the wider use 

of triploids eliminated the need for anglers to see those sad dark looking early season diploid fish going 

through their annual pre-programmed ritual of trying to breed. 

356

Living in a three dimensional world, 

and sometimes pre-occupied to the 

extreme in their feeding adding 

accurately 'matching the hatch' to the 

list of potential angling problems, there 

are days when, not to put too fine a 

point on it, you could be forgiven for 

thinking them impossible fish to catch. 

Dark early season diploid Rainbow Trout 

Then on other days, such as a visit I 

made one early season with Dave 

Devine to Arnfield reservoir in the 

Peak District, when standing side by 

side, we knocked out one hundred and 

six rainbows using anything you cared 

to throw at them over the duration of a 

four hour ticket. 

Dave had many fish more than I had. Unable to stand it any longer, I packed up somewhere in the 

forties. But you couldn't call that pleasure. Sure, we all want to catch well, but that was akin to 

punishment. No challenge, no respite, and no energy left to be bothered with another throw. 

So two extreme and opposite 

examples, with of course, a complete 

mosaic of situations in-between, 

ranging from small over stocked 

scrapes in the ground to huge public 

service reservoirs looking like vast 

inland seas. 

The important thing here is that the 

introduction of rainbow trout as a fast 

growing, easily produced, not too 

fussed alternative to our indigenous 

brown trout, has not only paved the 

way to inclusion and expansion by 

Diploid female Rainbow Trout venting eggs 

bringing affordable fly fishing 

opportunities to the masses, but 

because of hatchery reared triploids, year round fly fishing too, and regardless of earlier jibes, the 

species has to be applauded for that. 

My introduction to rainbow trout fishing came through seeing an early season advertisement in the 

angling press for an any method competition at Ffestiniog reservoir in North Wales, which was being 

operated as a recirculation hydro-electricity plant. 

Keen to make fuller use of the facility, the Welsh electricity generators piled in loads of dark coloured 

diploid rainbow trout, which unfortunately was the norm back in the 1970's, then let everybody loose 

to do as they pleased for the next few hours. 

Competitions have never been my scene, even at sea. But sometimes they can be a means to an end in 

opening up situations which might otherwise not be available. After all, despite being registered as a 

competitor, you don't actually have to compete. 

357

For me Ffestiniog was one such an occasion. In the first six casts from the rocks just below where water 

coming down the mountain entered the lake, I took five fish on a silver mepps spinner from a peg, 

which while it was chosen at random, couldn't have been better suited to finding early season diploid 

fish which running water always seems to attract. 

Not exactly the most auspicious start to what would evolve into quite an avid fly fishing career, but a 

launching pad none the less that would soon have me learning to cast, studying freshwater invertebrate 

biology, and travelling the country to fish many trout fisheries both large and small. 

This included all the big midland reservoirs, plus the gin clear chalk stream fed fisheries of Hampshire 

such as Dever Springs and Avington with Graeme Pullen to shoot a couple of trout fishing video's for 

YouTube, where I was introduced to the art of selectively stalking individual big fish. 

My intention here is not to explore the various facets and techniques generally of fly fishing for rainbow 

trout. There are many excellent books and video's out there done by real experts that will make a far 

better job of it than I could ever hope to do. That's not what this book is all about. 

My mission here is to recount specific experiences, observations, and personal opinions on a take them 

or leave them basis, offered as an unapologetic bout of self-indulgence, and as such, my next piece of 

recall involves an encounter with Birmingham angler/tackle dealer Terry Eustace, followed by an 

angling visit to Esthwaite near Hawkshead in Cumbria. 

Terry was doing a promotional talk pushing Berkley tackle which he was importing from the USA at 

the time. Amongst a wide variety of Berkley products handed out at the end of the presentation, I 

remember in particular being given two items. One was a floating fly line, which I have to say, having 

owned and tried pretty much all the big name brands up to that time, was the best I have ever used. 

You could screw it up in your hand and immediately it went straight again like soft string. It had 

absolutely no memory at all. Perfect for keeping a tight line rather than having a series of kinks across 

the water surface as is so often the case when using a figure eight retrieve. 

In complete contrast, the other handout goodie was a small 

jar of synthetically produced bright orange 'plasticine' like 

dough called Power Bait, which Terry made me promise I 

would use and report back on, otherwise I wasn't going to 

be allowed to take it away. 

Not so much with Power Bait in mind as just fancying an 

easy day trout fishing on the tail end of a long, cold, hard 

winter's cod fishing, Dave Devine and I decided to take a 

run up to Esthwaite, which at that time was an any method 

fishery where we could just laze about on a small headland 

next to the car, bait fishing with our little cooker producing 

hot brews and bacon butties. A nice relaxing day out. 

We were legering worm tipped off with sweetcorn popped 

up just off the bottom in conjunction with monkey-climber 

bite indicators, and very quickly, we each had our limit and 

were at the stage of putting fish back, when I came across 

the Berkley Power Bait in the bottom of my bag. 

Despite my earlier promises to Terry Eustace, subconsciously 

I think, I'd been avoiding using it. It looked 

ridiculous, it was artificial, and to my mind it was never 

going to catch fish. But, a promise is a promise. So I buried 

Phill Williams, nocturnal Rainbows 

358

the hook inside a small ball of the stuff and out it went, then immediately found myself struggling to 

get the bite indicator set-up on the line wondering why it wouldn't settle down, little realising that a 

trout had picked up the bait within seconds of it going in. 

So I wound in for another cast, only to find that I was into a fish. A pattern that was to go on and on 

and on all day. So hectic was it in fact that other anglers were coming over to see what I was doing so 

right in light of their meagre efforts, which resulted in me handing out blobs of the stuff, and instantly 

they were into fish too. It was ridiculous. 

Shortly afterwards I was out on an assignment with a very 

famous and very capable fly angler doing a feature for Still 

Water Trout Magazine. It was a freezing cold bright sunny 

day up in the hills somewhere, where for £1 million, you 

honestly could not have bought a bite. 

Finally, in sheer desperation, we took a smear of Power Bait 

and rubbed it onto the fly. Not so you could see it, but enough 

to give it 'flavour', and had three rainbow trout out in front of 

the camera in no time at all. 

So, gob smacked by those two preliminary results, I went 

back up to Esthwaite to try it again, only to find that the other 

lads I'd given samples to had been out bought some, cleaned 

up, and it was now banned. 

Back to the fly fishing. As you might have guessed, I've tried 

pretty much everything there is to try on that score, which is 

good in the sense that it affords you the privilege of being 

able to objectively make mental comparisons and form firm 

opinions regarding favoured techniques. 

Phill Williams, Power Bait haul Top of my list for small waters is without doubt buzzer 

fishing on a nice warm overcast early summer morning or 

evening when the trout are mopping them up for fun. 

Days when you can see ripples and bulges all over the surface, then placing your buzzer smack in the 

middle of it all and waiting for that sudden swishing noise as the line suddenly tightens sending water 

droplets into the air. From confident anticipation to adrenalin pumping action in less than the blink of 

an eye. Amazing stuff. 

On the larger waters however, it has to be boat fishing doing one of three things. First off there is the 

general water coverage approach of drifting with the drogue out loch style fishing down the wind onto 

a lee shore with a team of flies, using whatever line is required on the day, actively looking for fish. 

An excellent none specific approach which my fishing buddy and avid competition angling friend Ian 

Gaskell taught me. This is closely followed by fry feeding time on Draycote with sunken fry patterns, 

and finally, fishing some of the calmer bays on Rutland, also at fry feeding time using a suspender 

minkie, again with Ian Gaskell, out in the boat. 

Floating minkie fishing is a bit like up-rated suspender buzzer fishing, where quiet patient anticipation 

again turns instantly into heart thumping action with visible takes at the surface. 

Finally, despite having put a lot of time, money, and effort into rainbow trout fishing, I have to ask the 

question, should they be here at all. I say that not as someone who would like to see them go, but rather, 

359

in light of the British Record Fish Committee's known desire to see all none indigenous species not only 

removed from the record list, but also from the country. 

That would include not only the rainbow trout, but amongst others, wels catfish, zander, and carp. Four 

species of fish which both the commercial fishery management industry and the tackle trade could quite 

literally ill afford to lose. 

The likelihood of it ever happening to any, never mind all of them, it has to be said, is remote. It has 

already been tried with the zander in the form of an unsuccessful cull, though in the case of the rainbow 

trout, this they say could be achieved simply by a ban on re-stocking. 

Or could it. After all, there are locations where escapee diploid rainbow trout from the pre-triploid era 

have somehow managed to set up small self-sustaining populations, one of which I came across over in 

Yorkshire. 

It was another planned visit for a Still 

Water Trout Magazine feature with the 

same team as the Power Bait incident 

mentioned earlier. I can't honestly 

remember the name of the fishery, but 

it was way out in the sticks set in a 

picturesque valley, and I was fishing a 

shallow corner of the lake tight up to 

some reeds where I caught several half 

pound or less rainbows, which the 

fishery owner said were all wild fish. 

So, if ever the BRFC do manage to 

enforce their alien species removal 

policy, the knock on effect to my 

bucket list would zero, as I have 

already caught wild rainbow trout here 

in home waters. 

Alex Wilkie, Rainbow Trout 


AMERICAN BROOK TROUT Salvelinus fontinalis 


Like the rainbow trout, the american brook 

trout is a trans-Atlantic import. But unlike 

the rainbow trout, despite the implication in 

the name, it isn't actually a trout. It's a char, 

a fact readily picked out by the red under 

belly and lower fins at spawning time, and 

more especially by the white leading edge to 

the pectoral, pelvic and anal fins, and the 

lower fluke of the tail. A fish also 

characterised by having a noticeably large 

mouth. 

360

Colouration is typically dark green to brown on the back and flanks, with a very distinctive marbled or 

mottled patterning comprised of lighter colours. This extends onto the dorsal fin and can be present on 

the tail. 

A fish introduced to Britain as far back as 1869, and first recorded on rod and line a few years later in 

1876, but one which only really took off in popularity when rainbow trout fishing caught on, opening 

fly fishing up to the masses in the 1960's and 1970's. 

When I first started visiting small still-water fly fisheries, american brook trout, along with sterile hybrid 

cheetah trout which are a brook trout x rainbow trout cross, and tiger trout which are a brook trout x 

brown trout cross, seemed to be available everywhere. Yet these days there doesn't seem to be much if 

any interest in the trio at all. 

The reason for this as I see it is that fishery managers are not too keen on investing money in stock fish 

they are unlikely to readily see coming out and earning their keep with the same level of ease as the 

more universally popular rainbow trout, particularly at times of recession and austerity. A case there of 

investment without any balanced level of return. 

Brookies, when they go into a water, tend to head straight for the bottom and sulk. The knock on effect 

of this is a lack of interest in them from people buying day tickets. Anglers would probably enjoy 

catching them, but are unlikely to do so easily enough for them to be a consideration rather than just an 

occasional welcome bonus. 

So adding them to a fisheries stocking policy merely adds in extra expense with no pull back in terms 

of attracting extra anglers, many of whom are just not interested. And of those that might be, most won't 

go to the trouble of hugging the bottom with big gaudy lures day in and day out in the half hope of 

picking up an odd brookie, when there are plenty of other more obliging hard fighting fish around to 

catch. 

There are still a few small still-water fisheries dotted around 

the country stocking them, plus a few hatcheries rearing them 

for stocking and for the table, along with cheetah or tiger 

hybrids when requested. 

A quick trawl on the Internet should throw up a list of which 

fisheries to target. A list that is likely to change over time, 

for which reason it isn't worth discussing it any further here. 

But generally, for the reasons given, interest in them does 

seem to have waned. 

That said, if all fisheries stopped stocking them, theoretically 

the species would die out over here, and as would also be the 

case with the rainbow trout, that you would think would be 

the end of that. But again, like the rainbow trout, this isn't 

entirely true. 

Bob Williams, Brook Trout brace 

At most fisheries they would eventually become extinct. 

However, at a handful, particularly a few running water 

locations in the north of England, parts of Scotland, and at 

least one in Wales, escapees have established small selfsustaining 

wild populations, which while they might not 

successfully breed every year, do so with enough regularity 

to maintain an established, albeit small and rather localised 

resident inclusion to the local fauna. 

361

So again, as with the rainbow trout, quite where this fact places the species in the minds of the British 

Record Fish Committee with its opposition to alien species, their total removal, and record list 

suspensions is far from clear. 

There is a national record still for cultivated american brook trout, while the 'natural' slot, which escapee 

breeding populations could fill, is open to claims with no minimum qualifying weight. 

Fortunately I caught mine at a time when there were plenty about, taking a small one at Foremark 

reservoir right at the start of my fly fishing journey, followed later by others at Twin Lakes in 

Lancashire, which produced more than a few decent specimens before it unfortunately closed down. 

GRAYLING Thymallus thymallus 


Not your typical salmonid species, but on closer inspection the link is there thanks to that small fleshy 

blob on the back just in front of the tail known as the adipose fin. A beautiful looking fish with a slightly 

under-shot mouth, which is one of the reasons why hooking them can at times be difficult. 

Giving the identity game away here is the dorsal fin which is both tall and long, with rows of blue, red, 

and black spots. The back and upper flanks are silvery grey and covered with small black flecks, and 

like the schelly, the skin and flesh have a faint odour of cucumber or thyme, the latter being the source 

of its scientific name Thymallus thymallus. 

362

In Grayling circles, I have to say that I am possibly one of the most privileged freshwater anglers in the 

UK. The River Avon at Durrington in the shadow of Stone Henge in Wiltshire, is a classic fly fishing 

water where to get a rod you have to wait for someone to die. Quite literally a case of stepping into 

dead-men's shoes. 

This is the purist game anglers crème de la crème. The stretch where the legendary Frank Sawyer 

developed and perfected his famous upstream nymphing technique, then went on to tutor the equally 

distinguished late great Oliver Kite. 

There is even a bend in the river named after him – Sawyers Bend, where reputedly he loved to practise 

his art. 

Imagine then not only getting an invite to fish this famous beat, but for one day only, an offer to Graeme 

Pullen and myself of the entire stretch to ourselves to fish without restrictions, including the use of 

maggots which we could also loose feed and fish under a balsa bodied avon float for grayling and 

anything else that might come our way, which included some beautiful brown trout, roach, and excellent 

dace, plus of course a good sprinkling of grayling. 

A once in a lifetime opportunity which also included trotting our floats down through Sawyers Bend. 

Even now I have to pinch myself to be sure it wasn't a dream, confirmed by watching the YouTube 

video we put together entitled 'The Upper Avon'. The Grayling there weren't huge, but what the hell. It 

doesn't get any better than that. 

That wasn't the first time I had caught grayling. Funnily enough, my introduction to the species was 

almost on the same sort of level as our day on the upper Avon. 

Back in the early 1980's I struck up a correspondence based friendship with grayling specialist John 

Roberts who lived over on the other side of the Pennines from me at York. I was heavily into in-situ 

photography of freshwater invertebrates at the time, and John being a renowned fly tier, we just sort of 

hit it off. 

The upland rivers over that side, as well 

as on the Lancashire side, are excellent 

grayling country. But being a sea 

angler, I hadn't got the first clue how to 

go about fishing for them, or where. So 

one very cold day shrouded in freezing 

fog, Brian Douglas and I made the trip 

across the tops to meet up with John and 

Richard I'Anson to fish the River Ure if 

my memory serves me well. 

Quite a narrow river with a mix of slow 

and fast water glides which grayling 

seem to favour, and as with the Avon, 

trotting maggots through the swims 

under a float, which in itself was quite 

an achievement to someone more used 

to lobbing out a six ounce lead down 

tide of a small boat for cod. 

Robin Howard, Grayling 

It was absolutely freezing. One of 

those days when, despite how well it 

went, and it went exceptionally well, it 

363

was good to be back in the car for the long drive home, with bright red faces struggling to stay awake 

as the heater blasted out at full bore. 

That is the grand sum total of my grayling experience. Limited in the extreme, but in some respects to 

be envied I'm sure. So it would be foolish of me to say anything regarding tactics for grayling. What I 

can do however is have an opinion on other related matters and offer that instead. 

These are magnificent fish. They fight well, are obliging both on bait and on the fly, and offer 

themselves as a worthy challenge for those times when other game fish species are for reasons of 

spawning seasons, off limits. 

Why then are they so blatantly looked down upon in the way that they are, and why are they still classed 

in some circles as coarse fish. True, they spawn at the same time as coarse fish, which is what allows 

them to be fished for when trout and salmon are seasonally off limits, and at any time at all in Scotland 

where coarse fish have no close season at all. 

At the same time, they possess an adipose fin which makes them a salmonid species. Yet on the southern 

chalk streams where they are regarded as vermin, they were regularly removed by all means possible 

and knocked on the head, supposedly to improve the brown trout prospects, though this has been shown 

not to be the case. An attitude that has only recently started to change thanks to persuasive pressure 

from the grayling society. 

CHAR Salvelinus alpinus 


Because char in the British Isles present themselves as stunted relict populations confined to deeper 

cooler lakes, identification gets a bit of a kick start here by virtue of the fact that only certain waters 

contain them, all of which, except for perhaps a few in the wilds of Scotland, are already known. 

Elsewhere, particularly to the south of 

Cumbria, except for a couple of 

populations in the Snowdonia region 

of Wales, they simply aren't present, 

unless introduced as a novelty by stillwater 

fly fishery owners which does 

happen from time to time. 

Under normal circumstances then, in 

natural situations, identification is a 

case of is the fish a brown trout or is it 

a char. Wild trout with their golden 

flanks and black and red spots rule 

themselves out immediately. In 

breeding livery, char are bright vermilion red on their belly up on to their lower flanks. 

This fades gradually once the spawning period is over, leaving the fish a dark greenish grey on the back 

and flanks, with a generous covering of pinkish white spots. The clincher however are the pectoral, 

pelvic and anal fins, all of which are very obviously red in colour with a prominent white stripe along 

their leading edge. 

When I was a kid, I saved up my pocket money and bought myself a copy of the Observers Book 

Freshwater Fishes. In it was this mystical species, the arctic char, which at that time was thought to be 

364

around one hundred and forty or so separate species, one for each of the different lakes around the 

British Isles known to contain them. 

As you'll see from reading elsewhere in this book, I don't have a lot of time or respect for the British 

Record Fish Committee as a collective, though I do have for certain individuals on the committee, not 

the least of which it's chairman Mike Heylin. 

To their credit however, the BRFC was responsible (in part at least) for having a closer look at this 

ridiculous char speciation situation, and for once taking a common sense decision by lumping all the 

so-called different species together under the single heading of Salveninus alpinus, the arctic char, and 

rightly so. 

Although there are both physical as well as spawning differences between populations, these has come 

about purely through geographical isolation since the parent stock stopped running back to the sea as 

their Arctic cousins to the north of Britain still do. 

In the British Isles they were prevented from undertaking these migrations by elevated temperatures 

several thousand years ago after the glaciers retreated, leaving both char and whitefish stranded as post 

glacial relict's in the cooler water still available below the thermocline in deep glacial ribbon lakes 

which thermally stratify during the warmer summer months. 

So, we're talking here of slight differences brought about by adaptation, and not a hundred and forty or 

so different char species initially running the rivers of Britain and Ireland, with one ending up in each 

different lake. 

This however doesn't mean that given more time, these 

differences won't become more pronounced leading perhaps 

to sub-speciation, or eventually even full species separation, 

as evidenced by the effects of geographical isolation 

elsewhere in the world driven on by evolutionary 

adaptation. 

If that is, UK char can manage to survive the current 

increase in global temperatures, plus creeping urbanisation, 

the result of which is often eutrophication or nutrient 

enrichment, adding extra pressure to populations already 

teetering on the brink. 

A lot of work has been done, and continues to be done, in 

completing an accurate representation of char as a species in 

the British Isles. Splits within populations in terms of 

feeding and breeding strategies are constantly being 

discovered, particularly in Scotland by scientists working at 

the Fascally lab near Pitlochry, one of whom, and a friend 

of mine, was ferox trout specialist and char researcher Ron 

Greer before he retired. 

A good practical example of this comes from the southern 

Phill Williams, Coniston Char most English Lakes of Windermere and Coniston, which 

are currently in Cumbria, but when I first fished them for 

char back in the early 1970's, were still a part of Lancashire until we had them stolen from us in the 

1974 county boundary reorganisation. In fact, some of the older char fishermen at Coniston still regard 

themselves as Lancashire folk, but that's another story. 

365

The char in Coniston spawn in deep water in the early spring, while elsewhere in Cumbria they are 

autumn spawners at the mouths of small shallow rivers. All that is except for Windermere, which for 

some inexplicable reason has populations of both spring and autumn spawning char. 

So you can see how complicated this is, and how far from being completely understood lake dwelling 

arctic char as a collection of discrete populations are here in the British Isles is, which strongly impacts 

on angling in terms of where you can find them, and when you can fish for them. 

My first encounters with char were at Windermere around the Low Wood area. This looks out onto 

some very deep water within shore casting range and used to turn up quite a few pound plus fish early 

season to anglers fishing worm on the bottom for brown trout. 

Unfortunately, there were never a lot caught. So I turned my attention to Coniston, where a chap I 

worked with said he knew 'X marks the spot' for catching numbers of char, particularly if fished for 

from a boat, which I just happened to have. 

The spot in question was the Brantwood headland on the eastern shore, which had both incredibly deep 

water close in and a small stream cutting across it where the char would come to spawn in March. 

Being green, we didn't fully appreciate the spawning side of things back then, even though all the fish 

we caught were beautifully coloured up with crimson red bellies. That was the way they were shown in 

books, and as far as we were concerned, that was how they always looked. 

So, using a big bag of rocks to anchor the boat in the soft bed substrate just beyond shore casting range, 

we would catch dozens of the things on small hooks and paternoster rigs with either pieces of worm or 

caddis grubs as bait. 

Not nearly so well though as some of the more unscrupulous elements fishing with maggots, both on 

the hook and fed in as freebies, which due to the trout being in season from mid-March onwards and 

the coarse fish being out of season, was a banned bait. 

As soon as a bailiff in a boat came anywhere near, the maggots all went over the side and the evidence 

was gone. Later in the day, these people would then hawk the fish around the local hotels. 

Is it any wonder then that the powers 

that be both sought, and were 

granted, a change in the season for 

catching char to open on the first of 

May, curing at a stroke the cropping 

of spawning fish, which to an extent 

I suppose I was guilty of doing 

myself without realising it. It needed 

to be done, and thank goodness it 

was. 

This pretty much brought about the 

total extinction of char angling at the 

lake, with just myself and a few die 

hard friends keeping the practise 

alive. But no longer with the bait 

fishing techniques of old. 

Char in breeding livery 

May the first was a date chosen because it was assumed that by that stage, all the char in Coniston had 

completed their breeding. This would see them off the spawning beds with a more general distribution 

366

across the lake, and would therefore render bait fishing pretty much ineffective, which has proved to be 

the case. 

A new strategy then had to be found, which we took from the traditional plumb-line commercial char 

fishermen who I spent time with, watching and chatting, then adapting their approach to suit 

conventional rod and line fishing. 

Plumb-line fishing employs a large bamboo cane out-rigger from each side of a boat which is slowly 

rowed over the deeper parts of the lake. Each pole can work as many as a dozen spinners spread out up 

the heavy main line which is weighted by a couple of pounds of lead to give good water column 

coverage. 

To better understand the technique, I spent a day with Coniston based plumb-lining experts Jeff Carroll 

and Bill Gibson, shooting a historical video on this rapidly dying art both for YouTube and for the 

Ruskin Museum. 

This demonstrates the technique and talks through some of the related problems far better than I could 

explain here. There is also an audio interview with the pair on the whole history of char fishing and its 

techniques, from its origins, right up to present times. 

Having trailed their boat all over the Lake District and Scotland demonstrating plumb-lining, which as 

a traditional art they are trying to keep alive, Jeff and Bill have a wealth of char knowledge the likes of 

which it would be rare to find again in any one place. 

But the use of multiple lures and huge leads has no place in rod and line fishing, so what we needed to 

do was adapt the basic principle to suit our particular angling needs. 

The most valuable piece of kit in all of this was an echo sounder. With it, we were not only able to 

locate the char, but also pick out patterns with regard to depth of water favoured within newly 

discovered holding areas, and more importantly, how high up in the water column they were feeding 

on any given day. 

Earlier I mentioned thermal stratification. This is the process of the upper layer of the lake warming as 

the summer progresses, forming a layer known as the epilimnion, which because it's less dense, floats 

on top of the colder water below which is known as the hypolimnion, separated by a short band of 

rapidly changing temperature called the thermocline. 

During the winter and spring, none of this exists, leading to total mixing. At such times, char have 

access to the entire lake, and as a result, in early May before stratification kicks in, I've come across 

fish not too far down from the surface, and have on occasions even managed to catch them on a fly we 

devised called the 'Char Lady' which had a gaudy red body with silver tassels fished on a lead core 

shooting head. 

More generally however, what we were finding was that most of the fish would be between twenty and 

forty feet down over around sixty feet of water. 

Obviously then, that was where we needed to be presenting our spinners, which were being offered 

singly, weighted by drilled bullet leads on the line stopped by a bead and a swivel, the amount of which 

we really had to work at to accurately determine. 

To do this, we decided that rather than rowing, we would use a four horse power outboard motor on 

tick-over to slowly push the boat along. So all our experimentation was based on that. Starting with one 

ounce of lead on the line, we ran the boat in to the shore until the treble hook snagged bottom. We then 

went back out until we had a vertical line down to it and sounded the depth. 

367

This was repeated with various other amounts of weight, until we knew how much lead would take the 

lures down to different depths with the outboard running, so that when we spotted char on the sounder 

screen, we knew what it would take in terms of weighting to get down to them. 

Our findings were, that as a rough guide, one ounce of lead will work a small mepps spinner at around 

fifteen feet; two ounces at thirty feet, with all graduated combinations in both directions. 

We also found that in May, when most of our fishing was done, that certain areas were most definitely 

favoured. Again, the echo sounder would help here, though many times we would pick up fish on the 

lures after having seen nothing on the screen, and visa versa. 

On other occasions, the sounder screen would show very little at all throughout the entire day, so we 

would therefore work the sixty foot contour with different amounts of lead on different rods until some 

sort of pattern started to show. 

We never bothered fishing much after May because thermal stratification would start to kick in, pushing 

the fish into ever deeper water all over the vastness of the lake looking to find suitably cooler 

temperatures. 

The unfortunate knock on consequence of stratification is that it's the water-air interface and surface 

layers that absorb the oxygen from the atmosphere, but because there is no mixing either side of the 

thermocline, the hypolimnion becomes depleted and less hospitable. 

Food will be scarcer there too. Conversion to body weight is reduced due to the lower temperatures, 

and with lower oxygen levels also acting as a limiting factor, growth becomes stunted as a result. 

Typically, Coniston char would be around the half pound mark. 

We would occasionally see the odd bigger fish to over a pound, but these were few and far between. 

More recently however, when I was filming with Jeff and Bill, and not having fished for char for a good 

fifteen years leading up that day, I noticed just how much the population balance had changed during 

that period. 

368

There were certainly less fish about by that stage, which the pair had seen as an increasing problem 

over recent times. But, the size had increased very dramatically, maintaining a similar level of 

productivity and biomass, only now expressed in a different presentation. 

Suggestions put forward include eutrophication such as septic tank inputs from a growing local 

population of people, and from agricultural runoff enriching the water, both of which can lead to 

increased invertebrate productivity. Rising temperatures generally will be in the mix there too. 

Whatever the reason, the balance has very clearly shifted. 

Coniston and Windermere are the two lakes I am most familiar with. But there are dozens of others, 

particularly in Scotland. Jeff and Bill were saying great things about Crummock Water being the best 

bet these days for good char hauls, and we have also picked a few up there while ferox fishing in the 

past. 

Unfortunately, many of the Scottish waters are either less accessible, or not available to char angling at 

all. There is however one worth mentioning here, that being Loch Arkaig. 

Apparently, the char there have learned to gather up under the salmon farm cages at feeding time, 

gorging themselves on high protein pellets missed by the salmon which then fall through the mesh. 

As sea run char in the Arctic can well top twenty pounds, the growth potential is there, even if other 

factors are limiting the expression of this amongst land locked populations. It should come as no surprise 

then that some of these Loch Arkaig fish grow big. Very big in fact, with double figure specimens 

having already been taken. 

A word of warning however, and this goes for all the larger exposed glacial ribbon lakes situated in 

deep mountainous valleys. When the wind is being channelled along these lake surfaces by the 

surrounding hills, the water at the downwind end can get as rough as anything you are ever likely to 

encounter at sea. 

I remember being out one day on Coniston in a howling blizzard with waves coming over the roof of 

the sixteen foot Pebble dinghy we were fishing from. Another smaller open boat close by decided 

enough was enough, upping anchor and turning beam on to the swell to run for shore, only to be 

completely swamped and rolled by breakers within seconds. 

What a dodgy rescue that turned out to be. Fearful of a similar fate, we could only grab the wrists of 

one person at a time and tow them back into the shallows, then back out for another one. 

So respect the conditions. The fact that it's freshwater and therefore can't get as bad as being out at sea 

is a fallacy. No bag of fish is worth any measure of personal risk. 


SCHELLY, GWYNIAD AND POWAN Coregonus lavaretus 


At the height of the last ice age, much of Britain, Ireland, and a lot of northern Europe was a frozen 

wilderness where glaciers carved out deep valleys such as in Cumbria and Scotland, paving the way for 

the glacial ribbon lakes such as Windermere and Ullswater which we know and love today. 

Due to the amount of water taken up by the ice, sea levels were very much lower than they are currently. 

England was joined to the continent of Europe, while Ireland was joined to England by the Kintyre land 

bridge. 

369

There was no Irish Sea. Just for the most part an empty basin in the middle of which was a body of runoff 

water forming a large lake linked to the surrounding land and distant ice free sea by a number of 

rivers. 

This lake was post glacial Lough Hibernia, and in it lived members of a family of fishes known as the 

whitefishes, represented in the present day British Isles by Coregonus lavaretus, the English schelly, 

Welsh gwyniad and Scottish powan, which despite the name differences are all the same fish, and 

Coregonus albula, the English vendace and the Irish pollan. Then, as the ice lost its strangle hold and 

started to melt, sea levels began to rise, eventually creating the geography we see today. 

At some stage in that transition, the sea broke through the Kintyre land bridge isolating Ireland from 

Scotland, eventually filling up the Irish Sea. 

As it did, it obviously mixed with the waters of Lough Hibernia greatly increasing salinity levels there, 

either killing off its intolerant inhabitants, or as in the case of the whitefish species, sending them 

scurrying up the nearest rivers, initially populating many stretches and lakes, until ultimately when 

things became too warm for them, at most locations they died out, leaving just the handful of scattered 

remnant struggling populations we have today. 

Seven populations of Coregonus lavaretus are recorded as managing to hang on in the British Isles, all 

of them living in England, Scotland and Wales. None survived in Ireland, though the Irish have four of 

the seven recorded populations of Coregonus albula, which because there is no rod caught record for 

that species, ceases to be of interest to us here. 

Schelly are found in Ullswater, Haweswater, Brothers Water and Red Tarn in Cumbria, Llyen Tegid 

which is Bala Lake in Wales (gwyniad), and Lochs Lomond and Eck in Scotland (powan). However, 

when I first became interested in the species, Brothers Water was not an inclusion on that list. 

370

One day, Bob Fitchie and I decided to fish for brown trout in some of pools along the length of Goldrill 

Beck which connects Ullswater to Brothers Water, eventually ending up taking a walk around the 

margins of Brothers Water in the proximity of the beck junction. It was there that we spotted a dead 

schelly floating on the surface. 

We already knew they left Ullswater at the other end of the lake, as coarse anglers had caught 

occasionally them on both the River Eamont and River Eden. But this was something new. So I 

contacted the British Museum, the knock on effect being that Brothers Water has since been shown to 

be an additional previously unknown home for the species. 

Though rare in the extreme, schelly, powan and gwyniad are easy fish to identify, because they can only 

be found in the lakes specified above. You will see them described in some books as being herring like, 

but this to me is a misleading description. 

I would say they look more like a grayling without the long tall dorsal fin or spots. Quite an 

inconspicuous looking fish really, the big give away being the small fleshy blob on the back just in front 

of the tail which all salmonids have, the adipose fin. 

The mouth is slightly under-slung and to an extent protrusible in a downward direction, suggesting a 

life spent grubbing about in the bottom sediments. 

When dead, they also have a scent of either cucumber or thyme, though this, as with checking out the 

mouth, is something anglers are not now in a position to explore, as all specimens must by law be 

returned to the water immediately 

As with that other post glacial relict species, the char, when I learned about the existence of the schelly 

I was immediately drawn to it. But unlike the char, which I caught at the first attempt and pretty much 

to order thereafter, the schelly proved to be a far more elusive, mystical fish, and again it would be 

people I worked with who would come to my assistance. And while the pair in question deserve credit 

of sorts for that, I'm not going to mention their names for reasons which will become apparent. 

Throughout April, May and June, 

these two anglers would travel up to 

Ullswater to fish a secluded spot 

known as Sharrow Bay. There's a 

small lay-by at the side of the very 

narrow road there, with a path leading 

off it to a small shingle beach. 

The bay is a yacht anchorage these 

days. But back then it wasn't. There is 

also a small stone built boat house to 

the side of the beach, and there used to 

be a couple of old upturned boats on 

the shingle itself. 

Bob Fitchie, Schelly brace Red Tarn 

What made this spot ideal from their 

perspective was that you could hear 

people coming along the road and down the track. This gave them time to 'modify' their activities in 

case it was a fishery bailiff. They would also have a dog with them which would bark when anybody 

approached, just in case. 

All of that being the case, they felt able to flout the rules on the use of maggots and ground bait, and as 

a consequence caught literally dozens of brown trout, with the bonus every so often, if you can call it 

371

that, of this other kind of fish which they didn't recognise, but which sounded to me like it could be a 

schelly. 

So despite what was going on, I tagged along on a few trips, and indeed the fish in question did turn out 

to be a schelly. It was only an occasion catch, say a couple each season. But I had at least located a 

vantage point, so I had to keep on tagging along, though I stress I always fished with worm. 

Yeah, sure you did I can sense people saying. Well yes, I did. I felt I had to, because even at that time I 

had aspirations of going to university, and concerns about jeopardising career paths that might follow 

as a result, all of which was ultimately vindicated one Sunday morning. The day in fact that I finally 

caught my first schelly. 

The dog must have been dozing on that occasion. And while the buckets of ground bait and maggots 

were concealed under one of the boats, when the fishery bailiffs eventually made it down to us 

‘unannounced’ and spotted a few maggots crawling about on the stones, they had us all reel to check 

our hook baits. 

My worm bait thankfully put me in the clear. But the other two were cordially invited to spend a day at 

Carlisle magistrates court to put their hands in their pockets, hence my not naming and shaming them 

earlier. 

It's often said that as one door closes, another opens. The lads in question stopped going to Ullswater 

after that. I in the meantime had teamed up with another angling colleague, John Roach, and we started 

exploring fishing the opposite side of the lake along the road from Pooley Bridge to Glenridding. 

In the process of doing this we came across a group of coarse anglers from St. Helens on Merseyside, 

who chartered a coach every Sunday throughout the coarse fishing close season. This would drop them 

off at the same pegs along the road side week in and week out to fish a trout match using worm baits. 

Consequently, we saw the same faces on most of our visits. 

John and I tagged on at the end of their line, at which point we 

regularly got into conversation with a chap called Wally 

Wainwright. These lads all fished worm on a leger pennel rig 

at long range, primarily looking for brown trout, but 

occasionally picking up an odd schelly in the process, which 

they knew we were interested in. 

One particular morning, Wally shouted us over, and there in 

his landing net was the biggest schelly I'd ever seen. So big in 

fact that we decided to weigh it, which you could do back then, 

and found that it well beat the existing British record. 

As a species, schelly were not protected at that time, so I took 

the fish away and arranged to look after the record claim for 

him. I'm not sure if he thought he'd ever hear anything about 

it again. But he did, and not only from the British Record Fish 

Committee. Also from the World Records Hall of Fame. 

Ian Williams, first ever Schelly 

That record stood at one pound ten ounces for quite a few 

years, eventually being deposed by the current incumbent at 

two pounds one ounce nine drams from Haweswater. A fish 

displayed in the British record list for historical record 

purposes only, as the species is now barred from further 

claims due to its protective status under the Wildlife and 

Countryside Act. 

372

Inspired by Wally's catch, John and I fished on at Ullswater for a while, but without any further personal 

success, though we did still see the odd one caught here and there from both sides of the lake. 

While all of this was going on, I had also started delving into the history and biology of the whitefishs. 

In England they were to be found in Ullswater, Haweswater and Red Tarn. Ullswater we knew was 

difficult due to its huge size and small numbers of schelly, and assumed that Haweswater would be 

similarly hit and miss. Red Tarn on the other hand is quite small. 

Unfortunately, it's also close to the top of Helvellyn in a glacial scoop or corrie at the base of a six 

hundred foot rock face, sandwiched between the notorious striding edge and swirral edge. The highest 

altitude water in England to contain fish in fact, linked to Ullswater below by a steep gradient piddling 

little stream called Red Tarn Beck. 

At times of heavy rain fall the beck would flow well. But at other times, particularly when the level of 

the tarn was low, it might not flow at all for months on end. 

Not unexpectedly, Red Tarn contains brown trout, though even they must have struggled to gain access 

battling the steep gradient, shallow turbulent water, and un-reliability of Red Tarn Beck to flow. 

But with several thousand years to repeatedly try since the glaciers retreated from the area, the odds 

were that one day they would catch it just right. 

Schellies on the other hand are not so tough or resilient. Not so pioneering either. They prefer deeper 

water and lower temperatures, though they do occasionally run out of the lake into the connecting rivers. 

Even so, Red Tarn Beck was going to be a very big ask. 

Yet there they were reported as being a part of the tarns fauna, though how they got there remains 

something of a mystery. Maybe monks introduced them. Then again, maybe not. Either way, with less 

of a surface area facing us, Red Tarn seemed like the next logical step. 

The first time I fished it was on a family fell walking 

outing. We stopped at the tarn for a spot of lunch, and in 

an hour or so fishing with a little telescopic rod from my 

rucksack, I caught ten beautiful brown trout on legered 

maggots, a bait which it is legal to use as Red Tarn is not 

on the list of nominated waters where the use of maggots 

is prohibited. 

Time then to be thinking about a more concerted effort, 

which I undertook on a number of occasions over several 

years with different people, and which, with only the odd 

rare exception, all produced schelly. 

Granted, it was typically just the one each visit mixed in 

amongst lots of brown trout, though on one occasion Bob 

Fitchie had a brace in the same session. 

Like the trout, some of them were surprisingly big fish too 

considering the low productivity of such a high altitude, 

freezing cold, nutrient poor piece of water. 

Wally Wainwright, Ullswater record 

Sometimes we would blitz an area with maggots and 

ground bait, laying down a carpet to place our hook baits 

on to which would be periodically topped up over the day. 

On other occasions, we fished with swim feeders instead. 

373

Both seemed to work equally well. So with weight always a consideration for the long hard slog up 'the 

hill', swim feeders and light telescopic rods became the norm, and we enjoyed lots of success in the 

deeper parts of the tarn, particularly on the swirral edge side close the steep rock face. 

So much in fact that the British Museum requested we collect research specimens for them, which we 

did. But not anymore as it is now illegal to fish for them, with any 'accidental' encounters having to be 

returned to the water immediately. 


374

PART TWO 

BEYOND HOME WATERS 

THE CATCHING OF 300 SPECIES WORLDWIDE 


Shortly after embarking on phase one, the catching of a hundred species of fish from home waters a 

second phase was added, with the more ambitious target of catching a further two hundred foreign 

species, giving a global target of three hundred species or more. 

Being honest, to look at all of those foreign species individually, many of which will be names few 

people will even have heard of, would potentially bore the waders off everyone. So rather than doing it 

that way, what follows is an alphabetical location by location run down of all of the venues and many 

of the fish that have contributed to that successful outcome. 

AMERICA 

While America is a single country, it's way too big of a place and opportunity to deal with under a single 

blanket heading, for which reason I feel I must break it down into specific smaller portions. 

In general terms, it is arguably the best fishing venue in the world. Granted, there will be bigger fish 

and better specific opportunities elsewhere around the globe. But in terms of overall package 

presentation, and for sheer quality and professionalism, you won't find anywhere quite else like it. 

375

There is however a down side to this. American anglers demand deck scivvies and tip well for the 

privilege. Brits on the other hand, once we know the script, usually like to do things for ourselves. 

So if you want that to be the case, to keep the deck crew from going OTT working to earn their tip, 

either tip them right at the onset on the understanding that they only come back out on deck when called, 

or tell them that unless they leave you to get on with it, there will be no tip at the end. 

Usually this works, though not always, as trying to do everything other than wind the fish in for you 

has become so endemic in their culture that they can't seem to stop themselves. Something you need to 

decide upon and deal with immediately if, like me, you don't want third party interference ruining your 

day. 

CAPE COD 

Even amongst anglers with no interest in or intention of ever setting foot outside of their home patch, 

Cape Cod and its adjacent east coast venues has an importance and relevance that transcends 

international borders. 

The striped bass fishery there has become an example; a 

beacon; an object lesson even, in what can be achieved in 

turning an ailing situation around from the very brink of 

extinction into a world class fishery. 

Of even greater importance still, the Americans did it in a 

relatively short time, and with a species so similar in 

appearance, life style, and under a similar level of threat to 

a fish British and Irish anglers hold so dear to their hearts, 

that the parallels are so uncanny as to look contrived. But 

they are not. 

The lessons are there to be noted and taken forward. Least 

ways they could be were it not for the one dissimilarity in 

all of this - political will. The ability to take hard and 

binding decisions without the requirement that other 

member states participate and agree with you, which is why 

America has succeeded, and where the UK and the 

European Union ultimately will not, at the cost of the 

European bass. 

The Cape Cod area also has other noticeable parallels to 

Ian Gaskell, 22 pound Striped Bass 

our home patch, and to England in particular. It shares 

many of its place names, which tend to be small quaint little 

seaside towns completely out of keeping with the more 

traditional US wide highway model, with its sprawling malls, and an ever repeating sequence of 

MacDonald's, KFC and the rest of the junk food regulars as far as the eye can see. 

A venue that is so easy to feel at home in. As if walking back through a time portal, not only in terms 

of location, but also what that location has to offer the visiting bass angler. 

Okay, so we are talking striped bass here. But other than having a few darker longitudinal lines on their 

flanks, they look, feed, and act like any European bass you will catch back home, the only other 

difference being that they grow much bigger and there are so many more of them, both from the beaches 

and from the boat. 

376

Cape Cod is a venue where bass in the eight to ten pound bracket are so common that the skipper doesn't 

even bother getting out the landing net, preferring to lift them in by hand, with a realistic possibility 

that the next fish to come along could easily top twenty pounds. That was our experience at Chatham 

fishing offshore and in around the Monomoy Bank. 

This was a pre-arranged striped bass trip with a single mid point day off on which we still fished home 

waters style, and for familiar species, out of another classic English named port, Plymouth, more of 

which later. Five of us had gone over just as the summer was starting to turn to autumn, giving it even 

more of a 'back home' feel. 

The boats there tend to be fast skiffs, but because there was five of us, we ended up with one skiff for 

myself and fly fisherman Ian Gaskell, and another slightly larger boat for Dave Devine, John Devine, 

and Paul Bennett. 

We also took along some tackle of our own too. Ian in 

particular with his fly fishing gear, though in hind sight we 

needn't have bothered, as both boats had a complete set of 

everything supplied by Orvis. And it was there that we were 

introduced to a soft plastic lure called the sluggo. 

The name sluggo actually says everything about it the lure. 

It looked like a long featureless slug that came in a range of 

colours, though we predominantly fished a greyish-silver 

version slipped on to a lead-head of a couple of ounces. This 

was cast from a drifting boat and slowly tweaked back in 

depths down to around thirty feet. 

As with any location, fish won't always be on the same 

marks day in and day out. Tide, ambient light, and the 

movements of bait-fish shoals are just some of the 

determining factors, which is why it is so important to buy 

in local knowledge in the form of a guide. 

Ian Gaskell, Albacore on fly 

Every day we would work our way out of the shelter of the 

huge natural harbour through the narrow outlet to the open 

sea to fish any one of a wide range of possibilities according 

to a combination of timing, tide, and conditions. 

Actually, that isn't entirely true, as one morning we stayed inside for a few hours because of the wind 

outside, which later dropped away. It was there that I got my first false albacore. There had been a few 

taken outside on the previous days, but not by me. 

We also picked up a few stripers and some other bits and pieces inside. So all isn't necessarily lost if 

the weather sends a short lived front sailing through, though obviously it's far better to get outside. What 

isn't always necessarily is to get very far off. 

One morning that particularly sticks in my mind was of us running along the outer edge of Monomoy 

quite close to the shore where we noticed heavy surface feeding activity very close in to the sand. So 

close in fact that bait fish were actually being driven up on to the beach where the gulls were grabbing 

them. 

It wasn't guaranteed that it would be bass pushing the bait in as there were good numbers of bluefish 

about at the time too, which pound for pound, as far as I'm concerned, fight far harder than bass anyway, 

though for some reason the Americans don't like them. 

377

Either way, this was an interesting situation, but unusual 

in that we had to ease our way in with the boat so as not to 

spook the fish, then actually cast our lures onto the dry 

beach in front of us so that as we retrieved them they were 

working right from the water’s edge, where they did 

indeed start to pick up bass. 

The numbers and size of the fish we caught was quite 

staggering. There were short lived blips where a new mark 

needed to be moved to from time to time. But by and large, 

it was good action all the way through, with moments 

when you genuinely needed a time out for a rest. 

Particularly with the bluefish. 

Mainly though we caught bass, a good number of which 

were in double figures, with the biggest tipping the scales 

at twenty two pounds, which considering the tiny wands 

of rods we were using paired with small light fixed spool 

reels was great fun. 

Lots of bluefish too, though these tended either to bite 

through the mono leader, or simply cut the sluggo off 

behind the hook. Wire traces were the obvious answer Phill Williams, 17 pound Striper 

there. And of course, there were albacore. I even had 

bonito one day, plus we picked up what looked like spurdogs occasionally too. 

Ian then turned his attention to the fly rod, taking a grand slam on a range of sandeel patterns. I even 

gave it a go myself and hooked up a few bluefish, ending up with reel battered knuckles as a result. But 

still good fun none the less. 

I mentioned earlier that we had a mid-point day off from the bass fishing and had decided to fish out 

from Plymouth. We'd taken a drive over there one evening to have a look at the place, and had spotted 

a number of large party boats in the harbour with their advertising boards covered in pictures of cod. 

So, always willing to try something different, and having brought along some bottom fishing outfits 

just in case, we decided to book in on one of these. 

As is the norm in these parts, all the bait was supplied, which was shellfish and squid. The boat itself 

was huge with an under-cover dining area, showers, and toilets. 

Inside the main cabin area there were the usual photo albums showing endless streams of people lifting 

up monster cod. That unfortunately is in the springtime, on top of which, as with elsewhere these days, 

even there things weren't what they used to be. 

Still, we caught cod, and lots of them up to maybe five pounds, plus wolf fish, and quite a few small 

wrasse like fish. There were probably a few other species mixed in there too elsewhere around the boat. 

Not exactly earth shattering. But different, and a nice little break from the bass and bluefish. 

While we were at Plymouth we spotted a Wal Mart close by and decided to call in and take a look at 

the fishing tackle area. It was there that we bought ourselves some of the ultra-light bass rods to take 

home. But as importantly, we also spotted a range of small plastic kids rods with tiny closed face fixed 

spool reels moulded to them, decorated with pictures of mickey mouse and taz, and decided it might be 

a bit of fun to buy one of each. 

378

The obvious problem was that Dave, our skipper, hadn't 

even the slightest hint of a sense of humour, so we had to 

smuggle them onboard and hide them in one of the lockers 

where they remained for a couple of days. It wasn't until Ian 

had boated the first of the twenties that 'taz' finally surfaced 

and was tackled up with a sluggo. 

To say that Dave wasn't impressed would be no 

understatement. I actually shot some video footage of the 

whole episode which is on YouTube, and I honestly don't 

know how I managed to hold the camera still as I was 

laughing so much. 

First throw out, Ian felt a few bumps, but no fish. Next throw 

he got a good solid take. The tiny reel couldn't have held 

much in the way of line, and its little plastic gears were 

literally on the verge of melting. 

That one must have been a bluefish, as there was literally 

nothing on the end when the line eventually came back in, 

persuading Ian to use a short wire trace, and next throw he 

was in again. 

Ian Gaskell, Bluefish Hardings Beach 

As before, the sound of the plastic gears is one I will never 

forget as the two foot long rod buckled and creaked under 

the strain. It looked inevitable that something was going to give. The rod, the reel, the line; it had to be 

one of them. Incredibly however, it turned out to be the fish. 

I think that had it been a bluefish or an albacore there may well have been a very different outcome. As 

it was, a seven pound striper was just about within the outfits capability. Certainly one of the most 

amazing, amusing, and dare I say impressive angling feats I have ever witnessed. 

FLORIDA - BANANA RIVER 

This was a one day session tagged on to a day out from Port Canaveral, and two days fishing the nearby 

Stick Marsh before we headed off down to Islamorada in the Florida Keys. 

For the most part, you can find many of 

the same species in varying mixes at a 

majority of the venues throughout 

Florida. One exception however is the 

red drum which needs to be 

specifically targeted, and it was these 

that brought us to the Banana River and 

Indian River system, which aren't 

really rivers at all, but a couple of long 

linked lagoons between the mainland 

coast and the fringing islands running 

south from Cape Canaveral. 

Phill Williams, Red Drum at the net 

There was no particular reason to 

choose one lagoon over the other. Our 

guide trailed his boat to a slip on the 

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main road across the water just above Palm Bay and made his decision during the sail up to where 

Merritt Island splits the two water bodies, in this case taking the right hand entrance into the Banana 

River based on a combination of recent catches and jungle telegraph news. 

For our part, we weren't bothered either way. As long as we could have a crack at some red drum we 

were happy. So having called in at a string of pots for blue crabs to use as bait, we were off headed up 

the lagoon, a journey which seemingly went on and on forever and ever. 

Every so often the engine revs would drop a little, or we might take a bit of a detour, and all the time 

our guide was scanning the water every which way looking for who knows what. Time appeared to be 

getting eaten away. Expensive time at that, and nothing to show for it. 

In well over an hour we hadn't even picked up a rod. Though nothing was said, doubt was starting to 

creep in with Dave Devine and Paul Bennett too. Then suddenly our man spotted something and took 

a sharp turn to the left to investigate further. We couldn't see anything, but obviously he could, as he 

cut the revs back and started to creep towards one particular spot. 

Still unable to see what had grabbed his attention, we waited for instructions. Then he pointed, and we 

could just about see the tiniest bit of surface activity which he had picked up on from hundreds of yards 

away. 

The water here is very shallow, so when the fish get their heads down to grub about in the bottom 

sediments, their tails were breaking surface, and it was this that he had spotted like dots on the horizon. 

Having established that we had located a shoal of feeding red drum, he slowly backed the power off, 

keeping an eye on the fish all the time. Each of us was given a tiny wand of a rod with a small Penn 

fixed spool reel and a short heavy monofilament trace of maybe a yard in length with a hook probably 

in order of size 6/0. 

Blue Crab for bait 

fast as it could. Very powerful fish too and on such light tackle. 

When we had edged closer to within 

comfortable casting range, the hooks 

were impaled into half a crab, and the 

boat slowly edged forward with the 

instruction to wait for his command, 

then gently lob the bait free-lined 

ahead of the lead fish and hang on for 

dear life, which is exactly what we did, 

and what subsequently happened. 

It was instant success. Not all of us at 

the same time mind. But it took mere 

seconds to hook up and the huge fish 

was off. And when I say off, I mean 

exactly that. The water being so 

shallow in these lagoons, there was 

only one way for it to go – away as 

Typically ranging between twenty five and thirty five pounds apiece, each one took ages to overcome, 

then it was back up to the shoal for another shot, until eventually, due to the chaos and the time spent 

drifting away from them while dealing with the latest hook up, we lost them never to be found again, 

eventually using up the rest of the day fishing for other things such as ladyfish and speckled trout. 

380

FLORIDA - BISCAYNE CANAL 

When I fished in the Amazon, I was faced with the difficult choice of either targeting payara, which are 

widespread throughout the whole system in the fast deep water sections, or heading north in search of 

peacock bass, which favour the slower quieter parts of the system and its jungle lakes. 

381

This being a trip of a lifetime, I obviously wanted to fish for both. But due to the distances involved 

commuting between sites, that wasn't possible, so I chose the payara, and ever since, with all the hype 

now coming out surrounding the fighting abilities of the peacock bass, I felt as though I'd maybe made 

the wrong call. Then one day quite out of the blue, as a result of sheer chance and family commitments, 

that feeling of having missed out was rectified. 

Not by a return trip to the Amazon. In fact it wasn't even a trip to South America. This time it was 

Florida, thousands of miles to the north of the ancestral home of the peacock bass. 

My wife Dawn had been getting on to me for some time to do a family holiday taking in Disney and all 

the other theme parks while the grand kids were still at the right age to enjoy them. 

I agreed to go on the proviso that I could take a couple of days out to fish. But for what. I'd done all the 

inshore and offshore stuff several times over and was looking for a different challenge. So I Googled 

the words 'Florida freshwater fishing', which to my surprise came back with peacock bass. 

Intrigued, this triggered further investigation, and my introduction to a boat fishery I previously wasn't 

aware even existed. 

With its near tropical climate and abundance of freshwater habitat, Florida is the perfect location for 

many alien species to establish themselves, something they have done to such an extent, that the Florida 

Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) have been forced to take decisive and quite radical 

action to try to keep these invaders under control. 

The 'problem' it appears stems from fish enthusiasts releasing exotic species that have become too large 

for their indoor aquariums. So much so that native species are coming under very real competitive 

habitat threat from alien species such as oscars, cichlids, and tilapia, to name but a few, which are quite 

literally taking over the place. 

Native predatory species such as the large mouth bass are simply unable to cope. So the FWC came up 

with the idea of making an alien introduction of their own that hopefully could, the Amazonian peacock 

bass, which coincidentally also just happened to be regarded as one of the premier game fish on the 

freshwater scene. 

For many years, American sport 

fishermen have been organizing 

specialist trips to Brazil, Peru, and 

Venezuela to target the species. But 

now they don't need to, because 

between 1984 and 1987, the FWC 

introduced twenty thousand fingerling 

butterfly peacock bass, and one hundred 

of the potentially bigger speckled or 

three barred peacock bass to the 

metropolitan Miami canal system. 

This isn't a canal system as we would 

know it in the more industrialised parts 

of Britain. It's more of a controlled 

drainage network similar to the Fens, 

excavated from believe it or not, solid land locked coral, and used to drain surface water from Miami 

and the surrounding area. 

382

So why go to the trouble of fishing it from a boat. The simple answer is that some of the more affluent 

residential areas of central Miami back onto these canals, where the only access to much of the system 

is by boat. 

Another important point of difference, not only between the Miami canal system and that of the UK, 

but also between it and the rest of the US, is that it lies on top of the Biscayne aquifer, which even in 

winter rarely drops below sixty five degree's in temperature. 

This is crucial to both the well being and the containment of peacock bass. Not only can peacock's not 

spawn in water below sixty degree's, they would also struggle to survive in it too. 

This then has been crucial to their spreading and prospering throughout the whole three hundred and 

thirty miles of the system. But more important still, it also confines them within it too. 

The FWC were very careful not to introduce another alien species they could not contain which might 

exacerbate the problem of exotic introductions still further. And in that regard, the experiment has been 

a complete success. Numbers of other exotic species have fallen off dramatically since the peacock bass 

started munching their way through them, and to quote Star Treks Mr. Spock, the peacocks themselves 

have lived long and prospered as a result. 

So much so that the world record for the species, previously from from Venezuela, was toppled from 

the Miami area shortly after my visit, placing the Biscayne Canal system very firmly at the centre of a 

brand new multi-million dollar sport fishery. 

As a visitor to the area, I not only needed to hire in the use of a boat, but also the services of an 

experienced guide, so Dawn and I booked a day with peacock bass expert Frank Carbone who operates 

'Hawg Hunter' Guide Services, 'Hawg' being the local term for a super sized large mouth bass. And 

when it comes to equipment and professionalism, they don't mess about in this part of the world. 

Even though we were 'only' going canal fishing, Frank still turned up with a twenty one foot flying 

machine with two hundred and fifty hp of engine 

clamped to the back of it. A little OTT at face value. 

But when you consider the size of some of the lakes 

he also guides on for large mouth bass you can 

appreciate the reasoning. 

So with drinks in the cooler and six dozen roach like 

live-baits called shiners in the live well, it was off to 

the suburbs of Miami to slip the boat from its trailer 

and start working our way through the system. 

Peacock bass differ from endemic species of North 

American bass such as large mouths in a number of 

ways, the most important of which being that despite 

their build, name, and aggression, they are in fact not 

actually bass at all, but members of the cichlid family. 

They also fight much harder than the resident 

varieties, and will feed when other species of fish 

would prefer to get their heads down and sulk. 

Largemouth bass for example prefer over-cast cooler 

weather and hate flat calm bright sunny days. 

Peacock bass on the other hand are at their best when, 

Phill Williams, Midas Cichlid 

383

as was the case this particular day, you feel like you are literally going to melt exposed out there in the 

boat. 

They are not too demanding either when it comes to tackle. A nice light outfit, a single size one hook 

tied directly to the end of the line, and a small shot above it to take the live-bait down is all it takes. 

Oh, and a good pair of polarized sun glasses to see them with, because this is all about spotting 

individual fish and sight casting the baits right onto their nose. 

This is the other big reason why you need a boat. Even it you could get bank fishing access, it wouldn't 

be much good, as you need to search the length of the canal for individual fish. And as it was spawning 

time, many of the fish were either paired up or guarding egg clumps in the margins along the tops of 

the coral shelves; in and around drainage pipes, or lying in ambush under the edges of over-hanging 

vegetation. 

At first I had difficulty picking them out, particularly at distance. But you soon start to get your eye in. 

Frank on the other hand could spot them from incredible distances. 

This is where the Minn Kota electric outboard on the bow of the boat really came in to its own. 

Controlled completely by a foot operated pedal, Frank was able to both power and steer the boat quietly 

to within casting range without any undue disturbance. 

The idea was to cast the shiner just ahead the basking bass, then let it swim down past it. These are 

exceptionally aggressive fish which would more often than not gulp the shiner down within seconds if 

the placing just right. 

If it wasn't, you simply had another shot, and another... Most would eventually take the bait, though a 

few that were guarding eggs swam at it and simply 'blew' it away from their territory. 

Watching a fish approach a bait then take it brings 

an adrenalin rush that no other approach to fishing 

can match. All heart in the mouth stuff, and boy do 

these fish go once the hook is set. Rather like 

rainbow trout in fact, they can take off at a good rate 

of knots, and will not give up until they are safely 

inside the landing net, if you can get them to go in 

it that is. 

The smaller ones were lifted aboard, but the better 

fish do need the net, as I found out to my cost when 

I parted company with the best fish of the day 

through not waiting for help. 

I won't be making that mistake again. And after 

careful unhooking, plus a few photographs, each 

one was taken back to the exact point it came from 

for release so that it could get right back to its egg 

guarding duties or defending its patch. 

Dawn Williams, Peacock Bass 

complaining about that. 

The peacock bass project was never intended as a 

challenge to South American supremacy. But that's 

what it has developed into, as well as being a highly 

successful biological control mechanism, and 

nobody, least of all American anglers, are 

384

It's just a pity that the hundred or so fingerling barred peacocks didn't follow through to share in the 

story, for these fish can easily grow upwards of twenty pounds. 

Perhaps that is something the FWC will take another look at in the future. But for the moment at least, 

they are looking to conserve the success of the project as it currently stands by encouraging catch and 

release for all peacock bass caught, with a mandatory maximum take home bag limit of two fish per 

day. 

In addition to this, only one fish may be greater than seventeen inches to preserve the spawning integrity 

of the population and success of the project, because as it turns out, peacock bass appear mainly to prey 

on the undesirable exotic species, leaving the smaller native prey species to be controlled by the 

indigenous largemouth bass. 

FLORIDA - CAPE CORAL 

Paul Haynes, co-director of Warrior Boats, owns a big house with a boat and boat dock on the canal 

system at Cape Coral, and had on a number of occasions after singing the praises of the fishing over 

there, suggested I might want to go over for a fishing holiday and take a look. So in 2011, Dave Devine, 

his brother John and I, plus the wives, decided to do just that. 

It was as much a holiday as a fishing trip. But with a twenty six foot boat with a two hundred and fifty 

hp engine strapped to the back at your disposal, plus Paul over-lapping our stay by a few days to show 

us the ropes, you just have to use it. Good job he was on hand though, otherwise things might not have 

gone as well as they did. 

Paul's house was set way back up the canal system, which if you used the on-site boat dock, would add 

an hour or so in each direction to the days travelling. 

385

With that in mind, he arranged for us to to rent a berth at Tarpon Point Marina just beyond the exit lock, 

which while it made a huge difference, still left us with a lot of very slow speed restricted travelling 

time. 

Manatee's are the 'problem' here. For although we didn't see any, the area is supposedly alive with the 

things, hence the mandatory low speed limit for miles through the winding creeks until you reach the 

road bridge between Punta Rassa and Sanibel Island. 

Only then can you turn up the power and run for the open sea, unless of course the weather is bad, in 

which case there is lots of shelter all over the place, and potentially still lots of fish. 

None the less, a very frustrating and time consuming place to fish compared to say Islamorada, where 

within literally minutes, you are straight onto some of the best fishing grounds around. 

Counter balancing this, as I've already alluded to, is the degree of shelter and richness of inshore fishing 

within that potential area. The drift under the road bridge for example is the spot where live-baits 

regularly connect with huge goliath groupers. 

Goliath's were on the protected list until recently, but have made such a good come back that they now 

appear to be everywhere. Not that I would recommend fishing for them. 

With weights up to five hundred pounds, spending a couple of arm wrenching hours connected to one 

of those things where the eventual outcome pretty much always goes the way of the fish, is just one 

more waste of more profitable time. A way of changing the line on your reel at best after getting spooled. 

On top of that, there are lots equally interesting fish out over the offshore reefs and wrecks, and in the 

would famous Boca Grande Channel, which every man and his dog seems to make for in search of 

tarpon. 

But once again, we are talking huge distances, which in turn relate to travelling time. It's all very well 

for local people, and indeed for Paul who visits regularly, with the time to explore, to travel, and to try 

different things. 

Our situation was different. We didn't 

know where we were going and were 

very much time limited, so confined 

ourselves to exploration of a different 

type, splitting our options between 

running out to fish a number of reef 

marks off the west side of Sanibel 

Island, and working the channels on 

the sheltered side, finishing up with a 

reasonable variety of fish. 

Dave Devine playing a Nurse Shark 

Nothing big, and none of the headline 

species such as tarpon. But plenty of 

speckled trout, sharks, and spanish 

mackerel, plus a whole swath of lesser 

species 

We also put in a bit of time fishing the canal itself from our boat dock in the evenings. The four hundred 

miles of city canal system there, which is said to be the largest in the world, was excavated and 

connected into the Caloosahatchee River after Cape Coral city was planned and built starting back in 

1957. 

386

This is controlled by a single lock to balance the water level, thereby keeping it navigable for the many 

luxury homes with their boat jetties, which is situated just to the side of Tarpon Marina where we 

moored Paul's boat. 

This lock can be left open, sometimes for extended periods, which has allowed in an amazing array of 

marine fish species to swell the ranks of the freshwater species which are also able to survive at the 

furthest extremities, where surface water run off has diluted the salt content to acceptable levels, with 

of course variable brackish water regions in-between where suitably tolerant species from both camps 

inter-mingle, as we would eventually find out for ourselves. 

I am reliably informed that the canal provides an excellent fishery for many sought after species 

including redfish, snook, goliath grouper, ladyfish, spadefish, sheepshead, jacks, tarpon, and several 

different types of snapper. 

Paul tells me that he regularly trolls lures along the mangrove edges on the un-inhabited side on his way 

back to the house, as well as elsewhere in the system, and has picked quite a number of good fish 

including jacks into double figures. But that's just a bit of bonus fishing on the otherwise long boring 

run out or in from his boat dock to the lock. 

Some of the locals have even made the system their sole angling objective, and regularly take some 

very good catches, which is especially useful when it's blowing outside and everyone else is confined 

either to the marina, or to tucking in behind one of the islands just outside for shelter. 

Equally, several of Paul's clients have also had some very good fish including tarpon to around fifty 

pounds. We on the other hand had paid for a two week berth in the marina to give us more sea time, so 

our efforts were very much more constrained. But still very interesting non the less. 

In the heat of the day (it never dropped below 93 degrees F during our stay), understandably, whatever 

fish there were in the vicinity of our leg of the canal, tended to keep their heads down or looked for 

shade. 

We would see and hear them splashing about in the first hour 

after day break, and again later in the evening, which 

presumably is why trolling on the run to and from the lock 

for a day at sea fits in best with their feeding patterns. 

We hadn't specifically intended to fish the canal. But with a 

rack of light fixed spool outfits in the garage, a pack of 

bubble float from Wal Mart, and whatever bait we had left 

over from being at sea, which usually centred around squid, 

fish, and live shrimp, we decided it was at least worth a shot. 

After a few days sitting around the pool watching and 

wondering, one evening we decided to throw in some pieces 

of bread to see what, if any response that drew, which 

initially brought hoards of tiny fry to the surface. 

As the bread was blown into the reeds close to some over 

hanging trees at the extremity of the arm we were on at the 

bottom of the garden, larger swirls and crashes could be 

heard. So I laid down on the jetty and scooped up a couple of 

dozen fry with a small bait net, some of which we sent out a 

couple of feet down under the floats. 

John Devine, Speckled Trout 

387

Initially, we just put one rod out to see what if any response the small fry live-baits would get, and were 

taken completely by surprise when Dave brought in a large mouth bass. 

This is a freshwater species, though with hindsight, having dragonflies which reproduce in freshwater 

regularly sitting on the top of the float, plus rushes and tree's growing out of the margins, we should 

have suspected that the water there was at least brackish. 

I must confess to not being the biggest fan of large mouth bass. After an initial surge, they quickly seem 

to come to the surface mouth open wide seemingly wanting to be taken out of the water. I can't see what 

all the fuss is about. All that hollering, whooping, and back slapping, over something with very little 

going for it at all. But in this particular instance, we were both happy and surprised. 

From my research on the Internet, it seems that one of the top baits for the canal is live shrimp, which 

we had left over from every boat trip. So home they came in the aerated tub. They say you can catch 

just about anything on a live shrimp from tiny snappers to monster tarpon, snook and redfish. 

Another favoured bait we had in abundance using the sabiki rigs out deep was pinfish. For the larger 

fish, and certainly for blacktip sharks which are also present in the canal, these are a must, though we 

tended to stick with the live shrimp, suspecting a more brackish to freshwater species mix down along 

our stretch of the system. 

Surprisingly these lasted quite well in the water we threw them into, particularly as Paul had told us not 

to leave them in the live well of the boat if we brought it back to the dock as they would be dead by 

next morning. 

But although we caught on the shrimp, it wasn't really the shrimps themselves that were grabbing the 

bulk of the predator attention. 

As dusk started to make its presence felt, we noticed increasing fish activity at the surface, some of 

which was coming from toothy alligator garfish. 

Instinctively, we would all pull our red and yellow bubble floats in their direction to try to tempt them 

with the baits. But it wasn't the baits they were interested in. Almost without exception they would take 

hold of the float and start swimming off with it. 

In all cases, they would at some point let go and it would pop back up to the surface with the fish still 

showing interest. What we would then do was quickly ease it away from the culprit causing the shrimp 

to rise us in front of its nose, hoping they would grab hold of that instead. 

However, as I know from past 

experience with big gator gars on livebaits 

in Thailand, getting a take is one 

thing. Sticking the hook into them can 

be quite another matter, and initially 

we were unable to convert interest into 

fish on the pontoon. But eventually, 

we found our timing. By leaving them 

for long enough to try to swallow the 

bait, it was possible to get a good firm 

hook up. 

Spanish Mackerel 

On our final evening, though we had 

plenty of live shrimp, I decided to try 

something a little bit different, and 

put on a strip of skinned squid. The 

388

idea was that as the light faded, the gator gars would have less trouble seeing it as I tormented them by 

slowing easing it away from the end of their beaks. 

That as it turned out was not what happened. Instead of seeing the float grabbed and pulled under, it 

shot down in the proper manner on its own. Obviously then, not a alligator gar. And again we were to 

be surprised. 

It turned out to be one of the saltwater catfish that had been robbing our baits out off Sanibel Island 

earlier in the day. Horrible things with solid bone heads and very sharp venomous spines at the front of 

each pectoral and the dorsal fin. Not deadly venomous. But nasty enough to really hurt and take ages to 

heal readily, with the potential for infection if not cleaned up and treated properly. 

A fish that was quickly followed by another offshore saltwater species, the ladyfish, which is a small, 

sleek and very fast moving relative of the tarpon caught by John using the shrimp. Something then for 

everyone. 

FLORIDA - ISLAMORADA 

It was on the drive back from Key West to the airport at Miami during a family holiday come fishing 

trip that I just happened to stop off at Islamorada to take a break. I'd spotted the sign for Bud 'n' Mary's, 

which in fishing circles is legendary, so decided to take a look around and stretch my legs. 

What I saw there would ultimately steer the direction of our 

future visits to the Florida Keys. Everything about the place 

spoke volumes about top notch fishing. I just had to give it a 

go, which taking in a wide coverage of options spread across 

several visits, I eventually did. 

These would eventually include offshore trips with legendary 

big shark hunter Jim Taylor, amberjack fishing over the 

hump, and all manner of self-drive options with Dave 

Devine, Paul Bennett and Graeme Pullen, which collectively 

produced a range of fishing the likes of which you would 

struggle to repeat anywhere else along the Florida Keys. 

Also, some memorable experiences for reasons other than the 

fishing, including getting caught out in a self-drive boat in a 

twister, plus the incredible hand feeding of monster tarpon at 

Robbie's Marina just across the bridge, all of which for me 

makes this my venue of first choice on the Florida scene. 

Right, that’s the bait ready 

The first re-visit was a split centre trip shared between Key 

West and Islamorada. We fished the wrecks off Key West for 

big AJ's which was good, but not a patch on going offshore 

to fish the hump for them with Jim Taylor. 

The hump is an under-water mountain rising up from depth 

to within a few hundred feet of the surface where the water all around quite literally dances and is 

marked by swell. 

All manner of fish congregate there from bait shoals to huge predators, including giant AJ's and sharks, 

both of which were on our target list. 

389

So the hump it was for the next five days, mainly for the AJ's, but with a bit of trolling on the way out 

for dorado and black fin tuna, and time-outs from the lure dropping, including one whole day to try for 

the sharks. 

As with Key west, we took it in turns to drop our jigging lures, which were hit the instant they got down 

there. So prolific were these fish that if one came adrift down deep, its replacement would be there 

within seconds. 

With so many huge hard sluggers up to ninety pounds in weight, you literally needed a break between 

fish. So much so, that at times the arguments between us was not that it's my turn next, but rather, it 

isn't me next, as each of us tried to grab a bit of extra R&R to give the arms and shoulders time to 

recover. 

And so it went on drift after drift, day after day. It was manic. Even the commercial boats which were 

knocking seven bells out of the amberjack population appeared to be having no effect, though I hear 

that eventually they did, which is very sad. 

We put all of our fish back. Jim had a long needle onboard which was inserted close to the pectoral fin 

to puncture the expanded swim bladder inside and release the gas allowing fish to get back down, 

something tagging had shown to have at least some measure of success. 

Well, I say we put all our fish back, 

but that isn't strictly true. We did keep 

an odd one for shark bait, which 

seems bizarre when you see a forty 

pound amberjack flapper being put 

out. But that's what Jim Taylor did. 

Not that it made much difference. For 

despite his reputation as the number 

one shark hunter in these parts, we 

never saw a shark, which was 

disappointing, but perhaps as well for 

the sharks sake as he was taking no 

prisoners. 

He had a pump action twelve gauge 

Charlie Holden, Amberjack 

shotgun onboard which he used as an 

attitude adjuster while the shark was 

still in the water, and which he liked to put a couple of cartridges through each morning to 'clean' the 

barrels out. But that unfortunately was the only action the shot gun received. 

The next time we fished Islamorada, we decided to go self-drive and explore inshore. So we rented a 

small boat from Bud 'n' Mary's, which if I'm honest, wasn't the most sea-worthy craft I've ever fished 

from. It was US Coastguard approved with full in-built buoyancy, but the free-board was way too low, 

and although we caught lots of very good fish, we felt a little restricted as to where we could go. 

Despite all that, we pottered around the flats and channels fishing small live and dead-baits caught in 

our chum slick, which along with frozen squid and live shrimps bought at Bud's bait store, brought us 

all manner of stuff including lots of sharks and stingrays. 

We also went out to the buoy at Alligator Reef where we caught plenty of small to medium sized 

barracuda's, and on one occasion, I jumped aboard a bigger faster boat with Graeme which we took way 

down to Tennessee Buoy where the barracuda's were huge, and again we caught plenty, but not the 

really big boys. 

390

You could drop a live mullet or blue runner right on their nose and still they'd turn away, the moral here 

being that fish don't grow that big by making stupid mistakes. 

These cuda, some of which must have been a good seventy pounds and more, knew exactly what they 

were doing. Fortunately, their smaller brethren up to maybe thirty pounds were a little more relaxed and 

were willing to play ball. 

Bonnet headed sharks and nurse sharks were probably the most abundant decent fish we caught. We 

did see the odd bigger shark go cruising through, plus an occasions tarpon. But neither our tackle nor 

our boat was up to that. Not that you necessarily need a big lump of boat under your feet to be in with 

a chance of big fish. 

At the end of each day when the offshore boats have all docked inside the marina, any fish brought in 

for eating are filleted off and their carcasses dropped in all around the place, which obviously is going 

to get swarms of smaller fish milling around picking off what bits they can. 

If on the other hand you went back after dark with a lamp and looked in the water, you would see far 

bigger predators at work. Huge rays cruising around like vulcan bombers, plus massive lemon sharks 

and the like. Fish well in excess of three hundred pounds just yards away from where you stood. 

391 

The problem was that the marina had a 

rustic construction. Wooden posts 

driven into the bottom with latted 

wooden walk-ways. In other words, 

potential snags everywhere. So when 

Graeme dropped in and hooked up a 

huge lemon shark which instantly went 

berserk and totally out of control, 

unable to hold it, he wrapped the trace 

around one of the wooden posts, at 

which point the fish set about trying 

the tear the place to pieces. 

By this stage the wire was so tight 

Paul Bennett, Barracuda at Alligator Light 

around the post that it couldn't be 

freed. Nothing left to do but cut the 

line and leg it, leaving the shark to do it's worst. Fortunately next morning the jetty appeared still to be 

in tact and the fish was gone. But it was touch and go. 

Still liking the idea of self-drive boats, for our next visit we went over the bridge from Islamorada to 

Robbie's Marina which we'd looked at on the previous visit. 

Robbie's is where you can hand feed huge tarpon. They also offer a much better range of boats. We 

hired ourselves a twenty three footer with electronics and a sun canopy which extended our operating 

range considerably. We were still sailing out of the same channel next to Bud 'n' Mary's, but now we 

were properly seaworthy. 

Still, we fished many of the same types of marks as previously, though the hull being bigger and having 

far more draft, we couldn't cross the flats where you risk legal action if you go in too shallow and start 

ripping them up with the propeller. So that was one drawback. But the positives far outweighed any 

negatives. 

We could now go pretty much anywhere, and we did, adding in a trolling session for dorado and black 

fin tuna which we had cooked at the marina, plus trips out to the drop off of the reef, both for trolling 

and bottom fishing.

The range and quality of the species taken there was phenomenal. And it was out there in the company 

of dozens of other small boats that we got caught by that twister. 

The day started breathless. But as you looked inland you could see it changing. Then the first hint of 

breeze came along. Minutes later, it was so bad that the boat was in danger of going over as the wind 

got under the sun canopy. Eventually we got it down, but could hardly breath due to the force of the 

rain hitting us on the back and chest. 

Then we had to negotiate the narrow buoyed rocky channel which we couldn't properly see for all the 

white water. It was a nightmare. How nobody perished in that lot defies understanding. But they didn't, 

and some how we all made it back safely. 

Two particular drawbacks to this sort of fishing are that despite the areas noted reputation for tarpon 

and bonefish, neither were really an option, even from a large self-drive boat. 

Unable to stay out after dark, we could go through the motions 

of fishing live-baits in the channels by day for tarpon, and 

might occasionally even get some interest, plus we could get 

as close to the flats as the boat draft would allow to try for 

bonefish. But if I'm honest, that was as much to say we'd tried 

it as being in with any realistic chance of success. 

I did pick up a bonefish on shrimp where two channels met as 

they skirted around one of the flats, but that was it. As for the 

tarpon – nothing. Nothing that is until we booked a few 

evening trips aboard one of the specialist tarpon skiffs 'hubba 

hubba' skippered by Kenny Knudsen, a man who wore a sort 

of leather flying helmet, face mask and gloves in the daylight 

to protect himself from the sun's UV rays, something which 

as a skin cancer sufferer myself long after those trips, I 

perhaps should have done a bit more of too. 

Drifting the channels up to the road bridges, we did eventually 

catch tarpon. I had my PB there at one hundred and sixty 

pounds. A fish I hooked in the Gulf of Mexico and finally 

released in the Atlantic ocean. 

Phill Williams, Moray Eel 

It sounds good, but all it did was take us under the road bridge 

several hundred yards from where it was hooked up on a live 

mullet, leaping pretty much all the way with us in measured pursuit. 

FLORIDA - KEY WEST 

This was my first ever fishing trip abroad. I'd looked at a whole range of options, and while there were 

bigger fish and more interesting species to be caught in other parts of the world, all things considered, 

such as range of species, range of boating options, and chances of success, Florida got the green light 

and would get it again with the same range of factors up for consideration. 

392

Having fished there on a number of 

occasions since, I am still of the same 

opinion, though with hindsight, the 

fishing options I would take would 

probably be different to that first visit, 

which taught me a great deal, not the 

least of which is that sometimes you 

need to take a chance and target things 

you really want regardless of cost, even 

if it ends up in failure. 

It also taught me that some lessons are 

based on what you didn't do and wish 

you had, which is very much easier to 

Dorado 

get around today by surfing the net. 

There is absolutely no reason these 

days why you cannot have the complete picture in advance at the click of a mouse, which unfortunately 

was a luxury I didn't have back then. 

There were so many species I wanted to catch, that to be honest, I didn't know where to start. So we 

kicked off by going trolling offshore with a spread of ballyhoo dead-baits, mainly picking up wahoo 

and bonito, plus a sailfish which only managed to stay attached for seconds before it jumped its way to 

freedom. 

Later we came across a floating wooden pallet which stirred up a lot excitement between the skipper up 

top and the crew down in the fishing well. The boat was brought to a halt, and suddenly chunks of 

ballyhoo were being cut up and thrown into the water. 

No explanation was given. It was one of those 'let’s wait and see' moments based on their past 

experience. Then sure enough, we started to see what looked like tiny blue neon lights way down in the 

clear mirror calm depths. That was the trigger to feed in more chunks and break out four light fixed 

spool outfits – one each for all the family. 

The instruction was for me to drop a free-lined bait in first, then when I hooked up, shuffle along the 

stern to the far corner allowing the fish to thrash at the surface making a commotion until the rest of the 

family had done the same. My fish would then come aboard, and working on a conveyor system, each 

person in turn would repeat the process, drop back to the start and keep it going. 

Eventually we had literally hundreds of dorado at the surface virtually crashing in to each other every 

time a few chunks were thrown in to keep their interest levels up. This, coupled to the thrashing about 

on the top, kept them there for well over an hour of the most concentrated muscle taxing fun fishing I 

can ever remember. It was truly, organised chaos. 

Apparently dorado love to hang about under floating objects, a fact we've exploited on a number of 

occasions since, not only off the Florida Coast, but elsewhere in the world including the Canary Islands. 

Not something you would want to do all day or every day, but a great experience, particularly for a 

family, and on your first ever foreign trip. 

I'm not certain how many dorado we caught, but the body count must have been up towards the hundred 

mark, with a few taken away for preparation at one of the many cook your catch restaurants they have 

in these parts. A meal that was only bettered a couple of days later when we had a good haul of yellow 

tail snappers while trying for barracuda for the last half hour on the way in over the reef edge close to 

base. 

393

One evening after a quick turn round 

of something to eat and dropping the 

family back at the motel, I was back 

aboard the same boat for an after 

dark session fishing for tarpon. 

Tarpon, along with lots of other 

desirable fish, seem to be 

everywhere in these parts. You only 

need look along the harbour walls 

and inlets to see the sheer wealth of 

fish they have available to them. It 

can be quite mind blowing at times. 

On this particular trip we would be 

Ian Williams playing a Bonito 

trolling ballyhoo again, though 

around the channel entrances rather 

than way out at sea. I've since learned there are better ways of approaching tarpon, which are notoriously 

difficult fish to catch. Not so much in getting them to take a bait, but to stick the hook in and get it to 

stay there, then get them back to the boat. 

The interior of a tarpons mouth has been compared to having a lining of fibre glass, and as such is a 

difficult place to get a hook to bite. On top of that, their aerobatics doesn't help the situation either. 

Combine the two, and you have the perfect recipe for fish losses. But not that particular night, as we 

boated and released a fish of around a hundred and forty pounds, and later, another of seventy pounds. 

Subsequent visits to Key West have been a mix of trolling and wreck fishing, with the former being 

done on the way out to try the latter. 

We also did a repeat of the dorado trick by chumming them up from depth around a raft of floating 

sargassum weed. But primarily we were interested in fishing a couple of US navy wrecks that had been 

deliberately scuttled for diving and fishing purposes after they had been given the ecological green light, 

which by that stage were loaded with big fish. 

Again we took in turns on the rods, switching pairs with each new drift. It was a bit like Whitby 

wrecking with large lures, except that the fish were a whole lot bigger, and definitely harder fighting. 

These were amberjacks in the forty to 

ninety pound bracket, after which you 

needed the break that alternate dropping 

gave. It was relentless. Fish must have 

been piled high over the rusting hulk just 

waiting for the next pair of lures to go 

down. 

What I've also done at Key West is headboat 

fishing. I've had a few trips out on 

the bigger party boats where you can 

really rack up the species numbers. 

Tarpon coming to the boat 

This was the first time I'd ever tried that 

type of fishing, and while it can be a 

never ending source of small fish for the 

hire rods, it can also be a cheap way of 

394

getting access to big fish too for the more experienced, depending of course on the areas of reef the 

skipper chooses to fish. 

We had literally dozens of species of smaller end hard fighting fish. But we also had some very good 

bonito, hammerhead sharks, and reasonable sized barracuda. Good sized red snappers too, which was 

the fish everyone on-board seemed to want. 

Most of what I caught stayed on-board. But I was persuaded to take a couple of hogfish and have them 

cooked at a restaurant, and they were beautiful. 

I was also tempted to try one of the longer range seventy two hour head boat trips they do there for the 

really heavy weight stuff way off around the Dry Tortugas, but had to back off that one due to the other 

fishing commitments I'd already made. 

FLORIDA - KISSIMMEE 

One point worth mentioning here is the way many residential areas in Florida, and possibly other parts 

of the country too, deal with their surface water run-off. The fact that this example was at Kissimmee 

is irrelevant really. I've seen it at other locations too. 

The Americans like to collect their surface water in ponds of varying sizes with high level overflows 

going to who knows where. 

The last pond I fished was surrounded by large houses available for holiday let. You just opened the 

door on the mesh cage covering the swimming pool and walked across to it where other people were 

fishing already. 

395

Complete with resident alligator and turtles, the water was obviously stuffed with fish. Initially, what 

species and sizes was difficult to say. Some of the locals were casting lures and talked of large mouth 

bass, but I didn't see any caught. So next time I was in Wal Mart I bought a carton of worms, rigged up 

my telescopic rod with a small float, and proceeded to catch a never ending stream of bluegills and 

small bass. 

I also saw an alligator gar patrolling the margins, and when I put a bait down on the bottom it was 

bullhead catfish all the way. But the best fish of all came quite by chance. 

I was float fishing at the time and was forced back inside by a sudden thunder storm, so I left the bait 

in the water until it had passed. 

When I got back out there was no sign of it anywhere. Fearing that the alligator had snapped it off I 

wound in to re-tackle, only to find a big tilapia hanging on the end. 

FLORIDA - PORT CANAVERAL 

The day after the red drum session mentioned previously on the Banana River, and our final day fishing 

up around that end of Florida, with the same guide as used previously, we decided to look for some of 

the more open water species after putting the boat in at Port Canaveral. 

Initially we stayed tucked inside, slowly trolling live-baits 

along the edges of the harbour walls, which, using the same 

ultra light tackle as for the red drum, produced some brilliant 

sport with hard fighting crevalle jacks in the twelve to fifteen 

pound bracket. 

These might not sound like big fish, but jacks rate amongst 

the hardest pound for pound fighting fish on the planet. 

Later, when we'd exhausted that one, and ourselves, it was 

decided we would head offshore to an area marked by a buoy 

to fish for barracuda, stopping off on the way to take a look 

under a patch of floating sargassum weed around which we 

spotted some triple tails, one of which I managed to tempt on 

a small shrimp bait. 

Then it was back to the barracuda's on small live-baits. The 

only problem was that if you fished with a wire trace to beat 

the teeth, they could sense something was wrong and wouldn't 

take. So we switched to heavy mono, got the takes, but then 

got bitten off. 

Paul Bennett, Jack Crevalle All very frustrating, followed by a good soaking on the way 

back in as the afternoon sea breeze had kicked up quite a 

chop which the small skiff proceeded to plough back through. 

Some years later during a family holiday near Kissimmee, and looking for any excuse to escape the 

theme parks, I persuaded my Grandson Josh and his uncle Steve to try a day out on one of the larger 

head-boats out from Port Canaveral, where I thought that being aboard a big boat with all its on-board 

facilities would be easier on them if it wasn't to their liking. 

I hadn't taken any tackle over for that type of fishing thinking I would be doing other stuff on small 

guided boats. But I did have a good selection of terminal gear to knock up some end rigs for the rods 

396

and reels supplied on-board, which kept them both busy with a seemingly never ending stream of trigger 

fish, small snappers and the like, all of which I had to deal with meaning that my own fishing suffered, 

which was fine by me. 

Meanwhile, the locals, who obviously knew the script and had come with live-bait containers filled 

with small fish, were fishing for and catching big red snappers. Not loads of them. But enough good 

ones out over the open water reefs to make the effort worthwhile. 

A few jacks also put in a show, plus a big nurse shark which they managed to cut free in the water. So 

something worth considering for the future, and with a bit more advance homework, plus the right 

approach in terms of tactics and bait, could produce some very good fish. 

FLORIDA - STICK MARSH 

The Stick Marsh, or Farm 13 as it is also known, is a 6,500 acre man made stretch of freshwater near to 

Palm Bay nestled in between a range of natural waters, the nearest of which is Blue Cypress Lake. 

The expanse was impounded in 1987 and first opened to the public in 1991. Judging by the numbers of 

tree stumps protruding from the lake, which typically averages between four and eight feet in depth, at 

least part of the impoundment looks to have previously been wooded. 

I fished it in 1994 during a visit to central Florida, which while it was primarily a trip aimed at saltwater 

fishing, also had a couple of days largemouth bass fishing added to the itinerary to give it a bit of extra 

variety. 

With that in mind, we booked to fish with a local character, who to help the story along shall remain 

nameless. The reason for this is that it wasn't the most politically correct few days we ever spent, which 

I would add, should have no absolutely no reflection on us. We were mere observers caught up in 

somebody else's feud. 

397

We met up with our man at Starvin Marvins diner at around six am. The boat hitched to the back of the 

truck was a bit of a give-away. A man who was probably well into his fifties by then, with lots of hair, 

a big drooping moustache, and wearing matching bright red budweiser cap and braces. 

After the usual preliminary greetings, he stood up and said "we need to get moving before those damned 

blacks get in the boat and steal everything". 

To be honest, there wasn't another living sole anywhere in sight. But that sort of set the tone, and off 

we went in our hire car following the boat to the launching area at the Stick Marsh site, where having 

slipped it from its trailer, he set about filling the live wells with 'shiners' which he caught using a cast 

net. 

Typical of American boats, this one was fast, sleek, and packing plenty of horse power. Not that you 

could do much with it due to all the submerged tree stumps. But there none the less, just in case it could 

ever be used one day. 

It was here that I was first introduced to circle hooks. The rods were short and light paired up to small 

Penn fixed spool reels, and typically, by UK standards, the approach was very basic. Lightly blown up 

balloons for floats suspending live-baits just off the bottom. 

Depending on whether you hooked the shiner in the shoulder or towards the tail determined whether it 

tended to swim upwards or downwards. But it was that first sighting of the circle hooks that most sticks 

in my mind. They looked to all intents and purposes to have been bent out of shape during some brutal 

disgorging session, though as we would eventually find out, nothing could have been further from the 

truth. 

If I describe our man as 'a good old boy' or 'a red neck', I don't think I would be too far away from the 

truth. Racist to the core and willing to point the finger of blame for everything bad at anyone and 

everyone who was black. Least-ways, that was the message that filtered out during the early 

conversations of the day. 

As for the fishing, I'm not sure whether to describe it as good 

or disappointing. We had lots of bass, though by that stage, 

the Stick Marsh had yet to earn its reputation as a producer 

of double figure fish. 

It was still way too early in its evolution. So the best we could 

hope for was the possibility of fish to maybe five pounds, 

some of which we got, plus the seemingly obligatory praise, 

back slapping, and hand shaking that goes with guided boat 

fishing in the US. 

Phrases like "good fish" and "well done" were also liberally 

used. But it truth, other than a bit of head shaking and opening 

up of their cavernous mouths to create some extra drag, 

winding in bass is like catching bronze bream back home. 

Typical Stick Marsh Bass 

All of that said, it was none the less enjoyable. We tried every 

conceivable area of the lake, and put in a lot of time casting 

right up to the edges of the lilly pads trying to tempt fish out 

of the shade in what was two days of relentless blistering 

sunshine. But actual stand-out moments were probably down 

to encounters with things other than bass. 

398

Paul Bennett hooked up a huge snapping turtle which at the side of the boat did an excellent impression 

of ET as it cranked its neck up in an attempt to grab his fingers, which, we were assured, it could quite 

easily have taken off. 

Our man wanted it in the boat, but it got away. Apparently his dog 'bugger' liked eating them. A similar 

encounter was with an alligator that crept up slowly towards my float, then suddenly went into a tail 

stand, grabbed my bait, and was away. 

We also decided to try for other species, particularly on the second day after we'd been pointed at a bait 

outlet where we could get worms (night crawlers) and crickets. 

The worms added quite a few assorted catfish to the species list, which we later found out at a local 

restaurant were beautiful to eat. As for the crickets, we fished these under bob floats for bluegills which 

were small and plentiful. 

Alligator gars also occasionally made short work of the live shiners, though having such awkward 

shaped mouths, these were difficult to hook up needing lots of time to get the bait into position before 

you can even think of setting the hook. So for the most part, encounters with those were pretty much a 

lost cause, though we did land a couple. 

I'm sure we had other stuff too. Particularly with the smaller species on the live crickets, which didn't 

all look the same. And of course, we had loads of large mouth bass which had been the primary objective 

of the trip. 

There were also a couple of interesting incidents off the lake too, such as when we arrived at the motel 

we used the evening before meeting up at Starvin Marvins. 

As we pulled on to the rear parking area, all we could see was red and blue flashing lights, and police, 

weapons drawn, dashing up and down shouting at somebody running along the building’s roof. Not the 

best end to a long tiring day travelling, though it was only going to get to worse. 

The following evening, our man, who 

happened to be booked into the room 

next door to us, had parked his truck 

and boat in full view of his window, 

which he told us was to keep an eye out 

for thieving blacks. His choice of 

phrase, certainly not mine. And he 

meant it, because when I glanced in 

through the entrance, there on the 

cupboard nearest to the door was a 

revolver which he made abundantly 

clear he fully intended to use. 

Shocked, we said to him, you can't do 

Alligator Garfish 

that. "Sure you can. This is Florida. 

Hell, at the end of the day all of 

you've got is one dead thieving black, and there ain't no court in the state going to convict a man for 

that". 

It was at this point, and without even the slightest hint of exaggeration here, that a very smart clean cut 

young black chap walked around the corner carrying a petrol can, explaining he needed to get back to 

his army base urgently, had run out of petrol, and was looking to borrow ten dollars to fuel up. 

399

He looked and sounded convincing to me. But not to our man who started asking which base and what 

unit, then told him that that particular unit wasn't stationed there at the time, and started to accuse him 

of a potential rip off. 

The supposed soldier couldn't see in through the doorway because our man was blocking his view. But 

as he stepped back to where the gun was, the would be soldier suddenly grasped the gravity of his 

predicament and was off, which thankfully was crisis averted. An eventful couple of days to say the 

least. 

VIRGINIA BEACH – RUDEE INLET 

Back in 2002 when my wife Dawn said she fancied a holiday taking in the sights in and around 

Washington, trust me to pick a base where the boat fishing just happened to be the costliest in the entire 

USA. 

At around twelve to fourteen hundred dollars per day even back then for offshore trolling, Virginia rates 

amongst the most expensive fishing destinations in the world. Yet from the same marina’s you can 

bottom fish fifty trips on a party boat for the same money as dragging lumps of plastic around the ocean 

just once. 

The old cliché of only getting what you pay for springs to mind here, but that isn't necessarily always 

the case. Virginian offshore trolling can be patchy over the high summer months when we were there, 

with tuna, when they are to be found, dominating catches. 

400

As one local party boat angler put it, “you would struggle to get twelve hundred dollars worth of tuna 

in a freezer. But at twenty six dollars a trip on a party boat, even if you catch nothing, you still don't 

feel ripped off”. 

There's not much chance of drawing a blank on the party boats though. While the fish are a bit on the 

small side, what they lack in size, they more than make up for in suicidal numbers. 

If I had one complaint to make it would concern the lack of variety. That said, it was August, which is 

the slowest period of the year. Later on into the autumn when the water has started to cool, a wider 

variety of species including striped bass and bluefish start to swarm inshore. 

This coincides with a greater variety of party boating opportunities too, including extended inshore, 

offshore, and wrecking trips, and all at prices comparable to those back home. 

That however is where any similarities with our home ports ends. No bookings are required. If you want 

to fish, you simply arrive half an hour before the boat is scheduled to leave, buy a ticket from the kiosk, 

and step aboard. 

You don't even need tackle or bait, as this is included in the price. Of course, you don't have to use 

what's provided, and while it may be convenient, particularly if you are holidaying over there from the 

UK or Ireland, in many ways it pays to take along your own tackle and buy some bait, as much of what 

is provided is very basic. The bait for example was a polystyrene cup filled with squid strips. 

All the fishing was done on the drift. With no more than eight ounces of lead being needed to hold 

bottom, a light boat rod and small multiplier loaded with fifteen to twenty pounds lbs monofilament 

would be perfect. 

Leave the braided line at home. Water depth and tidal flow don't warrant it, and while it will still catch 

fish, it can also present major un-tangling problems of which there can be many if the boat is crowded. 

When it comes to bottom fishing, the average US boat 

angler lags way behind his UK counter-part in terms 

outlook, attitude, tactics, and technique. Conversely, 

US boat operators certainly could show us a thing or 

two about service and value for money. 

American party boats bear no resemblance whatsoever 

to their UK counterparts. The boats there must have 

been sixty feet in length and possibly more. All had 

plenty of cover from the elements, which in this case 

was the sun, with comfortable seating all round. They 

also had hand and fish washing facilities, toilets, and a 

lounge from which you could buy snacks and cold 

drinks. 

Dave Devine, Trigger Fish 

At other ports, I have even fished on party boats with 

café facilities serving hot food. Deck hands do all the 

running around, cutting bait, disgorging, icing of fish 

etc. The man at the helm has his wheel-house up on the 

top level just ahead of the sun deck from where he 

keeps the party updated about the fishing, planned 

moves and like, over a tannoy system. 

401

Out from Rudee Inlet we fished on the drift, so short droppers above the lead did the business. It wasn't 

exactly reefy ground. More a mix of all sorts including patches of heavier stuff. 

Hang-ups were not that common place, and when pressure was applied, whatever bit of the rig was 

snagged up would usually pull free. I’m not sure whether it was weed, boulders or what exactly was 

causing these hang-ups as nothing ever came up on the hooks except for fish, which did so by the bucket 

full. 

This was a venue where double hits were the rule rather than the exception. Black bass were the main 

culprits starting at a couple of inches in length right through to a couple of pounds. But these were not 

the only fish. Quite a few flounders were also caught. 

This doesn't sound very exciting, but other than being flat, American flounders bear no resemblance to 

their name sakes on this side of the pond. Instead, they are more like small halibut, with huge mouths 

crammed full of sharp pointed teeth. 

I suspect they are related to turbot and brill as their eyes are located on the same side of the mouth. They 

also fight well and are very good to eat as I was to find out one evening in a restaurant. 

When there are lots of anglers tightly packed onto a 

party boat, it can be hard work keeping clear of other 

people less familiar than perhaps you would like with 

fish and tackle handling. This particular boat however 

had a long narrow pointed walk-way protruding out 

from the bow which Dave Devine and I made a bee-line 

for. 

This allowed us to drop down from either side 

depending on the direction the boat was set up to drift. 

And with nobody behind us, or for that matter within 

several yards, we didn't suffer a single tangle all day. 

The crew on the deck organised a two dollar sweep. It 

wasn't compulsory, though judging by the stamp put on 

the back of the hands of those who paid, most people 

were in it. 

Numbers onboard these boats can vary between a mere 

handful on quiet season midweek days, to maybe forty 

and more when word gets about that the fish are in. So 

the sweep money can be worth picking up. 

Dawn Williams, brace of Croakers 

Who gets it though is very much a lottery, in that while 

most Brits would wipe the floor with the yanks in terms 

of numbers of fish caught, picking out the single biggest fish of the day in situations like this 

unfortunately is beyond individual control. 

I thought I had it for much of the trip with a nice flounder picked up on a long thin mackerel strip cut 

to resemble a sandeel, but unfortunately at the weigh in, I was pipped by a whisker with a black bass. 

The inlet itself is quite a sizeable affair with plenty of surface area for boats and moorings, all of which 

is accessed via quite a short narrow channel lined with big boulders which look to have been put there 

deliberately, as they follow the contour of a protective sea wall, behind which is a walkway used by the 

locals for fishing. 

402

The entrance can get quite busy with boats, which, 

despite speed restrictions, can still cause a bit of a wash, 

and is probably the reason why a ban on fishing from 

these rocks is so strictly enforced. 

Very strictly enforced in fact, as I was to find out when 

a police boat with a loud speaker came along and told 

me to get back behind the wall. But not before I was 

able to get the fish I was looking for. 

I wasn't the only person fishing either from the rocks or 

from the wall. But I was one of only two people to 

catch, the other being a local angler who knew exactly 

how to fish the inlet and the nearby surf beach. He had 

an aerated tub full of tiny live mullet, plus some 

breakaway leads to hold them out in position. 

He had already caught himself a couple of nice 

flounders by the time I got talking to him. He then gave 

me a live mullet and told me to put it out in the middle 

of the channel, which I did, and the rest as they say is 

history. 

Phill Williams, Rudee Inlet Flounder 

I got a decent sized flounder just before the police 

moved me on. I even got my battered live-bait back. But with nowhere left to cast it, I decided to call it 

a day. 

If, as we did, you explore using a hire car, you will quickly find all sorts of other shore fishing 

opportunities. Anywhere there was water with access seemed to attract fishermen. In particular, around 

and under the bridges, where we saw people catch flounders, black drum, and croakers. 

There were also plenty of croakers caught from the purpose built wooden angling jetties, and we had 

more than our fair share of those out on the boats too, which are a bit like whiting in terms of size, 

willingness to feed, and availability. 

Triggerfish were another fairly common species, plus we had quite a few pufferfish. But bass and 

flounder were the species everyone wanted for the freezer, and with the black bass in particular, nobody 

went home disappointed. 

ASCENSION ISLAND 

Ascension Island. That tiny lump of wind-swept cinder sitting on top of the mid-Atlantic ridge, which 

along with its two 'sister' south Atlantic British Overseas Territories of St. Helena and Tristan Da Cunha, 

is part of the most isolated island trio, and therefore location on earth, with obvious important 

ramifications for the fishing. 

Huge numbers of desirable fish species congregate there under the supposed protective shield of the 

UK military by way of a 200 mile exclusion zone. Otherwise, a tiny speck in the middle of a huge 

ocean, with precious little in the way of infra-structure, other than a few houses and administrative 

buildings, an air strip, and a virtual patch-work of UK and US eaves dropping equipment sat astride a 

heap of volcanic rubble and cooled larva flows. 

403

Graeme Pullen, Black Jack on popper Despite it being Yellow Fin Tuna heaven and having unparalleled 

shore fishing possibilities, my personal reason 

for wanting to go there was its potentially large numbers of huge six gilled sharks which come in close 

from deeper water surrounding the island after dark. 

Still needing a fish topping 1,000 pounds to complete my bucket list project, and currently in my late 

sixties, I recognised that this would be my last shot at placing that final tick on the list, and that come 

what may, win or lose, I could finally get on with completing this book. 

Not the easiest of places to get to. With all the entry consents, permits, and vetting required by both the 

Ascension Government and the military to get on to the flight at RAF Brize Norton and off again at 

Wideawake airstrip, it was a relief to exit the airbase, finally knowing that at last all the paper work 

must have been in order, and that the outcome of the visit was finally down to Dave Devine, Graeme 

Pullen, Kev McKie and myself. That was if all the other long range email arrangements regarding car 

hire, accommodation and fishing had also gone according to plan, which, thankfully they had. 

Because of the sheer quality of both, I'm going to look at the boat and shore fishing separately, starting 

with the boats. There are limited offshore game fishing opportunities from big boats at big prices, and 

there are far less expensive smaller part time local boats. 

For my money, there is no comparison between the two. True, we are not comparing like with like in 

terms of objectives. But having fished from both, I would gladly waive the comfort of the big game 

boat for the sheer enjoyment, quality of fishing, and local knowledge of the smaller private inshore 

boats, with the add on bonus of coming in at an absolute fraction of the cost. 

We had two Americans staying at our digs, one of which was a Marlin boat owner and the other his 

skipper based at Hawaii, looking to catch themselves that elusive 'grander' which Ascension is famous 

for. Between them they caught four small white marlin and a couple of wahoo over the week. The only 

grander they saw was the one leaving their wallets each day. Ouch!!. 

404

Each morning at breakfast we would swap the previous days 

experiences, them aboard the big boat, and us from Patrick 

Anthony's small open boat 'Bounty Hunter', and they were 

obviously impressed with both the quality and quantity of 

the fish we had taken. So what better place to start than with 

Patrick, known locally as Kimbo, boat fishing out of 

Georgetown. 

The name Georgetown kind-of over-states the size of the 

place. At best there are maybe half a dozen small roads, a 

handful of old colonial government buildings, and a few 

houses clustered around a pier head. With no hint even of a 

harbour, what boats there are lie moored up just off, which 

is safe enough. 

Despite there being a constant breeze of between 15 and 25 

miles an hour, because it's the trade wind from Africa, it 

always comes from the same direction, which at 

Georgetown is offshore. So unless it picks up, or big 

Atlantic swells push in from bad weather elsewhere, you are 

reasonably assured of getting afloat. 

Dave Devine, 310 lb Yellow Fin Tuna The next area of concern is the pier head itself. Stone steps 

at the end lead down to a small stone ledge where small 

boats can come in to pick up. Unfortunately, even in calm weather, when the tide is up, there is usually 

a swell washing over this. 

So you're going to get wet, and so too is your gear if you are not careful when boarding the boat while 

clinging on to one of half a dozen 'tarzan' ropes dangling from above to help hold the boat steady as you 

attempt to get in. Local people have been lost here. A sobering thought worth bearing in mind. 

When we were there, Kimbo's boat 'Bounty Hunter' was a small open centre console outboard powered 

vessel of around 20 feet in length and was guaranteed to throw spray up and into the fishing well, which 

added to the pier head steps, meant another wetting. 

Light water proofs are essential if you don't want a good soaking, or like Dave and Graeme, wear a 

make-shift spray jacket made from a hotel bin liner. I'd also take along a life jacket for those days when 

you need to board and unload from a small punt at the moorings, which can be a bit un-nerving. 

You could if you wanted start fishing immediately. On a couple of occasions we saw birds circling and 

tuna topping amongst the moorings. The problem with that is the number of jacks knocking about 

inshore which would be onto the trolled lures immediately. 

Best then to wait until you are out of the jack's preferred feeding depth range before putting lures out 

for the short run down or up to where Kimbo thinks the tuna are, where the main approach then is 

chunking and free-lining, either on the drift, or more usually at anchor. 

Throughout, we fished in two's or three's because of the lack of room, a pattern we followed on both 

the weekend morning and mid-week evening trips due to Kimbo having a regular full time job. One 

day, Dave and I had two yellow fins and a 90 pound wahoo trolling just beyond the moorings en route 

to the buoyed anchor, while on an evening session a few days later, Dave had a 310 tuna on a lure. 

That said, the bulk of what was caught fell to chunking, which is loose feeding with chunks of fish 

followed by similar sized baits free-lined amongst them so as to sink at the same rate. 

405

This was how most of the tuna were caught from dusk on 

into the dark. Kev had a tuna of around 220 pounds doing 

this with his fixed spool lure popping outfit, which took him 

2 hours and 40 minutes to beat. But typically the tuna would 

range between around 40 to 70 pounds apiece, which while 

this doesn't sound much, can still be a handful to beat, even 

on the much heavier gear Kimbo provides. 

On a few occasions however, the same chum also drew in 

less welcome predators, as indeed would hooked tuna 

struggling on the hook sending out stressed messages, 

leading to them occasionally coming back bitten off just 

behind the head. 

Obviously this was the work of sharks. But not just any 

sharks. So far as we could ascertain it would always be by 

galapagos sharks in the 200 to 500 pound category. It's 

worth noting that at the time, the world record for the 

species stood at 308 pounds 10 ounces. 

One particular day we got Two Boats store owner Andrew 

Ellick, known locally as 'BBC,' to take us out in his 

converted ships life boat 'Lady Shy' for a mid week daytime 

trip while Kimbo was at work, and in no time at all we were 

surrounded by huge galapagos sharks. 

Phill Williams, 90 pound Wahoo 

So brazen were they that Graeme even managed to dart tag a couple as they swarm around the boat, one 

of which was a good 600 pounds. We also kept hooking them on small chunks of bait intended for the 

tuna. I had one on for well over an hour before it bit through the heavy mono trace, while a combination 

of Dave, Graeme and BBC actually got a big one to the boat and tagged before it too bit through. 

As mentioned earlier, my sole objective was to tick off the missing 'grander' from my bucket list, and 

with that in mind, we booked a couple of evening trips spent fishing after dark at anchor aboard the 36 

foot marlin boat 'Harmattan'. 

While it was still light, the shark gear stayed in the boat. Instead we chunked for tuna for fresh bait 

which were not slow in coming. Then as darkness fell, the 130 pound class outfit was brought out and 

rigged up with a long heavy wire trace to beat the teeth and abrasive skin, with the addition of a large 

lump of rock on a piece of lighter line tied to the hook, the idea being that when a shark took the bait, 

the lump of rock holding it down would be bitten free, leaving just the fish on the end of the line. 

We did eventually get a big six gill during the second session caught by Kev, which because it was 

estimated at a 'mere' 800 pounds didn't bother me that I'd missed out. In fact, I was quite happy that it 

wasn't my fish. 

Having already previously caught them to 900 pounds, what I didn't want was all that laborious hard 

slogging dead weight effort, only to be disappointed at not having a 'grander' as compensation. So not 

as much six gill activity as we had hoped for. But not necessarily because of any poor showing on the 

part of the sharks. Other un-anticipated factors were to a large extent responsible. 

Pretty much as soon as the big tuna slab went down after dark on both trips, fish other than six gills 

were biting and tugging at it on the bottom. These we were told were oil fish, a species of so-called 

snake mackerel I had previously only seen in photographs of people posing with specimens which 

looked to be between maybe 10 and 20 pounds. 

406

407 

What we had not expected was either 

the numbers of oil fish we would 

eventually encounter during our 

stay, and more especially their size. 

Their power too once they felt the 

pressure change around half way up, 

which during later encounters on 

much lighter tackle, saw them 

repeatedly fast stripping line from 

the reel. 

Great fish while on the end of the 

line in the water. Wild fish when 

they hit surface where they would 

immediately go nuts, and dangerous 

Yellow Fin Tuna at the surface 

fish with all but the smallest of 

specimens carefully held in gloved 

hands brought inside the boat on account of the sharp bony tubercles between their scales, their spiky 

fins, and their teeth. 

These tubercles have hard razor sharp pointed tips which are well capable of removing skin and cutting 

in to flesh. As if that was not enough, at the business end, the mouth is huge and full of sharp teeth. Not 

the best of fish to attempt to pose for the camera in light of their insistence to wriggle and crash about 

generally while out of the water. 

Once we were aware of the presence of oil fish after dark, we deliberately started fishing for them with 

10/0 hooks tied to 200 pounds bs monofilament droppers. One evening Graeme found a small chemical 

light stick in the bottom of his box and attached that to the trace, taking three out of the four we had that 

night. 

Unfortunately, it was the only one he had. The locals on the other hand tend to see them as nuisance 

fish. But for us, getting pestered by hard fighting fish averaging 60 to 80 pounds, and occasionally 

topping the hundred, was just the kind of nuisance we could happily live with while waiting for the tuna 

on the chunks. 

The shore fishing around the more accessible parts of the island is perhaps best described as frustrating. 

Absolutely world class at the right spots when it's on song. Painfully boring when its not. And 

sometimes both within minutes of each other at the same place on the same day. 

The quality of the shore fishing along the beaches and at most rock marks almost completely comes 

down to the presence or absence of 'fry' shoals, which are actually scad being pushed in close by 

predatory fish marked by flocks of diving frigate birds. No frigates or fry, then no fish. But even more 

frustrating is that even this doesn't always hold true, so it can be a hard situation to read at times. 

A good example here is a day when we had driven down to Pan Am beach, which is a series of three 

short beaches separated by rocks close to the American base. Along one of these beaches the frigate 

birds were going berserk, so we quickly tackled up our popping rods armed with shimano saragosa reels 

loaded with 80 pounds bs braid, tied a short length of 200 pounds monofilament to the end, then fished 

a variety of poppers, dexter wedges and lead-heads with soft rubber split tails, and bingo, it was every 

egg a bird. Mainly hard fighting black jacks and almaco jacks. But there were also some tuna mixed in 

there amongst them as evidenced by the sizes of some of the surface boils. 

But every so often the birds would stop diving, and either continue circling high up over the water, or 

sit it out on the rocks and wait. Correspondingly, the regularity of takes on the lures would fall away.

Then suddenly it would all kick off 

again, a pattern which on this day 

persisted for a few hours producing lots 

of good action and fish. 

Birds working the bait fish 

So much so that we got a bit blasé about 

it and nipped over to Two Boats for 

some cooked food, which is something 

of a rarity on Ascension, as the few 

potential food outlets there are always 

seem to be closed when anglers 

typically find time to feed. But not this 

day, so we grabbed our chance, and 

when we returned you could not have 

bought a bite. It was hard to believe we 

were back at the same place. 

On another occasion, we spent a couple of hours driving from beach to beach looking for bird activity 

and saw nothing. With experience of the previous encounter etched on our minds, we were becoming 

despondent. We wanted to fish, but not simply to stand there flogging the water for nothing. 

In the end however, that was the only alternative left open to us, so at a short finger of rock in front of 

the desalination plant, again at Pan Am, we decided to bite the bullet and give it a go. Not a bird could 

be seen anywhere. Yet as soon as we started casting it was absolute carnage, which as you would expect, 

we looked to repeat on subsequent days, yet caught nothing. 

We made our visit in September running on through into early October. Having taken a very wide cross 

section of advice on the various options available on and around the island, this seemed to be the best 

compromise. 

The main scad run, which can never be accurately predicted, and in some years doesn't even happen at 

all, is usually around June-July time. So it's a difficult one to call. That said, the man who really set the 

shore fishing scene alight here, an English chap now living in Switzerland called Grant, was also there 

at the same time as us. So read what you will into that one. 

In the not too distant past, Grant had become the first person to land a yellow fin tuna in excess of 200 

pounds from the shore. It's been done a couple of times since from the same spot, but Grant was the 

man, and we'd accidentally stumbled across him fishing his favoured deep water mark. 

In fairness to him, I'm not going to 

disclose its location other than to say 

it's a rock mark between Long Beach 

and English Bay, and while the fishing 

platform at the bottom over-looking 

very deep water is a good one, the 

climb down is treacherous and 

daunting to say the least, even with 

both hands free by not carrying fishing 

tackle. 

I was lucky in that I had a four piece 

popping rod made for me by artico in 

Italy courtesy of Neil Bryant at 

bluezone tackle. Along with my 

Kev McKie, shore caught Tuna 

408

cameras, this went into a rucksack with the rest of my gear for the hazardous climb down to the spot, 

where in the past, Grant had shackled himself to a rope tied around a rock with a short lanyard to play 

and land his big tuna, a fish which took in excess of 6 hours to beat. 

Now that's dedication, as is the rest of the safety kit he carries, the months of gym training he does in 

the run up to these visits to be able to cast his huge poppers all day every day, and his deliberate 

avoidance of huge amberjacks, black jacks and almaco jacks, which might detract from the sole 

objective of big tuna or nothing. 

We fished it a couple of times. Initially I wouldn't do down. Myself and Dave Devine went off elsewhere 

in the car, returning later to pick up Kev and Graeme who'd managed to get down. When we got back, 

Kev held up a tuna of around 35 pounds which he'd literally just caught. 

Needing to get a picture, I decided to brave the descent, then while he was getting himself sorted out, I 

had a few casts with his rod, one of which had a missed hit is the middle of a water boil the size of 

dinner table. Tuna, most definitely. Monster tuna, very probably. Disappointed, not really. Posing a 

monster fish for the camera is one thing. Getting beaten up for the next several hours just to be in that 

position is completely another matter altogether. 

Before we flew home, on the last day, Graeme and myself popped in to the conservation lab to talk to 

a young lady there who was involved in a government backed research project looking at age to growth 

rates, sexual maturity, and gut analyses, in the many tuna that were brought in every day. 

Interestingly, what she did say was 

that the black triggerfish, which 

abound in their millions tight up to 

the shore, feature heavily in the 

stomach contents of the very biggest 

tuna, which might help explain why 

shore anglers, inshore spear 

fishermen, and boat anglers working 

very close in seem to catch the 

biggest fish. Also why dark coloured 

poppers work so well. 

We also pushed her on rumours 

regarding the planned issuing of 

long-lining permits which she did 

not want to talk about. In fairness to 

her, despite being privy to the 

discussions, this wasn't her 

responsibility. But appreciating that Graeme Pullen, Rainbow Runner from the beach 

it would be a very touchy subject, 

nobody was willing to say anything other than hint that the income generated was necessary to finance 

more infrastructure on the island, and to finance further conservation research in the future, which to 

my mind is a complete contradiction of the definition of the term 'conservation'. 

Why risk damaging a perfectly balanced, protected, and productive fishery in that way. It makes no 

sense. Not only tuna, but sharks, marlin, and many other species are also going to be at risk. So if you 

fancy fishing Ascension, better get over there quick before it's too late. The writing it would seem is 

very clearly now on the wall. 

409

AUSTRALIA 

According to a very interesting TV documentary, the Cairns area of Queensland in north east Australia, 

is statistically the most toxic location on the planet. Not from a pollution point of view, but by way of 

a collection of animals living locally in the wild which could, given the chance, and in a variety of ways, 

very easily kill you. 

Inshore and creek fishing boat, Cairns 

The sea for example has sharks, 

poisonous sea snakes, box jellyfish 

and blue ringed octopus to name but 

a few, while the adjacent creeks and 

rivers are full of saltwater crocodiles. 

On the land its funnel web spiders and 

deadly taipans. And so the list goes 

on. 

Not that anyone need be particularly 

concerned. We roamed freely in all 

these types of venue, and while we 

did see examples of some of what was 

lurking out there, we were always 

well insulated from it. 

So a wonderful experience at a 

fantastic location, also supposedly offering some of the best fishing in the world. Certainly from an 

offshore big game perspective. But as an avid species collector, I wasn't there to go dragging lumps of 

plastic all over the ocean on the off chance of a marlin trying to eat it. There were way too many other 

potential attractions on offer for that. 

The creeks for example, where you can fish for amongst many other things, barramundi, and of course 

there's the great barrier reef. 

If I'm honest, though I went to Cairns with the hope of fishing the barrier reef, I wasn't actually sure 

until I got there that this would even be allowed, as there was little in the way of Internet back then to 

check things out in advance. So I started things off by fishing a few short stints in and around the creeks 

from a guided aluminium skiff in the hope of barramundi. 

Not that it would have mattered even if I had found myself a barrier reef opportunity, as the weather 

was ropey. So up the creeks it was catching all sorts of catfish and snapper-like things, plus a fish that 

looked like a barramundi but wasn't. 

Usually this would be done in the morning. Our guide would use his cast net to gather up an ample 

supply of large shrimps and we were off. 

It was fun fishing. Nothing big, but plenty of action from a wide variety of species more than capable 

of giving a good account of themselves. Then quite by chance, on one of the days, we chose to fish in 

the afternoon. An inspired decision. 

Not so much for the fishing on that particular day, but most definitely for what was to come. For 

coinciding with our arrival back at the marina came one of the larger reef angling boats, and on the dock 

they were sorting through a whole host of huge snappers, groupers and jacks. 

That was my cue. I made a bee-line for the skipper, and by the time these trips came around, the sea 

had thankfully settled and the sun was out. A good job too as it was a long haul out to where we were 

headed to fish some of the deeper portions of the barrier reef. 

410

The fishing itself was straight forward enough. I had my own 

tackle, but none the less I let the skipper advise on the 

terminal gear. He's the man who does it every day, so no 

point in wasting time, though as it turned out it too was quite 

basic. A single hook dropper rig tied from very heavy 

monofilament with a weak link for the lead. 

Bait was equally un-fussed. I seem to remember there being 

squid, huge shrimps, and cut fish. A case of just loading it 

on, sending it down, and hanging on in there poised for 

action, knowing that you had to be brutal and quick by not 

letting a fish, however powerful it might be, have its head 

and power dive down in to the rough where it would be lost. 

Easier said than done. Sometimes you would feel fish biting, 

hit them, and would have little trouble clearing the snags. 

They still fought hard and were a handful, but manageable 

due to their smaller size. Then on other occasions, what 

initially felt like the exactly the same bite would suddenly 

develop in to a mad uncontrollable power diving rush which 

the fish would invariably win. 

Not always, but usually. Very powerful fish, which judging Trevally, Barrier Reef 

by what we did actually get to the boat were huge snappers, 

groupers, or jacks. Exciting, but very frustrating at the same 

time, with lots for arm wrenching physical exertions, and often precious little to show for it at the end. 

BORNEO 

I went over to Borneo completely clueless, knowing that whatever I found out there fishing-wise, if 

anything at all, would have to be done on the hoof. 

Considering the nature of the place and its tropical rain forest coverage, it's actually quite well developed 

in a couple of the major centres, with the contrast of a beautiful new marina faced off by a collection of 

battered old tin shacks sprawling out in to the water surrounded by rubbish on the opposite side of the 

road. 

So they had boats there, which was a start. They also had a lot of jungle rivers supposedly full of fish 

like jungle perch. But where, and how could I get access to any of them was the problem. 

I did get to look at one river when we headed off up into the jungle on a battered old train belonging to 

the North Borneo Railway, built by the British in the 1890's, aboard what looked to be the very same 

trains judging by the one we had, which leaked during the regular afternoon down pour through holes 

in the roof. 

Not that getting wet mattered as it was warm, on top of which we'd just body rafted through the white 

water sections of the river on our way back downstream to pick up the next station, with no real hint of 

any likely spots or possibilities to freshwater fish. And so it went for the first few days, with a spot of 

beach fishing always looking the most likely candidate. 

That being the case, one morning I made my way down through the hotel grounds to the tree's fringing 

the beach to weigh up my options, passing a cat taunting a cobra on the lawn en route, only to be faced 

off by a herd of buffalo bathing in the sea where I'd intended to fish. 

411

Dawn Williams into yet another big reef fish Needless to say I gave that one a miss. Then I 

stumbled across this Australian lady named Shelly 

who owned a small restaurant on the road into Kota Kinabalu where we'd called in for a meal, who also 

owned a boat with a skipper who would take parties out to fish. The boat was called 'Fat Cat', and the 

man in charge was Edwin Pong. 

Conditions across all the trips we did were never ideal, though always fishable, just about. The journey 

out to the grounds was also long. Certainly to get amongst the better fish. 

Borneo had suffered a lot of unwanted attention from commercial fishermen coming over from the 

nearby Philippines using dynamite, which besides killing or damaging the fish, more worryingly was 

destroying the reefs capability for short term recovery. 

At that time, the Malaysian authorities looked to be getting a grip on the situation, but full recovery was 

still some way off, the result being that it was difficult to find good sections of reef that had not been 

seriously affected, and good fish stocks that hadn't also been hit hard. 

Fortunately, the crew had a few aces up their sleeve which would make the long hard slog out into the 

South China Sea worthwhile. Certainly more worthwhile than staying inshore, where all I saw was a 

few local fishermen coming in with the odd barracuda and small snapper. 

The marina too was full of small fish, and on one occasion when we were taken across the bay to a nice 

restaurant built on legs standing up from the water on a tiny island just across the way, I saw lots of 

small jacks and other interesting looking fish nosing around the docking platform, which obviously you 

couldn't fish from. 

So there were opportunities inshore too, if only some way could be found of exploiting them. Otherwise, 

you needed to be afloat and heading well offshore. 

To put things into context, the fishing was a bit like Whitby. The water was deep, but not too deep; the 

ground was heavy, but not too tackle hungry, and the fish were feeding right down in amongst it at the 

412

ottom. It was all bait fishing with good strong hooks on 

short heavy monofilament droppers above the lead. 

Good, solid, hard fighting fish too. Probably nothing 

making double figures, though quite a few would come 

close to that weight. But snappers, groupers and coral cod 

in that sort of weight range are still incredible scrappers. 

Incredible eating too as Mr. Pong and his crew cooked some 

up for lunch which was served on a table with a cloth and 

cutlery. All very civilized, and a bit surreal on the deck of a 

pitching boat sat under a cover to shield us from the rain. 

They tasted much better at Shelly's restaurant that evening 

where she put on a good spread of coral cod and red 

snapper. All top notch quality eating fish, and the primary 

reason for the Philippine fishermen dynamiting the reefs. 

Beautiful fish to look at too. 

Phill Williams. Snapper & Coral Cod 

The red snappers I don't think were the same species as I'd 

caught previously in other parts of the world, and nor were 

they all the same species there. But the coral cod I'd seen 

and caught before. Incredible fish, which for some reason, 

at least one other similar looking fish had gone to great 

pains to mimic. 

BULGARIA 

Not I suspect the first name on the list when laying down plans for a fishing holiday, Bulgaria is an ex- 

Soviet bloc eastern European country with a short stretch of coastline on the Black Sea. 

If I'm honest, I wasn't impressed with the place at all. The resort was terrible and the fishing there wasn't 

up to much either. There were a few fliers pinned up around the place offering both sea and freshwater 

fishing trips to holiday makers, all of which need to be avoided like the plague. 

For my part, I had contacted a chap in Sofia before I flew out who offered a guiding service, and we 

had arranged to meet up to fish the River Danube. I'm not an out and out freshwater fan really, but the 

prospects of a new species in the form of an asp kind-of caught my imagination, so we decided to give 

that a go. 

Andrey Parvanov and Pavel Pavlov picked me up at my Hotel for a three day look at the real Bulgaria, 

with its pot holed roads, ram-shackle Dickensian looking industrial complexes, and mighty River 

Danube which commercial ships use as an arterial trade route to adjacent cities and countries. And what 

an eye opener that turned out to be. 

The International Union For The Conservation Of Nature (IUCN) record the asp Aspius aspius as a red 

list endangered species. It is also protected by the Bern Convention on endangered species and habitats. 

But judging by the number of times I've been asked what an asp is, my guess is that not a lot of people 

know that. 

For those who think that an asp is the snake used by Cleopatra to kill herself, let me say that it is in fact 

a predatory member of the cyprinid family that includes the roach and the chub, which in terms of 

general appearance it rather looks like a hybrid of. Until that is you get to the mouth. This is huge, 

slightly up pointing, and interestingly for such an aggressive predator, totally devoid of teeth. 

413

In a way it reminded me of a tarpon's mouth, and judging by the way they 

The Danube at Russe 

totally engulfed the lures we were using, it also appears to feed like a 

tarpon too by coming up to its prey from below, then quickly sucking it 

right in to the back of its throat. 

In terms of distribution and life style, asp prefer the bigger, faster rivers of Eastern Europe, though I 

understand that they can also be found as far west as northern Germany, particularly in the River Elbe. 

The Danube is one of the biggest rivers in Europe, which from its origin in Germany's Black Forest, 

flows through nine other European countries before eventually discharging into the Black Sea close to 

the Romanian city of Sulina. And based on local information, it was that stretch where the river actually 

marks the border between Romania and Bulgaria, around thirty miles to the east of the city of Ruse 

(Pyce), that Andrey and Pavel had ear marked as the area to fish. 

We knew that the further east we fished, the better our chances were, particularly if we chose a large, 

deep, fast flowing stretch which was an almost tailor-made definition of much of the lower Danube. 

But that still left a lot of potential water to be tried. So Andrey and Pavel sought advice from some of 

the local angling talent in and around Ruse, who told of a potentially productive stretch way out of the 

city where the river actually looks more like a rural river should. 

We were to find a specific track leading down through the surrounding forest to a water pumping station, 

downstream of which we should look for fast water glides within casting range where the bigger asp 

are known to do some of their feeding, particularly early mornings and evenings, which in the dark and 

with no prior knowledge of where to go, took some finding. But at around day break on the first 

morning, bingo, we had found 'X' marks the spot. 

So what exactly is a big asp. Well, there have been authenticated reports of specimens topping twenty 

pounds, though we were told to expect a more typical good fish average of around two to four pounds, 

by which stage they should have become lone hunters, usually out in the deeper water. 

414

Smaller asp on the other hand tend to be 

pack hunters. Find one and you could be 

in for a bit more regular action, which 

we were later to find was a very 

accurate piece of advice. 

The thing about asp is that while they 

are potentially big fish with big mouths, 

unlike predators such as pike which 

have enormous mouths, they require 

much smaller lures, particularly for the 

smaller pack fish. 

A further problem is that they like their 

lures cranked back in at almost break 

Pavel Pavnov with our first and biggest Asp neck speed, which, unless the lure is 

carrying a fair bit of weight, is going to 

bring it up quite high in the water column, which if it's deep, or if say it's carrying a bit of colour after 

heavy rain, can present problems getting small lures down deep enough while coming in fast enough to 

be in with a shot. 

With that in mind, Henk Simonsz has put together a range of asp specific lures in different body weights 

and colours, which I must admit I had not seen before, but which I dare say I will be using again for 

other small to average fish, both in freshwater and at sea. They were absolutely excellent, and amongst 

the best and most innovative lures I have used in a very long time. 

With the sun now fully up in the sky, we stopped off at the first fast water stretch we came across where 

we all started pitching in our lures at long range, the reward for which was a very early bit of success 

in the form of what would turn out to be our best asp at around three pounds to Pavel's rod. 

He described the hit as hard and sudden. A fish with plenty of power, and no easy push-over to get in 

to the landing net. But unfortunately, despite being suddenly enthused by Pav's fish, for the next hour 

or so we drew a complete blank, unless you count a couple of spirited but abortive hits by small pike 

just as the lure was about to be lifted from the water. 

It was at this point that Andrey wandered back a couple of hundred yards upstream to where a fallen 

tree was somehow being held out across the water flow. Here he started trying a few risky throws with 

the lure in an attempt to get as close to the log as possible without actually getting hung up, which 

unfortunately did eventually claim a few lures over the day, though the payback for the gamble proved 

to be more than worth it. 

Protruding branches from the log eventually took lures from all three of us. But it also gave us at least 

one asp each. Granted, they were all small fish, which fits in very neatly with the juvenile shoaling 

instinct we were told about, but still none the less they were asp. 

That probably isn't the only reason why we took a total of four asp from the area of its influence. As it 

was protruding above the water line, the log clearly also had a lot of water flowing underneath it too, 

as evidenced by the swirls being thrown upon on the downstream side. Just the kind of stuff asp love. 

But again, that may not have been all, because those parts of the tree submerged nearest to the bank 

where the water was both quieter and shallower would also provide a nice stretch of sheltered haven for 

any small prey fish in the area. And as these asp were probably only just at or into the start of their fish 

feeding phase, if that were so, then it could only be a good thing. 

415

What amazed me about those smaller 

fish taken around the log was the 

amount of aggression they showed for 

their size when attacking the lures. Very 

obviously, even by that stage, they were 

instinctive full on predators, which put 

together with Pavels account of the 

earlier bigger fish left me wondering 

just what it might be like if one of us 

was to hook up something into double 

figures, which I'm sure are there, and 

for a couple of good reasons. 

The first is that asp have a preference 

for the lower reaches of big rivers, 

Andrey Pavanov releasing small Asp 

though we were still around a hundred 

and fifty miles from the Black Sea, 

which while that might sound a long way, is nothing when you consider the total length of the Danube. 

More important still, the local anglers, of which there are literally hundreds each evening along every 

available stretch of river bank in and around Ruse city centre, for the most part have absolutely no 

interest whatsoever in catching the things. 

Not that they would have much of a chance of catching them anyway as most were fishing with bait, 

the reason being that bread and maggots catch roach, bream, and catfish, all of which you can eat, 

whereas asp, certainly from the English speakers I bumped into, are not well regarded as table fish, 

which in light of their endangered status is perhaps as well. 

CANADA 

I chose to fish the Fraser River at Chilliwack in British Columbia very carefully. I needed to catch a 

fish from freshwater weighing in excess of one hundred pounds, and while there are a number of 

potential locations and species such as wels catfish from the River Ebro, and arapaima in Thailand, with 

typically one in every six sturgeon caught there topping the hundred pound mark, the chances of success 

looked very good, on top of which, I just fancied fishing for sturgeon anyway. 

Our timing however wasn't in any way 

flexible. Dave Devine and I, plus our 

wives, were over there to see the 

Calgary stampede, followed by a drive 

across the rockies taking in all the usual 

tourist haunts along the way through to 

Chilliwack, just outside Vancouver, 

where we would hook up with a guide 

for a few days on the river. 

Glacial flour water discolouration 

Not that timing mattered that much to 

us, because sturgeon were our primary 

aim, though July is not a good time to be 

there if you want to catch any of the 

various Pacific salmon species which 

416

also run this river in their millions every year. 

Actually, it would have been impossible to catch fish during our visit on anything other than bait 

because of the discolouration of the water, which looked as though someone had been washing out paint 

brushes with white emulsion on them. 

Visibility would have been measured in mere inches, caused by a natural phenomenon known as glacial 

flour. This is finely ground rock fragments similar to talcum powder, scoured from the surrounding 

substrate by glaciers gets into the river as the ice melts. 

The other problem with our timing was mosquito's. I've never seen as many in all my life. We fished 

from aluminium jets boats which were launched each day from a small beach where we parked up the 

car. 

Once the boat was off its trailer we would exit the car and make a run to it, then race out across the huge 

expanse of the river with the front window open to blast any mossies out of the cabin. 

It wasn't too bad out on the water, though obviously you still had to take precautions. But around the 

banks it was mossie city. So bad in fact while we were there that they had crop dusting helicopters 

spraying insecticides along the river margins all day long. The big question was, would the fish bite as 

well as the mossies did. 

We were assured they would and that we would see some big fish amongst them within that six to one 

ratio mentioned earlier. But that's just a prediction, not a guarantee. And even if it does work out about 

right at the end when the final stats are all in, it won't necessarily be five double figure fish then one 

over the ton in chronological order. 

They could come in any sort of order, which is exactly what happened, which when you are the only 

one not to have achieved it and it's the afternoon of the last day, believe me, the pressure is really on. 

For obvious reasons, the tackle they use there is heavy by freshwater standards. Medium sized boat rods 

with shimano multipliers loaded with one hundred pounds bs braid. 

The end gear is similarly heavy and 

crude. Quite a large lump of lead to 

keep the bait well pinned down in the 

fast river flow, and a very short flowing 

trace, presumably for the same reason. 

Dave Devine bending in to a Sturgeon 

As for the bait, this was either a one 

inch diameter bag of salmon eggs 

contained in a piece of material cut 

from a pair of women's tights (for 

reasons of staying out of trouble, 

preferably not while she's still wearing 

them), or a tiny cross section cut from a 

lamprey, both of which had the 

potential to bobble about and lift in the 

flow, which is another reason for the 

short trace to help keep baits down in 

the feeding zone. 

While both were small baits in proportion to what it was we were hoping to catch, every day out in the 

boat still brings with it the likelihood of cracking the ton. 

417

There is a pretty good chance of cracking the double ton too. Then there are the really big fish going 

anywhere between five hundred and a thousand pounds, and the beauty of it is that any and every bite 

could genuinely be that fish of a life time. 

And still it doesn't end there. From time to time, anglers get completely spooled out by truly monstrous 

fish. The largest sturgeon ever recorded from the Fraser measured over twenty feet in length and 

weighed in at 1860 pounds. 

Because of the catch and release policy, which had been in force for fourteen years prior to our visit, 

the bottom eighty miles of the Fraser River is now said to hold around seventy five thousand sturgeon, 

though the fishing guides involved in the electronic tagging scheme put the true figure very much 

higher, having already tagged in excess of thirty five thousand individuals, with more new fish showing 

every day. 

Certainly while we were there, a good thirty percent of the fish we caught were not carrying tags. And 

with average catches of between four and six fish per day at the slowest time of the year, which 

coincided with our visit, it isn't hard to see why the official population estimate is thought to be on the 

low side. 

Actually, on our first day we boated eleven fish, though unfortunately this did not include the predicted 

three figure specimen in there amongst them, with the best fish going around fifty pounds. That meant 

that by day two we were theoretically owed a couple of hundred pound plus fish. 

Thankfully, by the end of day three, the one to six ratio was back in balance and we were accumulating 

numbers towards ton-up fish number four. But there were times, particularly in the early stages, when 

I feared the ratio, and in particular my part in it, looked like being missed. 

Sturgeon are present in the river all 

year round, though the best times are 

without doubt the early summer 

months when a smelt-like bait fish 

know as eulachon swarm into the river, 

and again in the autumn when the 

salmon are running. 

What you also have to take onboard is 

that the Fraser River has incredible 

runs of five species of Pacific salmon. 

The pink salmon run alone, which 

occurs every two years, numbers 

around thirty million fish, which, with 

the many millions of individuals from 

the other four species thrown into the 

final calculation, makes for the highest 

concentration of salmon anywhere on 

the planet. 

Dave Devine small Sturgeon 

What makes this fact important from a sturgeon point of view, is that unlike Atlantic salmon, in the 

autumn when Pacific salmon spawn, they all die, providing easy pickings on an unimaginable scale for 

anything with a big enough appetite to help in the clean up, which is one of the reasons why there are 

so many sturgeon, and why they can grow so big. 

418

Surprisingly, for the size of these fish and the degree of movement in the water, strike worthy bites 

barely move the rod tip at all. The best thing I can liken it to is a shy cod bite. We were assured by our 

guide Chad that that is about as good as it gets. 

As sturgeon mooch along the bottom hoovering up edible items with their extendible mouth rather than 

pursuing them, with such small baits, you don't have to wait to snatch the rod from the quick release 

holder and set the hook. 

The arrangement with Chad was that after catching one Sturgeon apiece of any size, a fish in excess of 

a hundred pounds was then our sole target, even if that meant missing out on some degree of potential 

action. So on day one he took us down river to a quiet area behind a gravel island where small fish could 

be relied upon, and within the hour both Dave and I had the species ticked off our list. 

Mine was a very small fish down in single figures. But Dave's wasn't a bad one which probably went 

somewhere between forty and fifty pounds. Then the search for the big fish holding areas was on, which 

doesn't take long in a shallow draft twenty one foot aluminium jet boat powered by a 286 hp Chevrolet 

350 engine, giving it a top speed of around forty three mph. 

As I've said, day one produced a lot more fish than had been expected, but that first fish of Dave's turned 

out to be the best. Eleven fish boated and released meant that if we caught anything at all on day two, 

by the law of averages, we were still owed two biggies. Least ways, that was our thinking as we sat in 

the car at the slip waiting for Chad the following morning. 

With rain rattling on the car roof and fearing being eaten alive by mosquito's outside, we waited 

patiently. Fortunately the rain came and went over the day, though with the heavier bouts typically 

always managing to coincide themselves with the hooking up fish. 

419

As I recall, we probably only managed four or five fish on that second day, but Dave broke his 

freshwater ton with a hard fighting beauty of around one hundred and twenty five pounds according to 

the length and girth estimation chart used by all the guides. 

This was a previously tagged fish last caught in October 2000 when it had weighed in at sixty five 

pounds, which was almost half its current size. But by close of play, if the predictive stats were to be 

proved accurate, we were still owed at least one more ton, and were well on the way to accumulating 

enough fish numbers to qualify for a third. 

Dave didn't fish on day three. Instead I had my wife Dawn onboard to operate the video camera. When 

asked if she wanted to catch one she said yes, but just a small one to say she'd done it. So with this in 

mind, Chad anchored the boat up in a nice quiet little nursery area where the first fish on any of the 

three rods would go to Dawn, after which we could then go off searching for bigger targets. 

Within minutes one of the rod tips was tapping. She picked it up expecting to connect with something 

between five and ten pounds, then for the next half hour or so had to deal with a fish that came out of 

the estimation formula at one hundred and seven pounds. It was bound to happen. Chad and I even said 

as much on the journey down river prior to hooking it. 

That brought our ton up average back almost on target. But it also piled more pressure onto me. Would 

I be the only person in the party not to crack the hundred. It was certainly looking that way until Chad 

brought one of the rods in and replaced it with a smaller outfit and a very much smaller bait. 

Many of the taps and rattles you get 

along the quieter parts of the Fraser 

come from what are locally known as 

squaw fish. A sort of cross between a 

barbel and a chub with a mouth the 

size of a cod. The aim was to catch 

ourselves a couple of these, which we 

quickly did, then move over to a 

known big fish lie and put one of them 

out as a dead-bait. 

With a bait of that size, the bite 

detection tactics also changed. The 

reel was set on ratchet with the lever 

drag backed off so the fish could pick 

up the bait and move off until it had it 

Squaw Fish – soon to become bait 

well inside its mouth. It was big fish 

or nothing on that particular rod, 

though on the other two we still had salmon eggs and lamprey section just in case. 

All three rods were mine, and we were probably now owed two more fish over the ton. How much 

pressure do you need. Fortunately, relief was not long in coming. The squaw fish rod started nodding 

followed by line trickling from the reel, which to all intents and purposes could have been a slow tope 

run. 

Nervously I stood holding the rod waiting for the nod from Chad. When it came, there was no mistaking 

the feel of a more solid fish. But within seconds it stopped doing anything much, leaving me with just 

the strong river flow to contend with. 

Still it wasn't easy to get it to the boat, but it certainly wasn't fighting. We then started wondering if it 

was going to be a fish of maybe fifty pounds or so with delusions of grandeur. 

420

Eventually it appeared within reach, and when Chad put his hand its mouth and started to lift it up to 

drop into the measuring sling, we could see it obviously wasn't a bad fish. It was at that point however 

that it suddenly burst into life, breaking free from his grip and making off down river at a rapid rate of 

knots. 

In the end we had to slip the anchor 

and take off after it. Still not quite the 

fight I had expected, but now knowing 

that unless disaster struck, I was 

finally going to crack the ton, and by 

some considerable margin if the hook 

hold held. I just wanted it in the boat. 

Some twenty or so minutes later it was 

back within lifting range, and this time 

Chad's grip of its bottom lip and 

pectoral fin held firm. One good heave 

and it was in the sling. A quick check 

with the electronic tag detector 

showed it had been caught before. 

Then for the moment of truth with the 

tape measure. 

Phill Williams, small Sturgeon 

It was obviously bigger than Dawns fish, but how much bigger?. Well, according to the formula, at one 

hundred and fifty five pounds, it was almost half as big again. What's more, the rain held off throughout 

the entire encounter for the video camera. 

By this stage our sturgeon total for the three days was running somewhere in the low twenties, which 

meant that we could theoretically expect to see another three figure fish at any time, and not long after, 

another run did come on the same squaw fish bait. 

Unfortunately, no sooner had it started than this fish, which was another biggie, was tail walking on the 

surface trying to eject the bait, which it did with ease. 

So my ton turned out to be a last gasp success, as no other fish at all were boated. The only remaining 

bites came from the mossies as we made our dash from the boat back to the car, relieved and satisfied 

that all objectives had finally been achieved. 

CANARY ISLANDS - EL HIERRO 

El Hierro is probably the least known, smallest, and most isolated of the Canary Islands. Certainly 

amongst English people. A dry, mountainous, bleak volcanic tip rising straight up from the ocean floor 

out on the western edge of the island group, with very little English spoken there at all. 

It reminded me of the kind of step back in time we do here in the UK when we visit small isolated 

villages which have not so much failed to adapt, but have refused to adapt to the twenty first century. 

The kind of place you visit for a trip back to your roots. 

Dave Devine and I were over there specifically to fish for six gilled sharks, which are a large deep water 

bottom feeding species. The actual fishing for these is covered in full detail in part 3 where I target a 

fish of over a thousand pounds, so I'm not going to re-cover that part of the story here. But some degree 

of overlap between that account and this one is inevitable. 

421

To give some appreciation of water 

depth around the island, the first clue is 

the anchoring procedure. Miguel 

Gamito who was our skipper, had two 

permanent buoyed anchors to tie up to. 

The inner mark, which we didn't fish, 

was around half a mile off and was 

used for stingrays. 

angle in the rope. 

El Hierro – constantly windy and choppy 

The outer mark, which we fished every 

time at about a mile off, was his six gill 

spot. The boat would be tied to this, 

and depending on the direction of the 

tide and wind taking it either inshore or 

off, you could be fishing in two 

hundred fathoms or closer to four 

hundred fathoms just because of the 

I remember asking Miguel what depth he had on the sounder when Dave hooked up a big six gill, and 

he came back with 1,750 feet (approx. three hundred fathoms). As Dave put it, that's three Blackpool 

Towers stacked on top of each other. And when we went a little further off as we did for one particular 

night session, our starting depth was in excess of a thousand fathoms. 

By any standards then it's deep, with most of the fish, certainly the ones we were interested in, preferring 

to feed on the bottom. But not all of them. 

During the short run down the coast from La Restinga harbour where Miguel was based, to the 'Costa 

Calma' as the locals call it, which is the calm water around the bottom tip of the island sheltered from 

the persistently howling north easterly wind where the 

permanent anchors were situated, we would troll small lures 

in the hope of picking up a few bonito for bait. This 

unfortunately never produced a fish. Commercial pressure it 

seems in not unique to the British Isles. 

We did however catch quite a few small dorado on spinners, 

attracted as the species so often is by anything floating on 

the surface, which in this case was the anchor mooring buoy. 

But that was it. We neither saw nor caught anything else up 

top. 

That said, keen to add more names to my species list, I had 

taken along an outfit loaded with six hundred yards of braid 

which I was determined to use to send down some small 

baits on a sort of multi task scratching rig. 

Small Six Gill at the boat 

I think I tied on something like half a dozen hooks of 

different sizes due to the depth and time involved in getting 

the gear down and back up. It took forever before the lead 

touched bottom, though that was as nothing compared to 

how long it took getting the fish back up. Nothing to do with 

size. I didn't catch a fish bigger than around a pound. It was 

all down to the depth. 

422

On one occasion, as soon as I touched bottom, a shark was hooked up and I had to retrieve the gear as 

fast as possible to slip the mooring and get the fish away from the rope. 

I can't tell you how hard that was. My arms were pounding and aching. Even when I was bringing fish 

up gradually I was still having to stop for a rest. Now my heart was almost bursting out of my chest. 

But worth it to a degree with a selection of deep water species including argentines, bluemouth and 

beryx. 

One evening just before dark, Miguel, Dave and I took the boat around to the 'Costa Calma', then headed 

away from shore until we were well past the thousand fathom line where the boat was set up on a long 

drift that would take us through in to the early hours. 

What an eerie feeling that was. With El Hierro being so remote and so sparsely populated, there wasn't 

a light on shore to be seen anywhere. It was absolute darkness. 

Of course, we had lights onboard the boat, including a particularly powerful one high up on the mast 

which illuminated quite a wide area around us, picking out small luminous green fish darting about at 

speed with bright red squid in hot pursuit. 

Out over deep-water after dark, and the reason for us being there, the food chain progressively moves 

up in the water column as the phyto-plankton, which are small plant cells at the base of the food chain 

reliant on sunlight for photosynthesis, rise up to grab the last few rays of fading light, dragging 

everything else up with them in the process. 

Dave Devine, Escolar 

This includes zoo-plankton, which are microscopic animals 

that feed on the phyto-plankton, followed by small fish 

mopping up these tiny animals, and progressively larger fish 

all the way up to the apex predators, which in this instance 

would be a species known as escolar. A sort of tuna shaped 

fish with lots of sharp needle like teeth which follow the 

larger bait fish up progressively higher and higher in the 

water column as the night wears on. 

Initially, our whole mackerel baits were suspended in a 

spread at varying depths maybe three quarters of the way 

down, creeping progressively higher in small increments as 

the night went by. 

Meanwhile, Dave and I were sight casting small lures at the 

squid and having a great time loading them into the live-bait 

well. Actually, they put up quite a decent fight. We even 

used a couple as live-baits. 

Then the escolars ranging between maybe thirty and fifty 

pounds apiece started finding the bigger baits. Dark 

coloured fish with jewel like green eyes as the boats lights 

caught them, and gill covers as soft as wet cardboard. 

I say this, because as Dave lifted one up by its gill cover in 

traditional pose for a photograph, it ripped, allowing the fish to drop and its teeth to make multiple cuts 

down the side of his leg. There was blood everywhere, and it didn't seem to want to stop coming out. 

Actually, it was borderline bad enough to warrant going back in, with only repeated use of the first aid 

kit eventually rescuing the session, plus more escolars coming along to take Dave's mind off it, by 

which time the baits were right up near the surface. 

423

Then suddenly, out of the blue, line started screaming from one of the outfits baited with a large live 

squid. Instinctively, Dave grabbed the rod and started winding, but as he did, the ratchet stopped. The 

fish had turned and was running straight back at the boat. Unfortunately, by the time he'd caught up 

with the slack line, the culprit had thrown the hook. 

The general consensus was that it had to have been a swordfish which are not uncommon in the area, 

particularly after dark. But it was gone. And now unfortunately so too is Miguel, who moved his 

chartering operation south to Cape Verde shortly afterwards to concentrate on marlin fishing. 

CANARY ISLANDS - FUERTEVENTURA 

Fuerteventura was never intended as an inclusion here. Ascension Island was supposed to be the final 

brick in this particular wall. But within days of getting back, my wife Dawn decided she also wanted a 

holiday and booked a last minute fortnight in the Canaries, leaving me no time whatsoever to try to get 

anything pre-arranged on the fishing front, meaning that I went in completely cold. 

I was fortunate in that we were staying at Caleta de Fuste where down on the sea front in one of the 

units under the Geranios Hotel, avid local angler Aram Taholakian runs the tackle shop 'Gone Fishing', 

which besides the obvious, also sells bait, offers advice, and can help arrange boat trips. And in addition 

to that, Aram also has a very good collection of photographs of fish caught locally, more of which later. 

424 

From my very limited experience of the 

fishing here, I would divide the prospects 

up under three sub headings, these being 

shore fishing, novice & visitor boat 

fishing, and serious boat fishing, the first 

two of which I dabbled at, while the third, 

which I dearly tried to get involved in, 

unfortunately eluded me. 

From the beaches, it's mainly stingrays 

after dark, with the occasional eagle ray 

or monkfish. It's the rock marks looking 

out over deeper permanent water that are 

the main producers of variety and which 

can be productive by day. While I was 

there, pelamid (bonito) and big garfish 

Small inshore Barracuda 

were both taken on lures just to the north 

of the harbour, along with lots of the 

obligatory smaller fish such as breams and wrasses. Needlehounds and barracuda are also a possibility. 

Most numerous of all, particularly on small portions of prawn fished under a float, were bogue, followed 

very closely by turkish wrasse, though Aram tells me that the lagoons on the other side of town can 

produce numerous species of small fish, which might have proved useful here in terms of camera fodder 

had I got around to giving that a go. 

At the shop I quizzed Aram about the species I particularly needed to put in front of the camera to 

complete the fully illustrated version of the book, some of which are not only caught locally, but he 

already had shots of on his computer which he was willing to share. Fortunately I had a memory stick 

with me and was able to get a download of fish like rays bream, dusky perch, puffer fish and blackfish. 

Mixed in amongst the many photographs were also shots of fish which while I didn't need them for the 

book, I still none the less wanted to see and if possible catch. One in particular was the seven gilled

shark, which, along with a fish I had caught before at El Hierro, the escolar, they catch at night in around 

150 metres of water from the boat. 

Efforts were made to get a group of 

interested anglers together for a 

serious minded night trip, but 

unfortunately, not helped by lack of 

advance notice on my part, this wasn't 

to be. However, I could still arrange 

to fish from the same boat 'AlbaKora 

Cat' for a few hours of a morning. But 

as mixed parties tend to be holiday 

makers wanting to give it a try, you 

shouldn't expect much in the way of 

serious fishing, though we caught a 

good selection of breams, plus a 

couple of barracuda, and a moray eel. 

With regard to daytime private 

charters, the target choices are many 

Aram Taholakian, Seven Gilled Shark 

and varied, including marlin, tuna, 

amberjacks, red snappers, and 

assorted larger breams. Obviously there is a seasonal element to it all, the trick being to get working on 

the arrangements before going out rather than with just a few days left by contacting Aram through his 

'Gone Fishing' Facebook page. 

CANARY ISLANDS - GRAN CANARIA 

Of the four main holiday options in the Canary Islands group, Gran Canaria has been the most 

productive for me personally. In particular Puerto Rico at the southern end where the climate differs 

markedly from that at the northern end of the island around Las Palmas. 

I haven't fished Lanzarote, though I hear that Arrecife Pier, which I understand is a concrete harbour 

construction, can be a very good spot for a wide range of predatory species, and I did once boat fish out 

from Tenerife and found that to be a complete holiday rip-off. 

Similarly, my first taste of Puerto Rico many years ago was a bit that way too, though maybe not quite 

as bad. At all the main ports throughout the island group you will probably see big game boats with 

super sized Penn outfits on display and old faded pictures of marlin at the booking kiosks. 

Marlin are occasionally caught at each. But the window of opportunity is often very small, and with 

little in the way of predictable bait-fish holding areas to hold them up as they pass through, I personally 

don't entertain thoughts of marlin trolling, which I don't like at the best of times. 

For the most part it's a holiday angler con. For me there is too much other good stuff going on to bother 

wasting time in the vague hope of latching on to an occasional blue marlin. 

That first taste of Gran Canaria that I eluded to earlier was typical of a holiday angler being drawn in 

by all the hype. Many years ago I booked a marlin trolling trip as a quarter share on a flashy looking 

boat, where it very quickly became obvious that we were never going to see a marlin, or anything else 

at the surface for that matter. A line of though reinforced when the skipper suggested a bit of bottom 

fishing in the afternoon. 

425

Being the only 'proper' angler on-board, I was 

obviously in the best position to know how to keep 

contact with the sea bed on the drift, and for my 

trouble, I came away with a big stingray, which 

though similar to those we catch in home waters, was 

not the same species. 

Even so, recognising the trip to be rip off, I didn't 

bother going out again, preferring to float fish around 

the harbour for all sorts of small breams and wrasses, 

plus smoothhounds at the harbour mouth on squid as 

the light began to fade. 

I also discovered that a reservoir not too far from 

where I was staying was full of large mouth bass 

which would readily take a small spinner, and on 

subsequent visits, even small gaudy flies. 

Brace of Moray Eels 

So I split my time between racking up a list of all sorts 

of saltwater species you hear of but rarely get to see 

back home, plus catching lots of small bass in the 

reservoir. And it was there while taking a minute sat 

on the rocks that I noticed something out of the corner 

of my eye break surface close in just to the side of 

me. 

When I turned for a better look, it was gone. So I sat and waited to see if it might appear again, which 

eventually it did. Three huge carp in fact basking in close, quite literally like pigs with fins. 

Sadly, not having anything suitable either in the way of tackle or bait to have a go at them, there was 

nothing I could do other than watch and drool. But a mental note had been made, which would prove 

useful some years on in the future. 

By that stage my kids were grown up 

and had flown the nest. I was over at 

Puerto Rico for a winter break with my 

wife Dawn, Dave Devine, and his wife 

Kath, and as you do being anglers, Dave 

and I strolled down to the harbour which 

was now a very different proposition to 

how I remembered it from all those 

years back. 

It seemed bigger. But also, the angling 

emphasis was now on bottom fishing, in 

particular from a huge state of the art 

catamaran called 'Katfish' which fished 

for marlin in the summer and other stuff 

over the winter. So, it being December, 

we decided to give it a go. 

Danny Cove 200 pound Sringray 

They supplied everything, which for 

holiday anglers meant short rods and 

426

fixed spool reels. Fortunately we had taken our own boat gear across, just in case. 

The bait was good, the live wells had squid in them, and this time the boat was anchored after we'd 

sailed the short distance around off the cement factory on the harbour at Arguineguin. 

With half a dozen other anglers on-board at most, we had acres of space, and because we had our own 

gear, apart from providing bait, the skipper and crew pretty much left us to get on with it, which we did. 

As always, I had a quick look at how the hire rods were set up, which was with short heavy 

monofilament flowing traces and a 6/0 hook. As this is my favourite all round trace anyway, Dave and 

I knocked up versions of the same, and very soon we were all in to a seemingly never ending stream of 

stingrays and eagle rays, typically running between twenty and forty pounds. 

There were a few bigger fish. In fact, one chap from Southampton fishing with one of the fixed spool 

outfits supplied onboard managed to boat a stingray that went over two hundred pounds, which like 

everything else we caught was very quickly released. 

Impressed by the day, we booked on again, and this time I persuaded my wife Dawn to tag along, who 

like the rest of us caught stingrays and eagle rays. But there were also two particular stand-out moments 

on that trip which neither of us will ever forget. 

I'd decided to write an article on the venue and was spending as much time taking photographs as I was 

fishing, which meant I had to leave Dawn in charge of my rod too which was still fishing while I was 

otherwise pre-occupied. 

The first incident was a cry for help 

from Dawn who had a superb 

monkfish at the surface which tipped 

the scales at fifty five pounds which 

we weighed and photographed before 

putting it back. 

The second incident shortly afterwards 

however, was a bit more serious. A 

bite had developed on my rod, which 

as I was busy, I asked Dawn to deal 

with, little realising the mauling she 

was about to receive. 

Dave Devine, Sierra Mackerel 

To cut a long story short, the fish took 

off ripping line from the reel, then 

clamped itself immovably on the 

bottom. 'Choo Choo Monstrosa' the 

skipper said, which I later discovered 

translates to monster stingray. 

We'd previously seen a two hundred pounder on a fixed spool outfit, but this fish was something else. 

In the end they fitted her up with the full stand-up harness normally reserved for the marlin fishing, 

lifted the anchor, and literally followed the fish in the direction of Africa, none of which made any 

difference. That fish was never coming up. 

Eventually, with time running out, Dawn and the skipper started pulling for the break, which itself was 

a job and half. 

Back at the kiosk I got the English speaking chap to translate. The potential it seems for stingray in 

these waters can exceed five hundred pounds. So who knows. It was certainly one very big fish. 

427

Wondering what else might be down there, on subsequent trips, Dave and I started experimenting with 

smaller baits and different rigs adding barracuda and couches bream to the list, plus a fish that looked 

like a sierra mackerel with plenty of sharp serrated teeth. 

One Australian woman also brought up quite a sizeable powerful looking pargo. Another fish was the 

almaco jack, which when I showed interest in catching jacks, the skipper in his best broken English said 

he fished for big jacks over a patch of reefy ground nearby from time to time. 

Back on the shore with the help of the English speaker at the booking kiosk again, I pushed the skipper 

on the subject of the jacks, and he agreed that we could try live-baits next time out for what turned out 

to be amberjacks. The problem was that when next time came around, the day was wild and wet with 

white horses everywhere, and the tactic was to suspend the live-baits just off the bottom using clear 

plastic water bottles used as floats. 

I've caught lots of big AJ's over the years in Florida, but always on baits or lures dropped straight down. 

Nothing like this. It worked though. Well, of a fashion. We got some really violent takes which would 

rip the live-baits clear of the hook, yet we didn't actually hook a fish between us. 

In the main this was because besides being barely able to stand up in the chop, we couldn't see the floats 

either behind the curling waves, so in the end we called it a day mid afternoon. It was then as we made 

our way across the marina, wet, bedraggled, and cold, that we spotted an advertising flier offering 

guided carp fishing trips, and I suddenly found myself thinking back to those monsters I'd once seen 

while fishing for large mouth bass all those years ago. 

With more than a twist of irony, that evening sat at the bar waiting for our 

Embalse de Chira wives to finish applying their slap to go out into town for dinner, there was an 

Englishman and his son sat close by who were joined by a scruffy looking 

bronzed chap in his thirties who handed them a VHS video cassette. We could hear them talking, and 

as soon as the word carp was mentioned, we started ear-wigging. 

428

As it would turn out, this was the chap named on the fliers we'd seen earlier. The holiday-maker and 

his son it seems had been out carp fishing with him that day and had had a burster with fish well up into 

the thirties, and the guide, who turned out to be ex-pat English carp fanatic Dave Beecham, was 

dropping off a video of the day. 

He didn't stay long, but it was long enough for us to know that we needed to grab him as he left, which 

we did, and a trip was arranged for a couple of days hence. 

No gear was needed. No food or drink either. We would each get a high quality three rod set up with 

all the latest thinking down at the business end. 

Bait, feed, and food for us was also part of the deal, and we would be picked up outside the hotel for 

the drive up in to the mountains where a number of lakes had been created by dams to collect rain water 

for crop irrigation. 

There are no natural lakes on the Gran Canaria. Obviously no indigenous freshwater fish species either. 

Carp were put into these lakes to grub about and muddy the water in the hope of keeping weed growth 

down, which apparently they did quite well. Large mouth bass were present too, though the story behind 

that introduction was a little less clear. 

On the morning of the trip I was apprehensive. As someone with a morbid fear of heights who once 

decided to take a hire car on a drive across the mountainous interior, I knew what was coming. 

Back then, the roads were so narrow, that once committed, the only way was forward. There was no 

conceivable way of turning round. The only way out was to abandon the car and walk, which was too 

far, and still almost as bad. 

The sheer drops, some literally thousands of feet in places 

and without crash barriers didn't help either. Fortunately, the 

intervening years had seen some barriers erected on the 

more dangerous bends. Not that I looked. I hardly dared 

open my eyes all the way from Puerto Rico to Embalse de 

Chira, one of the largest and probably most accessible of the 

islands irrigation reservoirs. 

De Chira is a vast piece of water in a spectacular almost 

alpine setting, though a little bit chilly in the early morning 

December sunshine. 

Dave had chosen to take us close to the dam wall where he 

piled in the boilies, the ripples from which were matched by 

the number of ripples made by topping fish as far as the eye 

could see. 

I'm no carp angler, so it's not for me to comment, on top of 

which, his business was working with holiday makers rather 

than serious carp anglers. So maybe carp specialists would 

have done things differently, I don't know. 

What I can say is that the gear was good and we had fish to 

Phill Williams, Canaries Carp just over twenty five pounds. And again, several years on, 

we had more carp to just shy of thirty pounds, which for a 

sea angler grabbing a day away from the beach is good enough for me. 


429

CUBA 

Cuba for me is a country of contradiction. Its 

geographical position and political isolation suggest 

it should have lots of fish. But when you go there 

looking for them, you can't help but wonder where 

they all are. 

The simple answer it seems is that for the most part 

the locals have caught and eaten them. Forced to take 

anything and everything, regardless of the 

consequences, austerity is a powerful driving force. 

Add to this the fact of the state owning and having a 

monopoly on everything, lack of incentive is another 

reason why the fishing is poor. Even if the fish were 

still there, local people it seems are not in a position 

to help anglers exploit them. 

Two examples of this that I came across are that when 

I did find a boat to fish from, because it was 

government owned and the crew received a regular 

wage, even the weakest of excuses not to sail was 

enough to cancel trips. So I went off looking for 

alternatives, and eventually found a chap in charge of speed boat trips for tourists, who, after much third 

party cloak and dagger arrangements to go out after normal work time into the mangrove swamps and 

fish, never turned up. 

I had to endure similar experiences with so called fly fishing guides working outside their normal day 

jobs too, though in fairness, I did see them turn up occasionally for some arrangements. So, a country 

lacking incentives, and for the most part also lacking fish. But not everywhere. 

Having watched TV programs about the wonderful fishing potential in and around Cuba, I can't help 

wondering just how genuine these reports are. You never seem to see much in the way of hard evidence. 

The odd fish here and there, but certainly nothing that you couldn't get as regularly and with much more 

ease in nearby Florida. 

The truth of the matter seems to be that if you want to do well in Cuba, you have to go to areas where 

the locals can't fish, and that means officially restricted areas of which there are just a few. 

The main angling centres are guided operations, usually run by outsiders given permission to set up in 

the national parks, where for obvious reasons the locals either cannot or dare not go in to fish, or in 

areas where the locals are excluded for 'other' reasons. 

I first investigated the former, and while the fishing looked interesting, decided against it as I was there 

for a family holiday wanting to take days out rather than committing to a full week at a time. 

The latter however was much easier to come to terms with, though it still had limitations of a different 

sort. You needed to base yourself within a restricted area, which looking back at the location I chose, 

was no hardship whatsoever. 

My choice was to to book a stay at Cayo Coco which is located towards the extremity of a long isolated 

finger of land terminating in a few small islands along the north coast of Cuba, stretching from around 

Nuevitas to well beyond Moron. 

430

A stretch of land separated from the mainland by a long lagoon with very few roads across it, each of 

which has a check point allowing through only official personnel, and even then for the most part on a 

daily return basis. 

This is a four and five star all-inclusive luxury resort, where people like hotel staff and other essential 

workers are bussed in and back out 

every day. 

The one concession to this was a small 

block house where some essential 

workers were put up to stay longer 

term, and though still very tightly 

controlled, it was these people who 

helped me with the shore fishing. 

They still kept everything to eat, but 

with numbers of fish taken so small 

scale compared to the geographical 

area in question, it didn't seems to 

make much difference to population 

numbers. Nor to fish sizes either. And 

while I'm certain that with a bit of 

exploration there would be many great 

John Adams, Red Snapper 

fishing marks along the connecting 

causeway and around the fringes of the 

exclusion zone, there was one spot in particular which I fished regularly. 

With hindsight, I wish I'd chosen to stay at Cayo Guillermo. The hotels at both resorts are exactly the 

same, in most cases run by the same chains. Where I lost out was proximity to the fishing, the best of 

which was from the road bridge across the inlet close to where the hotels are situated at Cayo Guillermo. 

Each morning I would have to catch a bus, which then stopped at every hotel en route through to the 

turning round point beyond the Cayo Guillermo hotel area, which took around forty minutes. The draw 

back was that this service ended around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, which meant that if I wasn't on the 

last bus back, I was stranded. 

Thankfully, knowing I was there to fish and would be going back, the driver looked out for me and 

would wait. In fact, on one occasion, the ticket collector even came looking for me. But it was still very 

restrictive. I couldn't fish in the evenings, which people staying at the adjacent hotels could, and from 

what they told me, that made a very big difference. 

Close by was also one of the block houses where a few of the locals were billeted, and with nothing 

else to do while off-shift, they would too fish from the bridge. 

Most used hand-lines, because while I was there, tackle of any sort was virtually impossible to come 

by. The nearest tackle shop I could find was in Havana which was quite a reasonable flight time away. 

Maybe the new accord with Barrack Obama will now help make a difference. It needs to. 

A couple of the locals had rods and reels given to them at the end of holidays by anglers they'd helped. 

Otherwise it was a coke tin with pebbles inside it sat on a hand line as a bite indicator. Yet still they 

caught some amazing fish. 

The main target species was red snapper, the best of which I saw caught topped fifteen pounds. Not the 

most numerous fish however. That would have been jacks. 

431

Stingrays were another fish I saw caught, and you 

would regularly see sharks, barracudas, and 

needlefish swimming by, all of which were caught 

on small live-baits which you could catch to order on 

size ten hooks and tiny pieces of squid around the 

legs of the bridge. 

Boat fishing unfortunately was another matter. After 

numerous false starts, I eventually found a small 

marina tucked way out of sight down a dirt track 

through the mangroves, where there were some very 

nice angling boats tied up. 

I even managed to book a trip, though not at the 

marina itself. Nobody there would take 

responsibility for that. In the end, after the holiday 

rep had been dragged into the arrangements, the 

hotel was able to place a booking on my behalf. 

Dawn Williams, reef Barracuda 

That unfortunately was cancelled a couple of times, 

supposedly due to the weather, though in all honesty 

it looked fine to me. Again the crew were on a fixed 

salary arrangement, so it didn't matter to them 

whether they sailed or they didn't. 

Eventually we did get afloat, taking a long route down the inside of a fringing reef looking for a place 

to cross, passing a boat stranded on the reef top that hadn't made the best choice of crossing point. Then 

at last we were out in the open sea. 

I think I was there in February. Whatever the date, it was a change-over point in terms of fish species, 

so we were told not to expect too much. 

Certainly we should expect the wahoo to be gone, and with the summer species yet to arrive, on top of 

which as it was mainly undiscerning holiday makers as opposed to anglers who booked these boats, we 

might have to make do with barracudas. 

Not content with that, I went up top and started talking to the skipper, suggesting things we could try 

instead of working the edge of the reef all day with lures. Willing to blank trying for something better, 

I twisted his arm to venture further off. But we were still trolling a spread of lures of different sizes and 

at differing depths. 

Eventually we spotted some frigate birds circling one specific patch, went over to see what might be 

attracting them, and immediately we were in to dorado. 

Continuing to work the area even after the birds had gone, we added more dorado, and a couple of nice 

bonus wahoo to our tally. Then it was back inshore to anchor up and dine. 

432

The food was very nice. Fresh lobster, plus some 

dorado steaks. What miffed me was that I wasn't given 

prior notice of the schedule and so didn't take my little 

telescopic rod and small end gear with me, because the 

shallow reef beneath us was alive with all sorts of 

groupers, snappers and the like. 

So a very good bonus opportunity was missed. Then it 

was back to the trolling, only this time we did stick to 

the tried and tested reef edge, taking a seemingly never 

ending stream of average size barracudas. 

I did however make up for missing out on the reef 

fishing with the telescopic rod in the days that followed 

at two locations I eventually found very close to the 

hotel. 

The first was a huge rock on the beach which I fished 

from with prawns bought from the hotel kitchen. This 

turned up all sorts of species, with a few break off's by 

fish way too powerful for the light tackle I was using. 

Phill Williams, brace of Dorado The other spot was a small wooden bridge over what 

appeared to be a river, but was actually a tidal gap 

between the mangroves, from which I caught all sorts 

of small fish ranging from needlefish to porcupine fish and small snappers. 

All interesting stuff. But a far cry from the promise of a Caribbean angling paradise, which from a 

purely holiday perspective it most certainly is. 

EGYPT - LAKE NASSER 

As a country, I don't like Egypt. It's dirty, noisy, and certainly in the more populated areas, everyone is 

constantly trying to see the inside of your wallet one way or another. Quite literally, a land of waving 

palms. 

Thank goodness then when we arrived we only had the one night to endure at Aswan where we stayed 

inside the hotel in readiness for a four am convoy to the fishing on Lake Nasser. 

This was supposedly a military protected convoy due to the threat of Islamic terrorism for our long 

arduous journey through the dessert to Abu Simbel close to the border with Sudan. 

It started off well enough, then very quickly descended into a live version of the wacky races, with 

trucks and coaches all trying to over-take each other in the dark on the narrow dessert track, ducking 

and weaving between each other and the numerous wrecked vehicles lying by the way-side to the point 

where there was no convoy left, which is presumably when the army contingent turned around and 

headed back to base. 

433

At Abu Simbel it was a very quick turnaround. The gear 

was taken off the mini bus, put straight onto one of the 

boats, and we were away down the lake to set up camp 

on one of the islands which we were informed was 

technically inside Sudan. 

There were three boats in all. Two for fishing with some 

supplies onboard each, plus a third full of camping and 

cooking gear which the support crew also slept in, the 

idea being to work our way back up the lake to an 

agreed rendezvous point a week later, fishing and 

camping along the way. 

But that would start the following morning. For day one 

we would remain on the island with an evening boat trip 

planned. In the meantime, we were free to wander and 

fish, which is exactly what we did. 

To better understand the situation, a little of the history 

and geography of Lake Nasser itself might help. With a 

surface area of over two thousand square miles, a length 

of three hundred and forty miles, and a width of twenty 

two miles at its widest point, this is one of the largest 

man made reservoirs anywhere in the world. 

Constructed between 1958 and 1971 under the 

Dress to blend in: PW, small Tiger Fish 

instruction of Colonel Nasser, the Aswan High Dam 

across the River Nile has impounded this huge volume 

of water, which amongst other things produces much of Egypt's electricity through hydro-generation. 

What it has also done is create a very stable and productive habitat for fish like nile perch and tiger fish, 

both of which can grow huge in these parts, and were the main reason for us being there. 

That first day on the island was a real eye opener. As with the rest of the desert in these parts, it was a 

mix of sand and rock, with an area of beach adjacent to the camp. 

We'd been advised to take along heavy duty spinning gear as well as trolling outfits and large plugs. 

Wire traces too, which, when you look at the dentistry of a tiger fish, it's blatantly obvious why. 

We were also advised to swap the trebles on the various large heavy spoons for quality 6/0 single hooks, 

which again we did, and off we set as a loose group along the beach to throw out a few lures in the runup 

to the boat fishing later on the edge of darkness after we'd eaten. 

We'd been informed that the beaches would most likely produce tiger fish, and that if we wanted to 

target nile perch, to stick to the deeper rock marks. But nothing could have prepared us for what was to 

come. 

I stayed with the group that fished the beach. Not really knowing how best to approach things, we all 

opted for different strategies to compare notes, if or when any success came along. 

The water was like gin, so you could see if anything was interested, but we saw nothing. Not even a 

follow. Then suddenly, one of the lads was shouting followed by lots of splashing about and leaping as 

this huge toothy bar of silver repeatedly took to the air. He'd cracked the code. 

434

What you needed to do was cast as far as you could, then 

retrieve as fast as your arms would let you. Initially, all you 

would see was the lure racing back in through empty water. 

Then suddenly, out of nowhere like a torpedo, a silver shape 

would come tearing in behind it, and in one swift split 

second move would grab, take to the air, and start emptying 

the spool with breath taking power and speed. 

Tiger fish are spectacular creatures, and big tiger fish are in 

a class of their own. Typically, these would average between 

ten and fifteen pounds apiece. Absolutely amazing, and they 

fought like tigers too. 

Once we'd sussed the technique, we caught literally dozens 

of the things, not only that day, but every day when we 

stopped and had a bit of time to ourselves. 

Inevitably, we also picked up an odd one trolling rapala's as 

we progressed up the lake looking for nile perch while 

moving from camp to camp. In the main though, we had 

them from the shore, which in places was a bit dodgy, as 

there were scorpions and snakes, not too mention 

crocodiles and larger fury critters knocking about too. 

Chris Barnard, decent Tiger Fish 

One of the lads stood on a large loose rock from underneath 

which emerged a cobra. We could also hear crocodiles crashing about at night on some of the beaches 

where we'd set up camp, and every morning there would be dog-like foot prints in the sand between the 

camp beds, for which reason, Dave Devine, Kevin Eardley and I decided it might be best to sleep on 

the boat. 

We had plenty of nile perch too, though not unfortunately any of the really big ones. For that you needed 

to be based at one of the better permanent camping areas, which for whatever reason, the organisers 

only offered to repeat customers. So we were on the move constantly. 

The best nile perch we had was a fish of seventy one pounds by Dave Devine caught after dark. We 

saw plenty of fish in the twenty to forty pound bracket through, and lots of smaller specimens on light 

plugs and spinners cast from the rocks. 

I also managed to find a quiet little backwater 

at one location which looked like a small 

lagoon. There I was able to try a spot of fly 

fishing with some streamer lures I'd tied to 

short wire traces, and managed to bag myself 

a small tiger fish on the fly, which I was 

especially pleased with. 

Dave Devine, 71 pound Nile Perch 

So a decent trip with all the main boxes 

ticked, except for a freshwater one hundred 

pounder, which we later discovered the other 

party headed up by Barrie Rickards had 

managed quite a few of at the permanent 

camp. That it seems is most definitely the 

way forward on there. 

435

GAMBIA 

I've fished Gambia on a number of occasions. In fact, on my last visit I even got married there with the 

taxi driver on the video camera and two of the church cleaners as witnesses. And speaking of witnessing 

things, because my visits always had a few years of a gap between them, I have been able to witness at 

first hand how the fishing has progressively declined in quality. 

Denton Creek Fishing Centre 

You get to hear all sorts of rumours as to why this is, such as the 

selling off commercial fishing rights to certain Asian interests. 

I don't know where the truth lies. What I do know is that it happened very quickly, going from superb 

to poor over a very short period, which is bad for visiting anglers; bad for the tourism economy, and 

most of all, bad for the locals, many of whom lead subsistence lives reliant on what they can catch from 

their dug out canoes as the main source of food and income for themselves and their families, and it is 

those people down at the pointed end who always seem to come out of things worst off. 

The inspiration for my first visit was a photograph of a friend of mine Graeme Pullen, sat on the rear 

seat of a nineteen foot orkney fastliner holding the tails of two three hundred pound plus lemon sharks, 

which seemed to stretch forever towards the camera along the floor of the boat. 

Based on that, in 1990 four of us went over for a mix of small boat and charter boat fishing out of Oyster 

Creek which separates Banjul Island from the rest of the country. 

Big sharks had been our primary target, of which we hooked several. We had some enormous lemon 

sharks on the trace at the side of the boat, plus at least one huge black tip. But, through a catalogue of 

errors, not a single proper shark either boated or deliberately released, all of which must go down to the 

man in charge. 

436

He in turn blamed the local lads on the boat working for him, 

but none of it was down to them. As a result, when we got 

back in they came over to us concerned and apologised, but 

there was nothing to apologise for. 

I felt sorry for them. It wasn't their fault. It was all down to 

faulty traces, trying to boat big fish while they were still way 

too fresh, and giving bad instructions to the lads. Needless to 

say we never fished on that boat again. 

When we fished from the smaller boats, a couple of the same 

lads took us out in the orkney's fishing further around the 

coast off Bakau where we had a great time. No big sharks, 

but plenty of fish. We even organised a competition across 

the two boats we were fishing from, each with two of the 

local crew looking after two of us. 

The Gambian lads were given a fishing rod apiece for an 

international match between Gambia and the UK. I can't 

remember who won. It doesn't matter. It was a fun couple of 

days afloat with loads of stringrays, kasava and kajele taken 

on uptide tactics. 

Gordon Thornes, Red Snapper 

Those kajele certainly fight well. One fish however which 

didn't fight well but we found particularly troublesome to 

catch was the butter fish. A fish which reminded me of a large blue-brown garden slug with white spots, 

armed with four guillotine like teeth with which it could bite through the shanks of the hooks. 

We also did a bit of rapala trolling through the mangrove 

creek back to base in the evenings, adding barracuda, red 

snappers and crevalle jacks to the list. 

My next visit was all fished from the smaller boats. 

Gordon Thornes and I, plus our wives, had gone over to 

team up with Graeme and his wife who were already over 

there. 

By that stage, little if any thought was given over to 

sharks. They were a thing of the past. This time we put in 

a lot more effort trolling the rapalas, which took quite a 

few barracuda, red snapper, and crevalle jacks, the latter 

sometimes being encountered in huge boiling shoals at 

the surface crashing through the bait fish concentrations. 

One particular day when around mid afternoon when we 

hadn't done a great deal, the skipper who I mentioned 

previously, came over to us in one of the other boats to 

say he had an airport pick up to make, and asked us to 

keep an eye on the local lads at the helm. 

Within minutes of him vanishing, we suddenly started 

piling into the barracuda and red snapper, which would 

have been kept by him and sold on. So as we made our 

Gordon with a ‘Sea Snake’ 

437

way back in amongst the dugouts, we give the fish away to the locals, telling him later that the fishing 

had remained poor after he'd gone. 

On one particularly blowy day we decided to stay inside the mangrove creeks to fish a species match 

with a mix of trolling and bait fishing. A case of having to be innovative with various scratching rigs, 

home made floats and the like. 

Nothing big came along, but the variety was fairly impressive, with everything from sunpats and angel 

fish through to snappers and frog fish. 

Most impressive of all, but at the same time also quite worrying were the sea snakes, which loved peeled 

prawns. These were brown and yellow hooped with blue heads. More worrying still, we managed to 

run aground on a mud bank with a dropping tide and had to get out of the boat to push. 

It was the thought of what might be down there in the mud as we walked bare foot through it that 

concerned us most. Thankfully we soon got the boat afloat again, then later on found out that the sea 

snakes were not in fact snakes at all, but banded snake eels. Still, better safe than sorry. 

On my final visit I fished with another ex-pat Englishman Steve Robinson, again out of Oyster Creek, 

and again aboard one of the orkney longliners. But to get out of the creek you had to sail under the main 

road bridge, which on one particular day almost saw the end of us. 

Mr. & Mrs Williams actual wedding photograph 

The tide was making and it couldn't have been too far off high water, so it was a bit of a dash to get 

beyond it and away in time. The problem was that half way under we got the roof of the cuddy wedged 

438

against the concrete above us and had to start palming the boat along, which with the tide rising, was 

getting increasingly difficult. 

Had we not pushed it free, I dread to think what might have happened. We would have been wedged 

there with the water coming up, and way too much current to try to swim for it, besides which I can't 

swim anyway. 

By that stage in the proceedings, Gambia had started making quite a reputation for itself as a big tarpon 

venue, so we bought half a dozen live mullet from one of the local gill netters on a nearby beach to give 

that a try. 

We could see tarpon topping and tailing inshore, but they weren't having any of it. So it was back off 

to the usual marks bottom fishing with slices of bonga and peeled prawns, where we caught a mix of 

pompano, kasava and kajele, which were now being called captain fish. 

These were the prize fish to be catching. Excellent scrappers, and still reasonably plentiful. But you 

could sense by the numbers, mix, and size of what was coming up that the writing was on the wall. 

They still get some good fish from the boats, and I hear that there are still good numbers of big guitar 

fish to be had from the beaches. But if I'm honest, I think we saw the best of it, as we have at quite a 

number of the more exotic venues we've fished over the years. 

GERMANY 

You could be forgiven for thinking that Germany isn't exactly an automatic stand-out place as an angling 

destination, and certainly not for sea angling. But you would be wrong. For along with the other 

countries looking out onto the Baltic Sea, it offers opportunities you will find nowhere else in the world, 

as I discovered in 2010. 

Through Warrior Boats, I was put in touch with Dr. 

Sven Hille who is a research scientist at the Leibniz 

Institute for Baltic Sea Research at Rostock in 

northern Germany. Sven had bought himself a Warrior 

165 which he had specially kitted out for deep water 

trolling, and was at that time taking it around some of 

the big angling shows in Germany to promote trolling 

techniques. 

Knowing that I had produced a number of 

demonstration video's for Warrior, he contacted me, 

firstly to see if he could use the Warrior 165 video at 

the shows, and secondly, to see if it would be possible 

to do a re-edit with all the captions translated into 

German, both of which we did. 

Then, many emails later, Sven suggested I might like 

to take a flight over there to see the trolling project in 

action, which sounded like a very good idea indeed. 

Sven Hille, Baltic Salmon brace 

To get a better picture of what the fishing scene is like 

along Germany's Baltic coast, there are a number of 

things you need to know about the place. 

439

First amongst these is that the Baltic is no ordinary sea. While in reality it isn't land-locked, to all intents 

and purposes it might just as well be. There is a narrow opening to the North Sea between Denmark and 

Sweden, after which it has a coastline with Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and finally 

Russia, losing its salinity continually as it progresses eastwards. 

Off the German coast it is still quite saline. Yet even there it supports what we over here would see as 

an interesting mix of saltwater and freshwater species, which it does because the lighter density 

freshwater from river inputs and run-off floats on top of the more dense saltwater, creating two well 

defined bands. 

Inshore, along the shallower parts of the coast, the freshwater might extend throughout the entire water 

column, allowing colonisation by those species which have a high tolerance of very low salinity 

brackish conditions from both sides of the divide. 

What you also need to understand is a bit about the relevant politics here too. Germany if you recall 

was a divided country, until Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev gave the east German people the all clear 

to cross and later demolish the Berlin Wall, eventually leading to reunification. 

Prior to that there was a very strictly enforced border which hit the coast close to Wismar, putting Sven's 

home town of Rostock just inside the eastern sector. 

The importance of this fact is that offshore fishing was to all intents and purposes banned there. The 

east Germans would not risk anyone escaping by boat, particularly in the border regions, which on the 

one hand may well have led to improved fish stocks by virtue of no exploitation, but on the other, left 

local anglers with a lot of catching up to do once the wall came down. 

This they have done astoundingly well. Not only in terms of acquiring boats and technology, but equally 

important, getting the best use out of them. 

At the same time, they have also recognised the need to conserve and protect their assets, with a fishing 

licensing scheme that requires thirty to forty hours of supervised lessons. This is then followed up with 

a written exam looking at fish specialisation, biology, equipment, treatment of fish, and relevant 

legislation. Visiting anglers however can get a tourist fishing permit. 

To be in with a shot of seeing the offshore trolling scene at its best, Sven suggested I compete with him 

in the annual trolling competition out from Schaprode on the Baltic island of Rügen where he moors 

his boat. 

Unfortunately for our plans, this fell 

right in the middle of the aircraft 

grounding fiasco following the 

Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in 

Iceland, which saw me stranded in 

southern Spain. 

It took me three days to get home by 

bus, train, ferry, and hire car, arriving 

back on the day of the flight out to 

Germany. Not that it mattered. With all 

flights still grounded, the Baltic visit 

was put on the back burner, and by the 

time flight restrictions were lifted, the 

effective fishing season was all but 

over. 

Inshore Baltic Pike 

440

The one remaining option was to go over and give it a go anyway, then trail the boat back to Rostock 

for the summer. Not unfortunately the favoured option, but I allowed myself to be persuaded and rebooked 

the flight to Hamburg, then on by train to Rostock where I was met at the station by Sven, and 

later Christian Bruckmer. 

Up to that point, everything was going according to plan. Well, sort of. Unfortunately when we got to 

the water-front at Rostock, we could hardly stand up as the wind was that strong. 

It was no better the following afternoon either at Schaprode looking out across the lagoon to the small 

island of Hiddensee. There were white horses literally everywhere, and this was arguably the most 

sheltered area, with the small island acting as a natural wind break for the powerful westerly gale. 

Even so, wanting to sample everything on offer, we still took the boat out for a couple of battered hours 

spinning for pike which can grow huge in the brackish waters close in to shore. Then it was off to bed 

in a caravan for a long night of buffeting by the storm. 

The following morning when we re-grouped it was unbelievable. No wind, no waves, and lots of 

pleasant spring sunshine. The big unanswered question was, would there be any residual swell, 

particularly up around the northern edge of the main island, where most of the offshore deep water 

trolling takes place. 

But first things first. We dropped in 

over a small wreck just on the edge of 

the open sea, on the one hand to see 

what conditions were going to be like, 

and on the other to catch a few cod 

which live in the saline water beneath 

the brackish surface water floating 

above it where the salmon, sea trout 

and pike prefer to live. 

Inshore Baltic Cod 

Out deep in say a hundred feet of water 

over the wrecks, cod are always going 

to be present, and with no tide to 

contend with, we were able to fish ultra 

light rods with fixed spool reels 

working light pirks and weighted 

shads. 

Both on and off the wreck we found plenty of cod in the one to three pound bracket, and no doubt had 

we stayed longer, we could have caught dozens of the things, as well as being in with a good shot at 

some of the better fish. What an amazing place. Then later, with the trolling lures out, we also picked 

up quite a few garfish. 

It's weird how the fish distribute themselves there, with the cod under the lighter density brackish water, 

the garfish, salmon and bigger sea trout offshore close to the transition level over the deeper water, and 

the pike and smaller sea trout in closer to the islands shore. 

Fortunately, with conditions improving all the time eventually leading to an oily flat calm, all options 

were open, so offshore we went, where Sven put on a full trolling demonstration for a YouTube video, 

and at last, the real fishing was able to get under way. 

This involved the use of double clipped down-riggers, deep diving vanes, and side trolling vanes, 

collectively all working a spread of something like a dozen or so lures at various depths, and all without 

even a hint of a tangle which was an art form in itself. I was well impressed. 

441

Ulrich Schneider, Salmon to 42 pounds 

442

More important still, so too were the fish, with some very nice salmon well topping twenty pounds, plus 

a couple of bonus double figure sea trout, one of which we later dropped in at a restaurant, nipped back 

to the site for a shower, then returned to devour it with a side order of pan fried potatoes, beer, and later, 

glasses of chilled vodka. 

Germany would make an ideal destination for British and Irish anglers to trail boats to. A cursory look 

suggests this would mean taking a ferry to Holland and trailing the rest of the way, which on the quality 

of the roads in that part of the world isn't so bad. I've trailed much further here in the UK and Ireland. 

The one major drawback is that the fishing is so unlike anything we would ever do around our islands, 

that nobody could expect to go over there and simply give it a try. 

Besides the obvious technical void, there is the cost of gear such as down-riggers, which back home 

may never see light of day again, though they could I suppose have some potential value for bass, but 

that would be limited. 

A far better idea might be to book some guided fishing aboard one of the small boats operating out of 

Schaprode, and possibly to do that during the late spring trolling competition. That way you get instant 

access to the equipment required, and the knowledge of how to use it. 

Salmon and sea trout are the main target species during the competition, but for other times, as I hinted 

earlier, the pike fishing can be out of this world. 

As for the cod, I hear that there are also larger charter boats which specialize in this, though I have no 

first hand experience of this. 


GIBRALTAR 

Situated close to the entrance-exit of the Mediterranean and 

the Atlantic, Gibraltar is in quite a unique position in that 

fish making the passage through this narrowing gap tend to 

be squeezed up into a tighter concentration that at other 

locations in that vicinity. Add to this very deep water close 

by, and you have the potential for an excellent inshore and 

offshore fishery. 

On the down side however, the Mediterranean being 

renowned for being full of mainly small fish where anything 

and everything is exploited to the maximum by every man 

and his dog, while this might not necessarily be the fault of 

the Gibraltarians themselves, by virtue of proximity, at face 

value, chances are they too could be forced to suffer to some 

extent as a result. 

Having said that, on the back of some very interesting 

reports regarding rod and line fishing in the area, I decided 

to start checking out if it might none the less still be worth a 

visit. 

Tony Triay, Couches Bream 

Much of this was centred on telephone calls and 

correspondence with Gibraltar international angler and 

443

local tackle shop owner Tony Triay, who in turn approached the tourist authorities to see if we might 

set up a promotional visit. 

Later, having got the green light, four of us then went over to try out a mix of shore and boat fishing. 

The shore in the mornings and the boat in the afternoons on into the evening with Tony after he had 

shut up shop, which as it would turn out was a very nice balance. 

The one potential drawback with this was that age old problem faced by all boat anglers in hot climates; 

sea breezes. As the land heats up over the day getting considerably warmer than the sea causing the air 

above it to rise, it pulls in brisk onshore breezes, which by late afternoon can throw up quite a nasty 

chop. Not every day. But we had our share, which can make for troublesome complications around 'The 

Rock'. 

The geography of this very British 'outpost' is such that most private boats tie up in the marina on the 

western side quite close to the border with Spain. If you want to fish the eastern side, which we did, you 

then have to motor all the way round, which means that once you've passed Rosia Bay, there is no 

shelter as such to tuck into if you need to. 

Nowhere at all to land, which as I was to find out later can have its safety implications. But we did it, 

and on some days it was quite choppy. Not so much once you got around to the eastern side. But you 

always knew that it was there waiting for you on the return leg. 

Much of the fishing there is for breams, which come in quite a wide range of colours, shapes and sizes. 

The one's we had most dealings with were white bream, couches bream, soldiers bream, and two banded 

bream, which we took on quite a wide range of baits. 

The most interesting of these baits and approaches was the use of live shell-fish opened up sufficiently 

to nick the hook into the flesh, then allowed to flutter down once the tide had slackened with the shells 

still in place and no lead on the line. You can't get a more natural presentation than that. 

I mentioned earlier the deep water close in. It also runs very hard, so even with braid and loads of lead, 

keeping bottom contact at times can be very difficult. But we must have managed it while trying to 

catch scabbards one day, as we came up with of all things, black mouthed dogfish and some small velvet 

sharks out off the western side, and on another occasion down off the southern tip, again in deep very 

water, you could catch as many bluemouth as you could ever wish to see. 

I'm told there are also big six gilled 

sharks in the area, though we didn't get 

to try for those. Our experience of the 

really deep water fishing actually was 

little more than a brief diversion, then 

it was back to the real job at hand of 

searching out quality bream. 

With that in mind, one day we motored 

around to the eastern side to fish some 

fairly deep lying heavy ground close to 

where a number of very large cargo 

ships were anchored up. Tony assured 

us this mark held some absolutely 

enormous hurta whose mouths are 

filled with fearsome teeth and have a 

love of live fish. 

Brace of Mullet 

444

Our problem was catching the necessary live-baits, which were extremely difficult to come by. But we 

did eventually get a few, and we did connect with what presumably were large powerful hurta bream. 

Dave Devine in particular who had one so powerful it was completely un-stoppable and looked like it 

might drag his arms from their sockets before finally making it back to sanctuary in the reef. Needless 

to say none were landed. 

When the live-baits were gone, we were forced to revert back to cut bait, whereupon Dave's brother 

John brought up a small moray eel of several pounds. 

I remember it lying there on the deck with its head just poking out of the landing net, so I decided to 

grab a few photographs. Unfortunately, as I leaned over to pick up my camera, my left hand must have 

been trailing close to the moray's mouth and it struck. 

Instinctively, I whipped my arm back with the fish still attached, and presumably banged it against the 

side of the boat causing it to let ago. But by then unfortunately the damage was already done. 

One finger in particular was cut right down to the white bone, and there was blood everywhere. In that 

short time it had inflicted over thirty assorted cuts and scratches across my fingers and hand. 

Immediately it was bandaged up, but it wouldn't stop bleeding. So the bandage was tied tighter to the 

point that my finger end was turning purple and throbbing. 

Unfortunately, being so close to the border on the wrong side to go ashore, we couldn't have been further 

away from help, besides which, everyone else wanted to get on with the fishing, as you do. 

The blood however just kept kept on coming. Then we spotted a police boat close by. Apparently there 

had been a border incident involving some sort of gun firing the day before from the Spanish side, so 

the police were on high visual alert. 

Tony made a quick call to them on the VHF to see if they could help and over they came, took me 

onboard, then radioed ahead for an ambulance to come to a tiny piece of beach next to the border, and 

promptly took me in. 

This tiny beach as it turns out was quite steep, though not perhaps steep enough for the police boat to 

nose right up onto, besides which there was a bit of an edge to the sea. The ambulance was there ready 

and waiting. It was bridging that gap between the two that was going to be the problem. 

I can't swim, so that was out of the 

question. In the end one of the 

policemen went in, followed by me. 

He then towed me by the chin to the 

waters edge where quite a crowd had 

gathered which he told I was a Spanish 

drug smuggler. 

Moray Damage 

Then to complete my humiliation, at 

the hospital, some geordie nurses 

pinned a luggage label to me 

describing my injuries for the doctor, 

which read 'attacked by ferocious 

fish'. 

Stitched up, injected, and on a course 

of anti-biotics, I was told not to go out 

445

in the boat again. The others still went leaving me kicking my heels at the hotel. In the end I decided to 

go for a walk down to the harbour where I spotted some of the biggest grey mullet I have ever seen. 

Immediately I nipped back, got my rod plus a fresh loaf on the way through, then enjoyed some of the 

best mullet fishing I've ever experienced in my entire life, which I've covered in more detail in Part 1 

under the thick lipped grey mullet heading. 

I also had a speckled bass on the bread. Well, they only said don't boat fish. No mention was made of 

fishing from the shore. 

So impressed was I with the mullet fishing that while I was over in Spain in 2010, I decided to drive all 

the way down there for another session, only to find the entire marina closed off by a skirting of plush 

shops, cafés and the like, killing any chance of any repeat fishing between the boats stone dead. 

ICELAND 

I'm hearing good things coming out of Iceland in recent times, particularly for huge coalfish and good 

sized cod out from Sudavik in the north, which to an extent is at odds with the mediocre to disappointing 

experiences I have had over there. 

I've fished from a number of venues all around the country 

on two separate occasions, though in fairness, both visits 

were at a time when the tourist authorities were still working 

on developing their angling assets, rather than more recently 

when much of that development work has now taken place. 

The first of these was an invite to spend a weekend fishing 

out of Akranes on the northern peninsula just across the bay 

from Reykjavik. I was picked up at the airport by the 

husband of the lady in charge of tourism at Akranes. 

He turned out to be a golf course designer and constructor 

who told me they had around thirty golf courses dotted 

around the country serving a population of around 240,000 

people who pretty much all lived around the coast as the 

interior was too harsh. 

That's just over one course for every eight thousand people. 

Golf must be popular there then. More popular than rod and 

line fishing, which like everything else in Iceland was ultra 

expensive. 

Economies normally work on the basis of cost balancing, 

Haddock, Akranes 

with expensive items being offset by cheaper ones. It may 

not be the same items in every country, but the concept of 

the balancing effect should be the same. Least ways, that's how it's supposed to work. But not so far as 

I can see in any of the Scandinavian countries, all of which are staggeringly expensive. No surprise then 

that when the Icelanders do put their hands in their pockets for a day out, if they can afford to, it's party 

time. 

The whole coastal area was alive with fish. Cod were coming up as fast as you drop a string of lures or 

a pirk in front of them. Loads of haddock too, and as many norway haddock or redfish as you could 

ever want. 

446

Unfortunately, everything seemed to max out at around five pounds, with just the odd better fish, and 

nothing crossing the line into double figures. Not that it bothered the locals. They had crates of beer, 

bottles of spirits, and a big portable barbecue out on the deck, plus a determination to eat and drink as 

much as they could squeeze in before heading back. 

At one point they skinned a load of cod and haddock, barbecued the skins, then presented them to me 

as a special treat as guest of honour. Apparently these are regarded as the best part of the fish. That or 

they were taking the pee. Either way I ate them, though that was as nothing compared to what was to 

come. 

Back at the harbour we tied up alongside a commercial gill netter who was just tidying up his nets. He'd 

been working very close in to the shore netting lumpsuckers which move in from deep water in the late 

spring to spawn. It's the ripe females they are after, the eggs from which are a local delicacy eaten in 

the same way as caviare. 

The actual Cod War warp cutting gear 

To demonstrate this, he clamped a 

lumpsucker belly up between his knees, 

made an incision, then started scooping 

the eggs out of its body cavity with his 

dirty fingers and eating them before 

passing the thing to me. Well, you 

know what they say.......when in 

Rome??. 

The other interesting claim to fame 

Akranes has, is that it was a blacksmith 

from the town who designed and 

knocked up the cutting gear used by the 

Icelandic gun boats Thor and Odin in 

the cod Wars of the 1970's. 

Because it has few natural resources 

other than fish, the Icelandic government started pushing its territorial waters out seaward from twelve 

miles, to fifty miles, and eventually two hundred miles. This forced trawlers from Fleetwood, Grimsby, 

and Hull progressively away from their traditional distant water grounds, which in the end they refused 

to comply with. Hence British and Icelandic warships having regular skirmishes, which led to the 

cutting of trawl warps by the gunboats. 

This cutter itself was quite a small device, rather like a traditional fisherman's anchor both in appearance 

and size, but with the arms bent in closer to the stem, and sharp cutting blades fitted to both inside 

edges. 

The taut steel warp would be hooked as the device was towed over it and would slip further and further 

down the narrowing gap of the blades until it finally parted. Simple, but very effective. 

I actually got to visit the workshop where they had been made, and even got to handle and photograph 

one of the devices that had seen action. The scourge of many a distant water trawler back then, and part 

of the reason why ports like Fleetwood and Grimsby have subsequently slipped into decline. 

Ironically, it was pressure from the Americans that brought Britain to ultimately concede defeat, as the 

Icelanders threatened to close down strategic NATO facilities if we didn't relent. 

Talking to some of the older Fleetwood trawler-men in recorded interviews, though they were bitter at 

the time, on reflection, most understood the Icelanders situation. Their only regret was that we hadn't 

447

done the same and kept all our fish stocks to ourselves instead of sharing them with the rest of the 

European Union. 

My next visit, made some years later, was deputising for Sea Angler editor Mel Russ, who at the last 

minute couldn't make a trip organised by Icelandair taking a team of journalists from all over Europe 

on an angling tour of the country. 

I got five days notice on that one. My problem was that my fear of flying had lead me to let my passport 

expire after swearing I would never use it again. The promise however of a weeks fishing in Iceland 

quickly over-rode any such concerns and had me standing in the queue at the Liverpool passport office. 

In addition to that, a word with Cliff Brown, the current Sea Angler editor who was working on a sister 

publication back then and also couldn't make it, confirming that he too would take an article from my 

boat partner Dave Devine got him onto the trip as well. 

We flew in from Heathrow and met up with the others at Reykjavik. From there we were bussed over 

to the small internal airport at Keflavik for a flight on a small twin prop plane to Akureyri in a howling 

gale, which was an experience to put it mildly. 

On landing, despite the relatively short distance, it was 

another world. Bright sunshine and hardly a breath of wind, 

though that unfortunately wasn't to last. That night we were 

treated to roast puffins washed down with lots of beer, then 

on to Dalvik further up the fjord for a dose of small cod and 

coalfish. 

Again, as with Akranes years earlier, the fishing was nothing 

to write home about, and not even as many fish. Then around 

three O'clock in the afternoon we had to cross to Grenivik 

for the onward journey to Husavik where we would 

overnight for the following days fishing, by which time a 

very stiff northerly wind had got up. 

It was horrendous. The fjord sides were exacerbating the 

problem by channelling the wind in. How we made it across 

I don't know, but relieved and soaking wet, we thankfully 

did. 

We then fished on in similar vein at a number of other 

beautiful fishy looking locations, again unfortunately, none 

of which fulfilled their promise. 

Phill Williams, Keflavik Cod Finally, we flew back to Keflavik where we did another 

overnight in preparation for our final day out from there. 

But first, they had booked us in for a viking feast at some posh gaff in Reykjavik, where another 

'interesting' food encounter was planned. 

By this stage, everyone was quite relaxed with each others company. All except for one poor German 

chap called Frank, who I actually already knew as a translator of work I'd done previously for the 

German publication Fisch und Fang. 

Most of the other journalists were from countries occupied by the Germans in WWII, and despite the 

fact that we had all been born in generations after the war, they weren't going to let him forget it, a fact 

which became increasingly obvious with every glass of alcohol which arrived at speed each time a glass 

448

was emptied, carried to us by scantily clad viking women slapped on the backsides by viking men who 

kept telling them they hadn't raped anybody yet all day. 

Then it was time for the meal with its raw fish platter starter. This was a wooden board with various 

offerings like dried cod and smoked salmon scattered around its edge, plus a small white cube of 

something in the middle with an Icelandic flag stuck in it. Obviously, then, the centre piece of the meal. 

As if dried cod, which looked like wood shavings and had to be reconstituted with saliva wasn't bad 

enough, the mysterious cube turned out to be a piece cut from a greenland shark, a species so toxic to 

the human palate it has to be buried in the tundra for twelve weeks to allow bacteria to break down the 

toxins before it can be eaten raw. 

I can and will eat pretty much anything, but still it took me several attempts at swallowing to finally get 

my piece to stay down. Then I was asked what I thought of it. One of those dreadful do I or don't I 

moments. Tell the truth and you risk offending your host, but say you liked it and you risk getting 

another lump. 

The following morning it was howling from the west and lashing down with rain. Consequently, only 

four of us fished that day. Dave, myself, and two chaps from Norway. 

The boat was a small commercial plodder fitted with hurdy gurdy auto-jiggers which the skipper edged 

along the sheltered shore of a headland right up to the point where huge rollers were starting to show 

around the exposed tip. He then put us on a long slow drift progressively back towards base. 

It was uncomfortable to put it mildly. When we moved, waves were coming in over the wheelhouse 

roof, and when we fished we got lashed with rain. But when we hit bottom with a range of pirks and 

hokkai type rigs, you just simply couldn't go wrong. 

This time we caught loads of cod, a good proportion of them 

going well into double figures, with the best pushing up 

towards twenty pounds. Catfish, coalfish and haddock too. 

The skipper was dashing from one side to the other with a 

sort of gaff which looked like a lump of wood with a large 

straight nail knocked through the end of it which he impaled 

into the fish’s skull. He was very good at it. Obviously he'd 

had years of practise. 

Unfortunately, I hadn't, and sods law, when I picked a spare 

one up to help out, the fish I was confronted with was a 

halibut which I promptly knocked off the hook and sent 

back on it's way. The only halibut we'd seen all trip. 

Fortunately, its Norwegian captor didn't seem too fussed as 

we proceeded to fill the boat. 

When it was over, the others met us in at the harbour and 

were gob smacked. We were just cold, weary, and very wet. 

Time for a quick shower, load all the wet gear into our suit 

cases, grab a bite to eat, then back up in the air taking off in 

one of the worst cross winds I've ever experienced for the 

two hour flight back to Heathrow. 

Dave Devine, Keflavik Cod brace 

449

INDIA 

India has always held a fascination for me. In the war, my dad was based there in the army before going 

into Burma, and he always spoke highly of the place, particularly Kashmir. Then more recently, while 

running a DNA trace on my ancestry, I found that my mothers side originated there some three and a 

half thousand years ago. Two potential reasons then for my being drawn to the place. Not unfortunately 

though for the quality of its fishing. 

Desperate to wet a line somewhere, I 

was torn between the coast and the 

inland waters fishing for mahseer. 

Unfortunately, mahseer fishing has 

slipped a long way since the days of 

empire when treble figure fish were 

regularly caught in the mountain 

rivers. So the coast it would have to 

be. But easier said than done. 

On my first visit, which was to the 

south of the country to the state of 

Kerela, I particularly struggled. 

Eventually I found a tuc tuc driver 

who claimed to know people in a 

Phill Williams bringing a Grouper aboard 

nearby fishing village. But on the day 

we visited there was some sort of 

stand-off between the villages Christian and Muslim communities taking place, at which point an army 

bus arrived full of very tall men in uniforms with big sticks who beat seven bells out of everybody, and 

that was the end of that. 

In the evenings we would dine at one of the shacks down on the beach from where I could see the lights 

of numerous fishing boats out there working offshore. 

At that time Kerela was a still dry state, so unless you registered as an alcoholic, you couldn't get a 

drink. Well, shouldn't have got a drink. To get around the ban they would bring beer to the table in a 

teapot which was quite amusing, and talking to the people at the shack, I managed to track down a chap 

with a boat who might take me out for a few hours one morning to the fishing fleet. 

When it happened, I did manage a bit of fishing, catching just a few trigger fish. The commercial boats 

on the other hand, which were a mix of battered old things up to maybe eighteen feet in length, plus a 

scattering of dug out canoes, had quite a mix of half decent fish amongst which I recognised scabbards 

and cobia. But they had been fishing after dark, and my man wouldn't budge on that one. So once again, 

that was the end of that. 

Determined to get some proper fishing in, my next visit to India was to Goa, and on this occasion I put 

in the time on the Internet looking to find some fishing opportunities before I went. 

Not the easiest of tasks I can tell you. Quite often you would pick up a thread on either an individual or 

a club, only to find no contact details. On other occasions it would be an email address and nobody 

would come back to you. Very frustrating. 

Eventually I came across a chap called Tony Estrocio based at Dona Paula at the entrance to the 

Mandovi River near Panjim who did reply. An ex-commercial diver, Tony had a fast boat of around 

twenty feet which he operated for diving and fishing. So with dates booked and taxi's arranged to get 

450

me there from Calangute where I was 

staying, at last there was the promise at 

least of some proper fishing. 

You need to watch the taxi drivers 

there. My driver demanded a fee from 

Tony for introducing me to him as a 

customer, despite the fact that I'd 

previously set the whole thing up 

myself from the UK. He then moaned 

all the way back because I'd left fish on 

the boat instead of keeping them for 

him. Needless to say he talked himself 

out of a tip there. 

Emperor Snapper 

So off we went to fish the reefs around 

a couple of small islands called Iiha 

Grande and Iiha de Sao Jorge, trolling a range of rapala lures. And while we didn't catch much, what 

we did catch was a couple of quite sizeable groupers, plus a very nice emperor snapper which I took 

back to the hotel and had cooked in a light coconut sauce later that evening. A fish which very nearly 

didn't make it to the kitchen. 

Having somehow managed to get itself wedged under a rock leading up to a stalemate situation, Tony 

put on his scuba diving gear, went down and freed it, then gave my line a good pull to let me know to 

start winding again. 

On the way back in that day, we also came across a boiling shoal of small jacks which proved to be a 

nice bit of a distraction. But as far as the lure fishing went, that was pretty much it. So on the second 

day I suggested we try a bit of bottom fishing with small hooks and bait, which was interesting. 

Nothing big, but heaps of fish. Lots of 

variety too, though with the potential 

for so much more if we'd only had a bit 

of half decent bait. Tony had brought 

along a box of long dead prawns which 

were way too soft to stay on the hook 

properly. The fish liked them well 

enough, but would usually rip them 

free before you could manage to strike. 

Those fish we did catch included lots of 

trigger fish, parrot fish, dollar fish, and 

various breams, plus several other 

species which never even got a name. 

Also a spectacular looking lion fish 

which we had to shake off the hook 

Assorted reef fish species 

because of its dangerous spines, all of 

which was very enjoyable. But not a venue you would want to go to specifically with serious fishing in 

mind. 

451

ISREAL 

Potentially, as with its near neighbour Egypt down the other end of the Red Sea at Sharm El-Sheikh, 

Eilat has a tremendous fishing potential. You only have to put on a set of scuba gear and walk in over 

the edge of the rocks as I did to appreciate the diversity, abundance, and sheer quality of the fishing 

which could be on offer within just a few yards of the shore. It was quite staggering. 

Unfortunately, it isn't available, as the Israeli's, along with the Egyptians, prefer to keep it as a marine 

national park, which on the one hand is understandable, but for an angler, very disappointing to say the 

least. 

I did manage to track down a few holiday maker boat trips where they would let you put a line out over 

the back trolling lures for bonito or whatever, but nothing worth bothering with. So, I had to content 

myself with my little telescopic rod down at the harbour snatching out all sorts of weird and wonderful 

things, none of which would have made half a pound. 

KENYA 

One fish I had long wanted to catch but somehow always seemed to miss out on was a sailfish. With 

that in mind, after taking advice from a number of people including Dave Lewis on specifically selecting 

the venue offering the best chance of success, I booked a trip to Malindi fishing with Angus Paul who 

operates the kingfisher fleet based there. 

February was ear marked as a good all round time to be 

fishing, and requesting Angus personally as my skipper was 

also a key part of a recipe, which I was assured would be 

successful. 

So there I was very early on the first morning stood on the 

jetty steps looking out on the moored fleet of offshore boats, 

with numerous smaller craft ferrying anglers out to them 

across the lagoon. Then I glanced seaward where beyond 

the protection of the reef, I could see big breaking swells 

coming from across the Indian ocean. 

They start fishing early in the morning there for just that 

reason. As the day heats up, so the breeze gets stronger to 

the point that by late afternoon you can sometimes barely 

stand up in the boat. The idea then is to get out early, bag 

up, and be back ashore before that happens. 

Our primary target - Sailfish 

I also remember how cool it felt, and how we even took a 

bit of a battering in the skiff from swells making it in over 

the reef top. I remember too thinking we need to get some 

early fish so as not to miss out in case Angus decided to 

cut things short, worrying that this might be yet another 

missed opportunity. 

I made it on to the boat at around seven am while the Kenyan crew were still getting everything ready. 

By around half seven we were exiting the lagoon, and immediately the lures were being paid out. Small 

self weighted skirted lures with long cuts of fish lashed to their hooks fished in a spread along the 

outside of the reef, and by five minutes to eight, the first sailfish had been to the boat, was tagged and 

released. 

452

In less than half an hour it was mission 

accomplished, and seven hours later, 

something of the order of fifteen others 

had gone through the same process, 

along with various other equally 

desirable species. Malindi had proved 

to be everything people said it would 

be and more. 

Marlin are also very popular 

Kenyan sailfish are not big fish. 

Typically they would range between 

about forty and sixty pounds, but still 

spectacular fish to catch, because 

unlike marlin they are not so big that 

you need to reverse the boat back 

down on them. 

Instead, you can stand there as you would with any other fish and fight them completely un-aided, so 

you get to see all the leaping and aerobatics, which you can also get from marlin, but often miss out on 

with the boat in reverse against a swell, as the man on the rod gets swamped with seawater coming in 

over the back. 

Everybody else on-board other than you gets to enjoy the marlins aerial spectacle. All you get is sore 

eyes with the salt, sore shoulders with the fight, and if you're lucky, a photograph at the end. So in that 

regard, sailfish are much more enjoyable billfish to catch. 

I was also able to join in the tagging and release process which was good, except that not all of the 

sailfish got to swim away. One in particular bellied up almost immediately it was released. 

In a flash, we could see a huge brown blur in the water circling around underneath it. A tiger shark was 

homing in. Then the order came from up top for one of the Kenyan lads to go in and retrieve it quickly 

before the shark got to it. 

I think I'd have told Angus where to stick his job. But life is different there, and as commanded, in he 

went. Thankfully, he won the race, but only by a small margin. A very difficult thing to watch. 

Wahoo were probably the most prevalent 'other fish' species we also encountered, which on the thirty 

to fifty pound class outfits used for the sailfish went particularly well, the best of which I had weighing 

in at fifty five pounds. 

We also had a few similar looking kingfish, along with quite good numbers of small yellowfin tuna, 

skipjacks, and bonito, one of the smaller specimens of which went on as a live-bait fished deep using a 

heavily weighted down-rigger. This produced both the biggest and the toughest fish of the day. A giant 

trevally or GT of around seventy pounds. 

As good as that might sound, you don't want to be hooking up too many of those things in quick 

succession. The power GT's have is unbelievable, particularly when hooked so far down where they 

stay and slug it out rather than making long runs. 

Imagine dangling a hook down from a motorway bridge and latching on to a lorry travelling in first 

gear, then trying to stop it. That's deep water GT fishing. So when Angus offered to put another livebait 

down, understandably, or was it wimp-like, I decided to give that one a miss. 

Day one was my trip to remember. Instant success with the sailfish followed by all those others, not to 

mention the wahoo, kingfish and GT, and the remaining days were pretty much a repeat of the same. 

453

Granted, no other day produced quite so many fish, nor as 

many species. But any of them could well have been standout 

days. That's a measure of the fishing there back in 2000. 

Whether it's still the same, or even approaching that quality 

now is difficult for me to say, though probably not. Where 

is these days. And therein lies a problem for venues all 

around the world. 

Some obviously are better than others, and a few do still fit 

the definition of world class. Having said that, it doesn't 

take long, particularly with big fish venues for that mantle 

to slide, as I know only too well from the number of once 

prime locations I have re-visited only to be astonished by 

how far down the ladder they had slipped. 

It may well be that Kenya is not in that position yet. Even 

so, and this goes for all venues, including those in home 

waters, you really need to get to them as quickly as possible. 

Dave Lewis, huge GT 

Not only for the quality of fish, but the availability of the 

fishing too, as things are changing rapidly with boats 

struggling for business due to falling angler interest levels, 

as other distractions see to it that younger replacement 

anglers are not coming through any more in the numbers 

they once did. 

MADEIRA 

In some ways, Madeira is the Portuguese equivalent of Spain's Canary Islands. Small, and mountainous, 

with very deep water close by, placed in an open Atlantic location off the North African coast. But in 

others ways, it is also very different. 

For example, as a visitor, you quickly become aware that it is far 

quieter and more 'normal' than the hustle and bustle of many of 

the Canary Island holiday destinations. 

A location more in tune with honeymoon couples and older 

people looking for a bit of peace and quiet, hence it's description 

as being the land of the newly wed and nearly dead. 

It's fishing too is similar to that of the Canaries, but again, at the 

same time different. Generally it sees much the same species as 

the Gran Canaria and the others, but in different proportions and 

mixes. 

The summer blue marlin fishing for example is of a far higher 

standard, with 'granders' taken most years by boats working the 

south side of the island out of the capital Funchal. 

Phill Williams, Butterfly Ray 

I've only visited the island once, and that was in the run up to 

Christmas, which is a very pleasant time in terms of winter 

weather and atmosphere, but not the main angling season. That 

454

said, as I'm not one for aimlessly dragging skirted lumps of plastic all over the ocean for hours on end, 

this suited me. 

Don't get me wrong. I want to catch marlin and the other big pelagic predators as much as the next man. 

But bottom fishing is what I've been brought up with, and winter can be a very good time to visit 

Madeira in that regard. 

With that in mind, Dave Devine and I teamed up with another Brit holiday maker Brian Wilkinson who 

was also looking to make up a trip, and between us we booked Ron Cowlings boat 'Our Mary' which 

he had sailed over from his mid channel wreck fishing base on the south coast in 1988 and had never 

gone back. 

A bit long in the tooth by that stage for working the deck, Ron now employed a local full time skipper 

and was more of a figure head. Even so, they had won the fourth of July Marlin World Cup that year 

with a fish in excess of eleven hundred pounds. 

This actually was the boats first season of winter bottom fishing, so something of a learning curve for 

all concerned. In previous years it had been left tied up in the marina between trolling seasons. But 

that's a long time without fish, which for an old sea dog who simply loves to be out there as much as 

looking to earn a crust, it was a no brainer. 

So it was off we went following the coast until we reached the designated spot. A patch of clean ground 

butted up to the edge of a reef in around two hundred and twenty feet of water within half a mile of the 

shore. 

I'd taken along a thirty pound class shimano exage travel rod paired up to a TLD25 loaded with braid, 

which on the face of things seemed like the perfect choice, and in many ways it probably was. 

Ron unfortunately wasn't impressed with the line choice, 

preferring monofilament for the stretch cushion it offers, 

which, with hardly any tide to contend with, he felt was best. 

By coincidence, 'Our Mary' was a shimano sponsored boat. In 

fact, the shimano UK management team had been out there 

fishing with him just a few weeks earlier, and had left all sorts 

of goodies behind. So he insisted I use his TLD15 loaded with 

mono, and to keep the peace, I agreed. He also provided the 

end gear, which was a simple heavy mono flowing trace. 

Big stingrays, eagle rays, and the odd butterfly ray had been 

the main stay of the shimano trip. That sounded good to me, 

particularly the butterfly ray. I'd seen them once or twice in 

the past, but had never actually caught one myself, so I was 

up for that. 

Disgorging Butterfly Ray 

Fortunately, mixed in amongst some quite sizeable stingers, 

plus more than enough horrible moray eels, that's precisely 

what I ended up with. Like a wide winged vulcan bomber with 

a short stubby tail and beautiful spotted markings gliding 

around just under the surface. I couldn't believe my good 

luck. 

455

MALAYSIA 

Kuala Lumpur was a stopover en-route back to the UK from Borneo. As we were scheduled to change 

planes there, we thought we might as well stay over for a few days in what turned out to be an incredible 

city. Clean, high tech, and feeling perfectly safe, with great night time entertainment in the open air bars 

scattered around the Petronas Towers. 

Really friendly people too. So friendly in fact that a chap called 

Phill Williams, Giant Snakehead 

Auslan who I'd exchanged a few angling emails with in the run 

up to the visit, agreed to meet up with us and introduced me to 

several of his locally well known fishing friends. 

These fellow fishermen included a local tackle dealer, plus angling journalist Aznir Abdul Malek, who 

after a nice meal and a few beers, offered to take me for a day fishing for giant snakehead, which I had 

secretly hoped might be to the vast jungle wilderness of Tasik Temenggor in the north of the country 

where snakeheads, jungle perch, and mahseer, are common place. But the distances involved were too 

great. 

Instead, they arranged a visit to a local fishery called Tow Foo, which is a small commercial lure only 

water close to the Sepang F1 race circuit, where because of the limited amount of time, and me never 

having seen a snakehead, the fishery owner waived the lures only rule and provided my with a load of 

small dead-baits. 

One the face of things a concession, except that none of us had suitable terminal tackle for bait fishing. 

So we cobbled together the heaviest mono trace and largest hook we could muster, baited it up, and 

threw it out into the pea green water, leaving it to fish free-lined with the bale arm open where it was 

instantly picked up by a good fish. An encounter which unfortunately only lasted seconds, as the culprit 

quickly bit through the monofilament trace. 

456

This happened a couple more times before somebody thankfully found a short wire trace. Now we were 

really in business. Every egg a bird in fact. No wonder then that they don't allow bait fishing. Amazing 

fish to catch though, which both pull hard and run well. 

In many ways they remind me of pike. They even look a bit like a pike in that they have a long sleek 

body and lots of teeth, though that's where any similarity ends. 

The dorsal fin is long and continuous, rather like that of a ling. But it's the colour and patterning that 

can really stand out. Not so much in the fish I caught. But some of the larger wild specimens can be 

spectacular in the extreme, with their black base colour covered in prominent white spots and stripes, 

plus of course their huge mouths bristling with sharp teeth. 

MALLORCA 

Like much of the Mediterranean, Mallorca is a holiday destination whose coastline is inhabited mainly 

by lots of very small fish. On one visit however back in the early 1970's that didn't matter, as I had been 

tasked with the job of collecting the widest range of research specimens possible for external anatomical 

studies such as scale and fin ray counts for Dr. Dietrich Burkel, who was illustrating the Collins 

Encyclopaedia of Fishes. 

Species listed as rare in home waters, but 

abundant throughout the Med such as 

comber and an assortment of wrasses 

and breams. And as most holiday 

makers will know only too well from 

looking into harbours and around the 

rocks in these parts, particularly those 

who pack a small telescopic rod, these 

fish are everywhere. An absolute collage 

of colours, shapes, and layouts. But 

barely anything big enough to cover the 

palm of your hand. 

it was absolute carnage. 

Male Turkish Wrasse 

With all the above in mind, a boat trip 

was arranged with a local character to go 

exploring in and around Palma harbour, 

fishing with small hooks on dropper 

rigs and a box of fresh ragworm where 

Fish were coming up by the string full. I didn't know at the time what many of them were, so anything 

that looked a bit different was photographed for colours, then popped into the formaldehyde tub for 

transportation home. 

Back in the UK, after Dietrich's formal identification work, I was absolutely staggered by the variety I 

had in there. Far more than I had anticipated. So while it wasn't exactly scintillating sport, it served two 

very important purposes. Dietrich got his artwork specimens, and I was able to positively add the best 

part of twenty new species to my world-wide list. 

457

MAURITIUS 

When discussing the fishing in South Africa later, I describe it was one of those places I would never 

ever go back to. Based on the experiences of a visit during the early 1990's, though for different reasons, 

Mauritius is another such venue. A trip which started off so full of hope and anticipation, but failed 

miserably on all fronts. 

It could be argued that we were just unlucky. Yet when I 

speak to other people, it would seem that is not the case. 

There are more stories of failure than success coming out 

of that place, though I do concede that it probably was once 

a fantastic destination, particularly for big marlin. 

Those days however are long gone, and not only for the 

billfish, which probably makes my experience typical. For 

like the infamous dodo which also once thrived there, 

decline followed by extinction is a word seemingly woven 

into the fabric of this beautiful island. 

For those unfamiliar with the place, Mauritius in quite an 

isolated deep water Indian Ocean island. One of those 

venues where the marlin lures can go out more or less at 

the moorings and stand as much chance of success as they 

will at any other time during the trip, which these days 

unfortunately probably isn't much. 

I went across in the company of Graeme Pullen, Tony 

Kirrage, and a number of other notable weathered big game 

enthusiasts, all expecting at least to see if not catch marlin. 

Securing large Hammerhead 

Being honest, I did see a couple of small ones being 

weighed when we first arrived which stoked the fires of 

anticipation even more. But that I'm sorry to say was it. 

On our first run out we had what we presume to have been a marlin strike which brought one of the 

outriggers tumbling down into the boat. Later in the day, trolling a small skipjack tuna live-bait, Ken 

Mitchell landed a hammerhead shark of just over three hundred and thirty pounds. Then the weather set 

in. 

It was on the evening following that trip that we first started hearing rumours of a cyclone, the Indian 

Ocean version of an Atlantic hurricane. Satellites tracking it were predicting it was headed directly for 

us, and consequently, the whole island went into shut down. 

The fishing boats were secured away inside the storm harbour, and the fronts of the hotels were all 

stripped bare, with everything that could be removed stowed away safely in their basements. The airport 

was also closed. It was then simply a case of sit and wait. 

The TV in the bar was full of nothing else other than tracking the monster rotation. Meanwhile, we 

found a bunch of garden canes at the rear of the hotel and decided to organise a fishing competition 

from the little wooden jetty using these with pieces of monofilament tied to the end. 

What a sight. Journalists, England internationals and the like, all fishing with sticks and lines, which 

incredibly did actually manage to come up with a few small fish and produce a winner. 

Not content with propping up the bar waiting for the violence to start, a couple of us took a walk along 

the beach and found ourselves a local fisherman who said he could safely take us out to fish the protected 

458

inside edge of the reef. As the storm hadn't yet arrived, 

conditions there were not too bad, particularly with the reef 

breaking up any incoming wave patterns. 

On our first venture we out set off in day light, but ended up 

fishing well on into the dark in this battered old boat with 

an eight hp outboard motor that was literally nailed in place 

on the transom to be used in conjunction with a battered old 

patched up sail. 

At one point it started raining, putting it down like you've 

never seen it back home. So we spent an hour or so huddled 

under a plastic sheet waiting for it to pass. Then when it got 

dark, we felt completely lost. No lights on the shore nor any 

other signs of land for comfort. 

Thankfully, the fisherman seemed to know where he was, 

and as a result we fished two or three times from his battered 

little boat, catching a whole raft of weird and wonderful 

things, and regularly getting bitten off too, probably by 

barracuda, while retrieving some small reef fish or other. 

Actually, it was quite enjoyable. But having spent so much 

Fishing the inner reef 

money and travelled so far, not exactly what we had 

originally planned on doing. And all the while, cyclone 

Bella as it was now officially called, was creeping ever closer, to the point that even the inside of the 

reef was no longer safe to venture out on. 

Then suddenly, almost within battering range of us, it inexplicably veered off along a slightly different 

path, ripping eighty percent of the vegetation off the adjacent island of Rodrigues just to the east of us. 

We still got some 'weather' from it, but missed out on the worst of it, which when things started to settle 

down a bit, left us with a couple of days at the very end which were just about fishable in terms of swell, 

but which unfortunately produced very little. 

One of the abiding memories I have of the place is the water colour and clarity. It was everything you'd 

expect from a tropical paradise, and on one particular occasion, we found ourselves surrounded by small 

tuna at the surface in every direction for as far as the eye could see. 

What an amazing sight, and needless to say we were quickly into action knocking out small yellow fins 

and skipjacks as fast as you could get a lure in front of them. 

Some of these were again used as live-baits. But as interesting as this was in that moment, it was still a 

far cry from the main objective of the trip, both for us and for everyone else concerned. 

So un-impressive was the fishing that I can't honestly remember if our marlin competition even ended 

up with a winner. I don't recall seeing any more marlin brought in, though I did hear of a small spearfish, 

and Pete Sharples on our boat managed to sneak out a bonus sailfish right at the death. 

So disappointment all round, and a hard hitting lesson that even if things had turned out better in terms 

of the weather, I still don't rate dragging lumps of plastic around the ocean for hours on end, then if 

you're lucky, being handed a rod with a fish on the line that the crew have hooked up for you as being 

in the true spirit of fishing anyway. 

459

MEXICO 

My first visit to Mexico was to Cabo San Lucas towards the end of the 1980's. Back then, it was still a 

bit of a ramshackle fishing village stuck out on a limb at the tip of Baja California, with the Pacific 

ocean on one side, and the Sea of Cortez on the other. A far cry from the plush stopover port reportedly 

used by luxury cruise liners today. 

I was with a group set up by Graeme 

Pullen visiting around Christmas time, 

which is the key period for striped 

marlin, plus a whole load of other 

potential goodies. But while we caught a 

good variety of fish both inshore and off, 

things didn't always go completely 

according to plan. 

Panga with Striped Marlin 

The problem was twofold. Being so close 

to America, having potentially excellent 

fishing and consequently attracting lots 

of US customers, the fishing fleet 

understandably was geared up to that 

particular market. 

Americans as we all know want 

everything done for them on a plate. The first time they touch the rod is when the crew places it in their 

hands complete with ready hooked fish on the end, then moan at them every time the drag adjustment 

is touched. 

Difficulty number two was the fact that back then, few of the boat crews could speak any English, which 

made getting our point regarding who hooks the fish across to them very difficult. A problem further 

compounded by never having the same boat two days on the trot. Any progress that was made was 

therefore immediately lost at the close of play. 

The fishing was for striped marlin with live-baits. It couldn't have been more simple. A rubbing trace 

on the end of the main line with a hook and a nose hooked scad. 

The skipper would head off looking for circling frigate birds, then try to spot the sickle-like tail of a 

feeding marlin protruding above the surface, at which point the crew would lob the bait out just in front 

of its nose, and hopefully it would be taken. Something we could quite easily do for ourselves. 

But no, we had argument after argument as the crew wanted to be in total control. So Gordon Thornes 

and I went off to the booking office to try to explain that we were not Americans, and that if the crew 

hooked a fish in future then they would also have to wind it in, which would mean no tip. 

Not that it made any difference. Next boat we had the same again, so we refused to take part and 

demanded to be taken back in. 

On another occasion when it happened, we told them not to bother with any more marlin and started 

fishing for other things, which included various sharks, dorado, and dog toothed tuna. 

Meanwhile, the other boat parties within our group we coming in with five fish limit bags of striped 

marlin every day. That's how prolific the marlin there were. But were they really catching them, or 

simply winding them in?. 

When we finally got the message across, we were given the freedom to use our own gear and do our 

own casting, and while we had precious little to show for it by comparison to everyone else due to the 

460

limited time, we were satisfied, and were 

in our eyes at least, the only ones who 

'actually' caught striped marlin that 

week. 

Around the mid point in the trip, we 

were given two days off for sightseeing 

or whatever, which Gordon and I used to 

great effect by chartering a panga. 

Baby Roosterfish 

These are small boats of around twenty 

feet in length which tend mainly to work 

inshore, though while we were there, 

some of the panga's were catching and 

releasing as many striped marlin as the 

bigger boats. 

They also had blue marlin too. But marlin were off the menu for us. We wanted to stick inshore, and in 

particular to target rooster fish. 

December unfortunately is not the best time for big roosters inshore. They tend to be more of a summer 

species. But we fished for them anyway by slow trolling live-baits on the edge of the crest of the rollers 

pushing in onto the steep sandy beaches. Real heart in the mouth stuff, riding the rising swells of some 

of the bigger waves beam on. 

Sometimes the skipper would get it just slightly wrong and have to gun the outboard at the very last 

moment if a roller started to break early, which around day break in the poor light conditions made them 

look even more ominous than would be the case later on in the day. 

We did actually manage to catch a few rooster fish. Only small ones, but we had them. Dorado too, and 

plenty of crevalle jacks, not too mention huge needle fish at four and five feet long, which look like 

garfish with crocodiles heads and would constantly be crewing our expensive live baits to pieces. 

We even found time to have a couple of hours with smaller baits over a section of shallow inshore reef 

catching all sorts of everything. Then it was back to the arguments and frustrations on the bigger marlin 

boats. 

The evenings obviously were spent out eating and having a few drinks. Not too many though, as the 

starts were always very early in morning around day break. 

We also managed to sneak in an extra hour or so of fishing just as the sun went down, casting from a 

man made boulder arm forming what looked like some sort of harbour entrance, throwing bar spoons 

out into the darkness which were snapped up by barracuda and jacks. 

I even went down there mid afternoon after one of the panga trips to try a spot of shore bait fishing for 

anything and everything, catching a good mix of snappers, trigger fish and the like. Also sergeant majors 

around the harbour entrance. 

Holiday makers throwing bits of bread in had them swarming there, so I improvised a float from a piece 

of wood, cadged a bit of fresh bread, and proceeded to fill my boots with those for half an hour. So all 

in all, certainly from a species point of view, Cabo was a very successful trip. 

The sight casting to the marlin, when eventually we got that sorted out was fantastic too. When a livebait 

goes in, if a marlin was in feeding mood, it would suddenly light up neon blue then dart forward 

and and grab it. An incredible sight, and one which most certainly would have been missed leaving 

everything to the crew. 

461

Then it's away leaping all over the ocean, except that the 

man on the rod doesn't get to see any of that as the boat is 

backed down sending bucketfuls of water in over the stern, 

over your head, and into your eyes. 

My next visit to Mexico was in January 2015. For years Paul 

Haynes at Warrior Boats had talked about the fabulous 

marlin and yellow fin tuna fishing out of Puerto Vallarta 

further down the Pacific coast from Cabo San Lucas. So 

when Dawn and I decided to go to Mexico on holiday, that 

seemed the logical choice. 

We both loved the place. Very clean, lots to do, and very 

nice helpful people too. A far cry from my previous Cabo 

experience. 

Obviously, some fishing was also on the agenda. But first I 

needed to suss out where the boats were and what they were 

catching, so I headed on up to Marina Vallarta hoping to see 

them coming in, which in theory was a good idea, foiled 

only by the fact that none seemed to be going out fishing in 

the first place. 

Gordon Thornes, big Needlefish I saw plenty of boats and advertising boards. But I never 

saw any fishermen at all coming in. So as you do, I started 

asking around, and very quickly got the distinct impression that things weren't what they used to be. 

I was told that tuna were scarce and hardly worth bothering with. The only people still doing a bit of 

rod and line fishing were the panga's. These would come right in onto the beach in front of your hotel 

to pick you up, which is eventually what I did. 

A word of warning though. Even in flat calm conditions you still get one big roller at the edge, which 

makes pick ups and drops decidedly dodgy. 

Also, I would advise taking your own tackle. I had more eyes than the battered old rods they provided 

on the boat. And still we caught fish, all of which is okay if slow trolling live-baits for good sized jacks 

turns you on. But that pretty much is what it's come to there now by all accounts. 

One day we took a rackety old bus ride down to the Malecon, which is the old Puerto Vallarta where 

all the shops, bars, and night time entertainment goes on. A great place to visit, and while I was there I 

went off scouting for vantage points to fish, where on the far side of the river, I found a small brand 

new concrete pier that some of the locals were fishing from with hand lines. 

The following morning, armed with a pack of calamari bought at Wal Mart and my telescopic rod, I 

was on the bus and back there before daylight, making my way down to fish the pier where it was instant 

success. 

Every drop a hit. All sorts of fish from jacks and snappers through to trigger fish and porcupine fish, 

plus weird looking blue spotted flatfish with their eyes set wide apart, all of which I was able to identify 

from my photographs using the Internet back at the hotel. 

The big problem was that the trigger fish kept biting my size eight hooks off their eight pounds bs 

monofilament snoods. There were some better fish in there amongst them too, with several stripping 

line from the spool. I also saw some very big fish mooching around the concrete legs, including 

stingrays. 

462

Phill Williams, Puerto Vallarta Jacks 

This beats any panga fishing I thought, so the next day I was 

back for more, and again on day three. Only this time I was 

in for a bit of a surprise. 

That morning, some of the panga's were coming in to the lower platform of the pier to pick up clients, 

one of which pointed out that if the police caught me they would confiscate my gear and fine me, asking 

if I'd seen the big no fishing sign at the start of the pier. 

Obviously, in the dark, I hadn't noticed it and had in fact walked right past it. So that unfortunately was 

the end of that. 

NAMIBIA – SKELETON COAST 

The writer Oscar Wilde is reputedly responsible for the often used quote 'there are lies, damn lies, and 

there are statistics', one interpretation of which is that with careful massaging of the facts and figures, 

the truth need not be allowed to get in the way of a good story. Raw statistics on the other hand without 

selective presentation or supplementary comment can tell little other than the truth. See what do these 

figures say to you.... 

11 anglers, six days surf fishing, 15,000 pounds of fish 

5 members of the party not dedicated shore anglers 

Most members of the party took at least one day out 

88 sharks averaging a 150 to 160 pounds apiece 

2 anglers each in excess of a 1,000 pounds in a single day 

463

8 of the 88 sharks weighing in excess of 200 pounds 

1 individual shark touching on three 300 pounds 

To me that is irrefutable evidence for the most impressive shore fishing in the world. Accumulated by 

a party of UK anglers fishing the surf beaches of Namibia in February 1999, at the time it took place, 

this trip is thought to represent the most productive surf fishing trip ever made. 

Namibia back then was one of the newest countries in Africa, encompassing one of the oldest, and 

certainly one of the hottest deserts on earth. Don't however read too much into the hot desert bit as it 

can be very cold down on the beach, and for up to maybe half a mile or so inland. So much so in fact 

that fleece jackets might even need to be worn. 

A little intervention from one of the coldest places on earth is actually the main driving force behind 

both this fact and this remarkable marine and coastal ecosystem. For this region, known as the skeleton 

coast, receives cool nutrient rich water all the way from Antarctica carried northwards by the Benguela 

Current. 

Our guide for the trip was Namibian international shore angler Johan Berger. A man whose enthusiasm, 

work rate, and temperament, make him one of the finest fishing guides anyone could ever hope to meet. 

At eight o'clock prompt he would pick us up at the Hansa Hotel, and would not pack up until either 

everyone in the group was satisfied with the fishing, or it was no longer light enough to see. 

He would then make the long trek back along the featureless salt tracks of the Namib Desert to our base 

at Swakopmund, usually in total darkness. Just time for a quick shower, a bite to eat, and a few hours 

sleep, then it would start all over again. 

Other than the occasional mile marker, out on the desert salt tracks there are no sign posts to pick up 

on. But like a cruise missile programmed to find a specific target, Johan would suddenly detour from 

the track out across the desert sands to the lip of a steep surf beach. There he would stand for a few 

minutes watching, looking at the surf tables, water colour, and current. 

464

Some days he would even walk into the water to see if it 

felt cool enough. Only when all his criteria were satisfied 

would the rods be un-clipped from their racks for a cast. 

But you only got ten minutes. No bait fish and we were off 

again looking for a new stretch of beach. 

The first priority on most days was the catching of at least 

half a dozen gully sharks for bait. A fish not unlike a bull 

huss, but with the capacity to hit weights of seventy pounds 

and more. A powerful fish too in its own right. My best 

tipped the scales at forty eight pounds. But not the species 

we had travelled all the way to Namibia to catch. 

Standard UK shore fishing gear is fine for these fish. A 

heavy mono leader, 6/0 hook, and a mullet head make the 

perfect business end combination. 

Stingrays, bull rays, and sand sharks also came the same 

way, and like the gully sharks, all found their way into the 

back of Johan's truck. Never again will fishing for bait ever 

be so pleasurable. Then with the bait requirements taken 

care of, we would head north looking for deeper, cooler 

water. 

Catching bait – yes, honestly 

To me, one piece of surf beach looked much the same as 

the next. But not to Johan. He was looking for water with an olive green tinge and breaks in the surf 

indicating deeper gullies between submerged banks. 

More importantly, it had to be a piece of coast where the current was being deflected outwards by the 

shore and the breeze. This is crucial if the big bronze whaler sharks are to be drawn within casting 

range, for it's this that will deliver the chum trail out beyond the banks. 

After removing the gills and liver from the gully sharks for bait, the carcasses were then pegged out on 

the beach at a point where each incoming wave would pick up a bit of blood and other body juices to 

establish this all important scent trail. 

It was usual at this point to be given a prediction as to how long it would take before the first dorsal fin 

would appear within casting range. Usually this would be around half an hour. Just time to set the rods 

up and get everyone prepared for action. Prepared in their minds that is. But on this the first days fishing, 

far from prepared physically for what was to come. 

Tackle for the shark fishing was provided by Johan in with the guiding fee. One piece fourteen foot 

purglas executive rods with their reel seats fixed around nine inches up from the butt are favoured in 

these parts. 

The reels themselves were a mix of penn senators and daiwa sealine 450 heavy duty boat models. I own 

and have used a daiwa 450 on quite a number of occasions in the UK for big common skate fishing. 

Amazingly, here Johan was using them for surf casting. 

To do this he had hack sawed one of the cross bars out to be able to get his thumb close enough to the 

spool to control it so as to prevent casting overruns. But seating the reel so low down meant that after 

casting, line control was done using the left hand, which took some getting used to. These were loaded 

with thirty five pounds bs monofilament tied to a heavy mono shock leader with twelve inches of heavy 

wire armed with two 10/0 hooks and a small sliding lead. 

465

Setting up the rubby dubby slick 

Bait was a sandwich of gully shark liver wrapped in blood 

rich gills bound together with elasticated thread. The fixed 

hook at the end of the trace was then inserted into the 

resulting sausage rather like threading on a lugworm, with 

the free sliding second hook nicked into the other side 

facing out the opposite way. 

Then, with a skill that had even the shore specialists in the 

party standing back in amazement, it was sent out by Johan 

to the back of the breakers. And before the last of the baits 

made it into the water, the first one had been already been 

picked up by a shark, so it was game on, quickly followed 

by two other sharks which were hooked a short time later 

making it a triple header, and all within the first hour. 

Shortly after, John Devine hooked up what would turn out 

be the biggest fish of the trip. With John still struggling, 

after a couple of pulls and several good hard strikes, line 

started pouring from my reel too, and after a gruelling hour 

long tussle, I had a 192 pounder on the beach. The other lads 

had also landed their fish by this stage. John meanwhile was 

still struggling, and a further hour or so later was still into 

the same fish. 

By this time people were starting to rally around offering 

him encouragement. But unlike the fish, John was tiring fast. Then, two and quarter hours after hooking 

up, he handed the rod to me. At first I refused. Only when he said he'd cut the line then did I relent. 

I really started laying into the fish. After all, if we parted company, it wasn't really my fish anyway. So 

beach or break, I had nothing to lose, except for seeing what it was that that could pull so hard, which 

when finally it was beaten, turned out to be a monster of almost three hundred pounds, and like John, I 

too had literally had enough. 

Day one produced seven sharks, all over the one hundred pound mark. Day two was a little more 

productive with ten fish, reverting back to seven again on day three, with day four a lot less productive 

in terms of the sharks, as much of time was spent fishing for edible species such as Steenbras and Kob. 

We only managed two sharks that day, both over one hundred and sixty pounds. So on the fifth day we 

decided to concentrate solely on the sharks at a new location to the south of Swakopmund, known 

locally as Donkey Bay. 

This unfortunately meant no opportunity to catch gully sharks, so bait would have to be frozen mackerel. 

No carcasses either to stake out along the waters edge to draw the bigger sharks in, which in light of 

what was to happen was perhaps as well. 

The response to the mackerel baits was instantaneous. Reels were pouring out line on all sides. It was 

however to be a day of mixed blessings. Our final total for the day was our best yet, but that was only 

half of the story. So effective was the mackerel, and so numerous were the sharks that it was drawing 

in from seemingly miles around, that we had a feeding frenzy on our hands. 

The problem this brought was that with so many sharks cruising the shallows with their mouths open, 

they were repeatedly swimming into our lines, sometimes while we were playing a fish, and accidentally 

biting the monofilament reel lines through. 

466

Were it not for the many bite-offs, our 

total of twenty two fish beached both 

would have and should have been twice 

that. Instead, we ran out of traces, and 

had to call a premature end to the 

fishing allowing us a good night out in 

the town. 

Piling on the pressure - from both ends 

Day six was to be the big day to 

remember. Johan took us to the 

sheltered side of the bay we had fished 

the previous day where conditions were 

mirror calm. The beach there didn't look 

too steep. But several yards out, the 

water colour quickly changed from 

sandy brown to blue as it dropped off 

suddenly to around twenty feet. 

Spurred on by Kob to over forty pounds taken from the shallows by local anglers, four of our party then 

decided to devote themselves to fishing for edibles, leaving the rest of us to work on the sharks, which 

we did to some tune. 

Over the week we had enjoyed numerous multiple hook ups. It was fairly common to see three or four 

rods in action at any one time. Here on day six, we had seven sharks being played simultaneously, all 

of which were in the one hundred and fifty to two hundred and forty pound bracket. 

Total catch for this day was exactly forty, with Dave Devine and Mike Dennehy both taking well in 

excess of a thousand pounds of fish apiece in a single session. Quite staggering fishing. 

I well remember the golden days of west country wreck fishing back home, when ten anglers sharing a 

charter boat would be given loads of press coverage for a collective haul of over a thousand pounds. To 

do it single handedly, and from a beach, quite literally defies belief. 

My best fish went two hundred and twelve pounds, which I took using my own UK beach tackle on the 

last day, and I don't reckon to be any sort of a shore angler at all. Providing you are prepared to listen 

to the guide and use the right terminal gear, anyone could enjoy this level of unbelievable quality shore 

angling. 

As long as the reel is seated low down 

on the butt to allow the use of a butt pad 

for actually playing the fish, I don't 

think any reasonable quality UK surf 

rod would find it a problem either. But 

you do need a reel capable of packing at 

least three hundred yards of thirty to 

forty pounds bs line. 

Phill Williams, Bronze Whaler on UK surf gear 

It's no good fishing light for these 

sharks. You have to be able to pile on 

the pressure, otherwise they can spool 

you out as one South African visitor 

next to me found to his cost. In that 

regard, both the TLD25 and the daiwa 

467

LD50H would be good reels for the job. 

Anything less and you would be making a rod for your own back in every painful sense of the phrase. 

For make no mistake about it, as good as the fish may look in the photographs after-wards, each one 

comes at a price in terms of back, leg, and shoulder muscle pain. 


NEW ZEALAND 

New Zealand was a brief visit as part of a wider look at south east Asia and Oceania, timed to be as 

close as possible to the international date-line for the millennium new years eve party at Christchurch 

on South Island. 

Fishing was a secondary consideration, but still a core 

objective none the less. That said, the tremendously good 

and expensive fishing I know they have over there for a 

variety of big game species, and in particular broadbill 

swordfish, was unfortunately never going to be a part of that 

plan. A case of grab what I could on the hoof and make the 

best of it. 

Unfortunately, in the run up to new year, the weather was 

appalling. So bad in fact that despite it being mid summer 

there, the new years eve celebrations set up for the local park 

had to be cancelled due to the severity of the wind and rain. 

Needless to say my fishing arrangements also went down 

the pan for the same reason, leaving me kicking my heels at 

some tiny rustic little harbour whose name I completely 

forget, with no chance whatsoever of the boat putting to sea. 

The best I could muster was to try an hour from the jetty, 

which turned up a string of small wrasse-like fish. 

North Island proved to be a little better. There I managed to 

get myself onto a boat trip out of Wakatane on a day when 

Dawn Williams, Barrachouta the weather had finally picked up. A trip on which my wife 

Dawn and I took the two remaining spaces on a boat 

otherwise full of Maori's out for a picnic and days mixed fishing. 

The women and kids sat around tucking in to all sorts of food and drink from huge cool boxes, while 

the men fished, drank beer, and replaced the rapidly reducing contents of those cool boxes with fish. 

Initially, they kept themselves pretty much to themselves, until one of them cottoned on to the fact that 

we weren't New Zealanders and started to chat. Once he realised we were from Lancashire and lived 

quite close to Wigan, the conversation very quickly turned to New Zealand rugby league player Va'aiga 

Tuigamala, otherwise known to Wigan rugby league fans as 'inga the winger'. 

That was it. The ice was well and truly broken, and we shared a very enjoyable day with the party, 

including throwing all sorts of quite decent sized karawai and terakihi into their cool boxes. Barrachouta 

too, which look sort of similar to a barracuda but without the same fearsome dental array. 

468

Gurnards very similar to our tub gurnards were another species I particularly remember, plus a lot of 

problems with blue sharks snatching hooked fish from the lines at the surface, which I wanted to try 

for, but nobody else wanted anywhere near the boat. 

NORWAY 

On more than an odd occasion, I've been very lucky in my angling life in having got to fish some of the 

best venues in the world while they were still at the top of their game. Often that doesn't last for long, 

so when you find one, you need to be in there quick. Norway however is probably the exception here 

in that I was there back towards the start of it all, and now ten years on, it's still just as good ever. 

Possibly dare I say it, even better. 

Not so much the quality of the fishing, which the Norwegians not being members of the EU, and with 

sensible fishery management policies, have managed to keep good. More a case of knowledge building 

by visiting anglers, both in turning up new potentials and learning how better to fish the ones they 

already know, which if the quality of that potential remains as high as it has, is bound to follow on like 

putting one foot in front of the other. 

As such, the long awaited first ever rod caught hundred pound plus cod caught by German tackle 

manufacturer Michael Eisele came in 2013. The commercial hand-liners had already seen fish of that 

size on several occasions previously, so it was only a matter of time. Other species which thrive and 

grow big in Norwegian waters are coalfish, halibut, torsk, haddock, wolf fish, and plaice. 

Much of the best fishing takes place at latitudes well up beyond the Arctic circle. Lyngen Fjord and 

some of the other camps in the Tromso area, which are the main producers, are almost two hundred 

miles up into the Arctic. 

469

It depends what it is you want to catch, which in turn adds a level of seasonality to the whole affair, 

which is no bad thing, as it allows those who are less hardy not to have to endure the worst of the winter 

weather and still record a string of excellent PB's. 

The biggest cod are there in February, March and April, which understandably can be very cold. I was 

there in mid May, and still there was plenty of snow lying about. Avalanches too sliding off the 

mountains forming the rim of the fjord, which are a spectacular sight to witness from a safe distance in 

a boat. 

You can find very big cod from forty to seventy pounds inside some of the northern fjords such as 

Lyngen. But for a chance of the really big cod in the seventy pounds and upwards bracket, you need to 

be at Lauklines, fishing from a large charter boat out over the offshore reefs, which can be a very 

exposed wild place in the winter months, and certainly not for the faint hearted. 

Still, if you want to be on a trip where people don't even get their camera out for fifty pound cod, then 

that's what you must do. Otherwise, stick to one of the more sheltered self-drive locations which still 

produce lots of what we in the UK would regard as big cod in the spring and early summer, plus big 

coalfish and halibut as the summer marches on. 

I fished out of Kappangen, a tiny no shops collection of 

houses at the base of Lyngen Fjord. No pubs or restaurants 

either, which with Norwegian prices as high as they were 

was perhaps no bad thing. We stayed in a property where 

people would come in and cook for us, plus we picked up 

alcohol en route from a supermarket somewhere way out of 

town. 

We also fished from a large comfortable skippered boat 

called 'Pendlar', which unfortunately is no longer available. 

Not that it gave us any advantage over the smaller boats 

other than it was warm and had shelter, plus we got a cooked 

meal at lunch time, and hot coffee on tap throughout the day. 

We would also get a tot of brandy off the skipper Od every 

time a big fish came aboard, which on the last couple of days 

almost made it a booze cruise, such was the quality of the 

cod fishing. 

Dave Lewis, decent Norway Cod 

Fishing with fast drop pirks in a range of colours, and large 

self weighted shads, the fishing early on could best be 

described as being patchy. It came in fits and starts with 

some very big fish thrown in. But no consistency. 

One day for example we were followed by another boat, so 

Od stopped 'Pendlar' in the middle of nowhere and told us to pretend to fish seriously until it had passed. 

Dave Devine boated a forty seven pound cod at that 'non fishing' spot. 

Cod obviously were the dominant species, with enough fish topping thirty pounds to keep everyone onboard 

happy. The lads on the shads also had small halibut up to around twelve pounds, plus we picked 

up some very good haddock on smaller baits, along with a smattering of wolf fish, and always plenty 

of torsk, one of which topped twenty four pounds. 

I even had quite a sizeable redfish on a pirk, while a couple of Polish lads fishing baits in deep water 

from a self drive close to base brought in a couple of rabbit fish. 

470

Cod though were always the number one target fish, certainly on our trip. As I say, we picked up good 

fish all over the place, and on one occasion in a blowy snowy squall, even ventured outside the fjord to 

fish the inshore reefs around the Island of Arnoy which were stacked with fish, but generally only up 

to around twenty pounds. 

And so it went on for the first few outings, until on the next to the last day, on our way back in, Od 

picked up an interesting hump like feature on the bottom in around six hundred feet of water very close 

to our home base well down inside the fjord, and suggested we give it a few drops. 

This was it. The promised land. And to think we'd been sailing over it on our previous outings heading 

up the fjord looking for fish which had been there on our doorstep all the time. 

We only gave it an hour as we were due back in. But what an hour it turned out to be. Big cod were 

coming up left right and centre. At times there were two and three forty pound fish being disgorged 

next to each other. 

Needless to say, the following mornings destination was written in tablets of stone. And so it continued 

just as we had left it the previous evening. Cod fishing of a consistent quality, the likes of which I don't 

think I'll ever see again. 

They may well get bigger cod elsewhere such as at Lauklines if you have the stomach for the big seas 

and cold, but this was sheer carnage. Well, I say carnage, but actually, where fish looked likely to 

survive the rigours of being brought up from such depth they were put back in, and many cases appeared 

to get back down okay. 

Longer term well being is another matter. But if you don't try you certainly won't succeed. And it's just 

that type of mentality that has not only made, but will hopefully keep the fishing in Norwegian waters 

right up there at the top of the pile, for species and tactics which home waters anglers feel comfortable 

and happy with. 


471

PERU - AMAZON 

Despite the picture painted by numerous TV documentaries, the Amazon is not one single river. It's a 

collection of many rivers across several countries spread out like a vast tree root, channelling rain water 

from a huge swathe of tropical rain forest to the west of the Andes, all of which empties into the Atlantic 

Ocean via one huge outflow which is the River Amazon close to Macapa in Brazil. 

In rod and line fishing terms, few 

people actually fish the Amazon itself. 

It's too wide, too deep, and often too 

murky. Most Amazonian angling is 

done on the smaller tributaries outside 

the rainy season which causes the area 

to flood, and in that regard, my 

Amazonian experiences are no 

different. 

Dawn Williams battling a Pacu 

We initially flew in to Lima in Peru, 

and from there on to the old Inca 

capital of Cuzco up in the high Andes 

where the plane door was left open on 

the small runway for passengers to get 

on and off. 

That was my first taste of high altitude. As the door was opened, it sucked all the pressurised air out of 

the planes cabin, and not being acclimatised, for around half an hour or so we sat there gasping for 

breath. Then it was on to the low altitude small jungle frontier town of Puerto Maldonado on the 

Tampobata River close to the Bolivian border to be picked up by our guides Marcel Gondenneau and 

German Valazquez De Silva. 

Though we didn't know it at the time, German was a newly retired admiral, and had been chief of 

military staff to the Peruvian government, a fact that would only become apparent later on. For despite 

being well inland over on the far side of the Andes, because of its geographical position, and with rivers 

being the only navigable highways in the region, Puerto Maldonado had a naval base from which crews 

in small boats would patrol looking for drug smugglers, and everywhere we went with German, sailors 

would inexplicably stop, stand to attention, and salute. 

Puerto Maldonado is a sprawling ramshackle town with small compacted soil roads, market stalls, and 

lots of motor cycles which are used by everybody, even as taxi's. There were also a few battered old tuc 

tuc's, plus the occasional car, but not that many. This is frontier gold prospecting territory, and later, we 

were to see many prospectors working along the river itself. 

Everywhere there seemed to be little kiosks trading gold, which was bought and sold by weight. I bought 

my wife a pair of gold ear rings with pearls from mussels taken from the local river, and again these 

were sold by weight. But more importantly, because of the isolation of where we were ultimately 

headed, my brother-in-law Eric wanted to buy some beer and spirits, which despite all the small bars, 

in the market area was difficult to find. 

Wading through stalls stacked with live fish, strange fruits, and cactus pads, we eventually found an 

'off license'. The down side was that this made us a couple of hours late in getting away aboard a large 

outboard powered canoe laden with fuel, food, and other supplies for our base nearly a hundred miles 

472

up into the jungle. So late in fact that when darkness came, we were still around twenty miles short of 

our destination. 

Dawn Williams & Marcel Gondonneau Frank with a nice double figure Pacu 

What a journey that turned out to be, shooting rapids and dodging boulders in the pitch dark. On-board 

was an old car headlight with two pieces of wire to a battery which we had to use to scan the water 

ahead, trying to pick out and avoid boulders and the banks. 

In the calmer areas, this also picked out the red eyes of caiman crocodiles which were everywhere, and 

as soon as it was switched on, the lamp would also attract vast swarms of moths which would come 

swooping in, followed by hundreds of bats feeding on them all around our heads. 

For miles we endured this until eventually we spotted a gas light on a pole at the bottom of some steps 

cut out of the steep river bank leading up to the lodge. Quite an experience to say the least. 

The lodge itself was a collection of sheds in a clearing with a large open planned seating and eating 

area, where for a few hours in the evening, a small generator would provide light and pump water up 

from the river. So if you wanted a shower, it was cold and muddy. 

As for the huts, these had been soaked in diesel to stop the termites eating them, and all around were 

strange creepy crawlies, including lots of huge tarantulas, plus poison arrow frogs. Vultures too 

attracted by the rubbish bins, and every morning we would wake up to the strangest blend of sounds 

I've ever heard. 

I say wake up, but that implies that you were able to sleep, what with the sounds outside and the feeling 

that you had just swallowed a gallon of diesel fuel. 

473

On one occasion, having managed to untangle myself from my mosquito net in the dark to nip outside 

for a leak, I felt something crunch under my bare foot at the side of the bunk. 

Without light it was impossible to see what it was. Next morning however I found a huge dead millipede 

with a flattened foot print half way down its body. But you very quickly got used to it, and shared a 

similar general lack of sleep and personal hygiene with everyone else. 

The fishing was divided up into two parts. The first was a six am start for a couple of hours before the 

main show, which came after breakfast. This was a short run up-steam to a constriction in the river 

where the flow was being very tightly squeezed by two banks of tall rocks. Not so much rapids as a 

collection of fast deep swirling eddies, which we would fish at the exit point where the river suddenly 

widened out again. 

The flow there was still strong and 

swirling, but settling out all the time. 

Here payara would line up waiting to 

pick off disorientated victims appearing 

out of the faster flow, and was the part 

of the trip I had particularly come for. I 

so much wanted to catch a payara, which 

is a silver salmon shaped fish with black 

edged fins – until you get to the head, 

which is short and stubby with an incredibly 

evil quality to it. 

that really steals the show. 

Electric Eel 

The locals call it the devil fish, and you 

can easily see why. It's large eyes, which 

are set quite close together, are 

presumably for hunting in low light or 

murky conditions. But it's the mouth 

This is armed with some of the most spectacular teeth and fangs you will ever see in any fish anywhere. 

I have the skull of one at home, which when I show it people and ask what they think it is, never gets 

picked out as belonging to a fish. 

It has a sort of dinosaurial quality to it. In particular, two very large fangs which stand a good one and 

a half inches tall at the front of the lower jaw. So tall in fact that the fish has evolved holes in its upper 

jaw for these to fit through, otherwise it would be unable to close its mouth. 

Great for grabbing and holding on to small fish passing by. Less good for grabbing wooden plugs, 

which they would frequently hit without becoming attached. 

We had payara there every morning. Unfortunately, I'm using the 'royal we' here. German and Marcel 

had them. I couldn't seem to set the hooks, while Eric and the ladies all stayed in bed. 

These sessions would last a couple of hours or so from first light. Plenty of time then to chat, which is 

where I got the low down on German, who looked like the small shaven headed captain of the aircraft 

carrier in the Tom Cruise film top gun. 

Marcel had set up the guiding company some years earlier. He and German had always been fishing 

friends, but obviously would meet infrequently due to the nature of German's work. As an avid angler 

however, on his retirement, German offered to buy into to the company with Marcel. 

474

As was often the case, the chat went off in all sorts of directions, which included a report I'd read of an 

alien space craft having crashed in the jungle over on the Brazilian side of the border. The 'occupants' 

had reportedly been captured by local Indians and taken to a medical centre, where some American's 

turned up and spirited them away. 

As an evolutionary scientist myself, which includes cosmology, I am well aware that alien visitations 

are nigh on impossible due to the distances involved, and therefore I'm always sceptical. But an 

interesting thread to the conversation none the less. So I asked German what he thought of it. 

I knew he'd been involved in meetings with his US counterparts, including the CIA, so I asked him what 

he knew about Area 51 and the like from those contacts. As you would expect, he said very little. But 

one thing he did say which has always stuck with me, was "put it like this, I firmly believe in aliens". 

So make of that what you will. 

The main jungle fishing was no less interesting, but not 

much more fruitful either. What you need to understand is 

that despite this being virtually un-spoiled rain forest with 

abundant and varied wildlife everywhere, you don't see 

much of it, and the river too seemed loathe to give up any 

of its fish. 

If you've ever watched Jeremy Wade fishing the Amazon, 

you will quickly appreciate the many frustrations and 

blank hours he regularly endures, and for us it was to be no 

different. 

We expected much, but considering the time put in, and the 

pristine location, we were rewarded with so little. That 

said, there were still some stand-out moments, plus a 

reasonable variety of fish, even though they were few and 

far between. 

One particular recollection is of heading off upstream in 

the boat with a group of bird watchers, including my wife 

Dawn, who were being taken to see what is know as a 

parrot lick. A particular stretch of the river bank rich in 

essential minerals to which birds in the area flock to stock 

up on their bodily requirements. 

Phill Williams, Pacu 

The idea was to drop us anglers off on a shallow gravel bar 

mid river adjacent to a deep pool where we would fish for an hour or so until the boat returned to ferry 

us about for the rest of the day. 

We trotted our baits down through the pool, but to no avail. I could see Marcel looking at his watch. 

The boat was obviously late back, and he was getting frustrated. So much so that in the end he waded 

ashore and off he went along the river bank looking for it. Meanwhile, we fished on. Then suddenly he 

came darting back, jumped into the water and waded as fast as he could back to the gravel bar, where 

once he'd managed to catch his breath, he told us what had happened. 

On one of the bends he'd been greeted by dozens of frightened capybara, some in the water, with others 

running in all directions along the bank. And there a short distance in front of him was the reason why. 

He'd stumbled into a puma that had just killed one of the capybara and was looking him straight in the 

eye. Time for a quick exit leaving the big cat to get on with it. 

475

Fishing a similar gravel bar and pool on another occasion, 

we dropped onto a shoal of pacu, which are large fruit 

eating piranhas not averse to taking fish baits. Great fish to 

catch, and excellent fish to eat too as it would later turn out. 

Very powerful never say die fighters all going on up into 

double figures. 

My wife Dawn had the best one at fourteen pounds fishing 

from the bank with Marcel, as she wasn't too keen on the 

ferocity of the water flow. It was hard to stand up and 

dangerous to wade in places, becoming even more 

dangerous than that at one stage, though not because of the 

water flow this time. 

Instead, it was for what came up on the end of my line. I'd 

felt a bit of activity down at the business end for a few 

minutes, but nothing you could really put down as a bite. 

So fearing that my bait might be stripped, I decided to wind 

in, and immediately started to sense 'something' on the end 

of the line. No recognisable struggling, so it didn't feel like 

a fish. Then it surfaced maybe twenty yards out. A sort of 

long yellow and green shape. 

Marcel with a Payara 

On seeing it, the native Indian guides were off like a shot. 

They thought it was an anaconda, but actually it was even 

worse than that. It was an electric eel, and there we were stood shin deep in the water directly in front 

of it. 

Fortunately, it must have discharged itself out in the deeper water when it first felt the hook, because it 

just laid there nice and still at my feet waiting for something to happen. I have to say, not the easiest bit 

of disgorging I've ever done, and not the only electric eel of the trip either. 

Other fish caught included a variety of catfish, stingrays, and red bellied piranhas from a pool on a small 

stream way out in the jungle which one of the local Indians had taken us to. And eventually, during the 

last hour of the last morning, I landed a seventeen pound payara. 

SOUTH AFRICA 

Of all the place’s I have visited, either to fish or simply for a holiday, on my list of preferences, South 

Africa is the only one I would never ever go back to. You couldn't pay me enough to revisit the place. 

A very uncomfortable country with lots of highly opinionated bigoted people, and the sense of a need 

to be looking over your shoulder constantly. 

I suppose that being held up at gun point in the middle of the day at the side of the main road in Cape 

Town didn't exactly help. Had it not been for a couple in a passing car, plus a local security team picking 

the incident up on CCTV, I don't know what might have happened. 

That occurred within hours of us arriving in Cape Town. But I was already uneasy about the situation 

before I even got there, having just spent a week fishing in and around Sodwana Bay in KwaZulu-Natal 

where we were based inside a large protected compound close to the beach, which kind-of says it all. 

The only time we went out was when we were escorted, and even then we were stopped by army patrols 

looking for hijacked cars. It might have felt worth the discomfort if the fishing had been better. As 

476

things turned out, it was nothing out of the ordinary, despite reputedly having the potential to produce 

great things. 

The experience of fishing out of small 

fast ski-boats was something I'll never 

forget. Not so much for the handling or 

pace of the boats as the conditions they 

were being expected to deal with. There 

are some very big swells out there in the 

Indian Ocean, particularly over the 

inshore reefs and onto the beaches. 

Dawn and Phill Williams, Kingfish Sodwana 

These tend to increase in size as the day 

progresses due to the heating of the 

land setting up quite a stiff on-shore 

breeze. Out on the fishing grounds it 

isn't too bad. But at the back of your 

mind you know what is waiting for you 

closer to the shore at the end of the day. 

Quite literally, it's a roller coaster of a ride flying up and over huge grey mountains of water with 

breaking tops, then hitting the beach so hard and so fast that the twin keeled boat slides a good fifty 

yards clear of the edge up onto the dry sand. 

There was talk of marlin, big sharks, and wahoo, plus all manner of other things. The reality 

unfortunately turned out to be kingfish up to maybe thirty pounds, plus bonito, and not that many of 

either. We tried fishing bonito live-baits for marlin and sharks, but nothing. 

In the end, the land marks suggested we were repeatedly working the same small patch of water, where 

the only time the skipper would speak would be to tell me off for adjusting the drag or doing something 

else with the tackle that he wasn't happy with. 

In the end, I decided enough was enough and called for an early finish. He wanted to be in control of 

everything right up to the point of cranking the handle on the reel. That being the case, I thought he 

might as well go the whole hog and do that too, so I left him to it. 

I've come across this type of attitude before in other parts of the world. Usually it's where Americans 

fish and expect everything to be done for them, plus of course, the crew wanting to please you as they 

are looking for a tip. But not so here. More an attitude problem generally, which is what got South 

Africa as a country into such a mess in the first place. 

Having had enough of the kingfish, we arranged to take a run inland to the Pongolapoort Dam. This 

forms a huge lake in a national park straddling the border between South Africa and Swaziland. There 

we fished from a small trailed boat in another situation which was to say the least, uncomfortable. 

In the mud adjacent to where we put the boat in there were fresh leopard tracks, which immediately had 

us looking around in the trees. Also, all along the waters edge there were large crocodiles basking in 

the red hot sunshine, while out on the water we were troubled by hippo's. 

One in particular kept slowly creeping up towards the boat. So much so that we were told to hold on to 

the grab rails in case we needed a quick get away, which eventually we did, as for whatever reason the 

animal suddenly came charging at us. 

Even if the hippo's don't kill you, it's not the best of places to end up in the water there with all those 

croc's. Then the same hippo, along with three of its mates, started following us everywhere we went to 

477

the point that we were constantly counting the heads 

popping up out of the water. Then they'd duck under and 

pop up somewhere else, but you'd never know which ones 

or where. A very uncomfortable day with a few medium 

sized tiger fish to show for our concerns. 

When we later moved down to Cape Town, it was primarily 

in search of sharks, which was a two pronged approach. 

Having done some preparatory dives in the shark tank at the 

local aquarium, we drove over to Gansbaai, where on a very 

gloomy swelly day, we took a run across to Dyer Island 

where there is a channel formed by a reef which great whites 

patrol waiting for cape fur seals to come by. 

The stench of the seal colony is over-powering. This 

actually is the location where most great white shark 

documentaries are shot, and in the shelter of the channel 

itself, conditions were quite calm. Down at the entrance 

unfortunately where we anchored, there were some quite 

sizeable swells rolling in over the reef edge scattering the 

chum far and wide. Again, not the sort of place you want to 

end up in the water. 

Dawn Williams, Tiger Fish 

A short time later we had five huge sharks up to the boat, 

one of which insisted on mouthing the outboard leg, probably drawn by the weak electrical current 

created by saltwater contact with exposed bits of the metal casing. 

You could actually touch the sharks as they went by. Unfortunately, it was too rough to get in the water 

with them, which in hindsight was probably no bad thing. 

Great whites are a protected species. That said, you can't help catching them if they take the bait while 

fishing for other things, which still regularly happens. So with that in mind, I booked a couple of trips 

out from Simon's Town on False Bay where there is a second cape fur seal colony on a small island mid 

way across. Another good spot for great whites, plus other species, including the ragged toothed shark 

which I had been diving with earlier. 

Unfortunately, the planned trip was cancelled each morning due to the weather. However, after 

cancellation on the final day, I received a phone call mid morning to say that things were starting to 

settle out, and that if I wanted we could give it a few hours, which we did. 

At last the shark lines were out and fishing. But other than several pyjama sharks which look like striped 

bull huss, it was quiet on the big baits. My wife Dawn meanwhile was having a field day with all sorts 

of smaller fish on a small light paternoster rig. Unfortunately, by that stage, all my enthusiasm had long 

since gone. 

FOOTNOTE: Some time after this visit I watched a documentary about a group of evolutionary 

scientists who had found a small colony of coelocanth within diving depth range living in some deep 

water caves a couple of miles out in Sodwana Bay. Had I known that at the time I would have given the 

kingfish a miss, and who knows, maybe instead caught the first ever coelocanth on rod and line. 

478

SPAIN 

I've only ever been to mainland Spain 

once. That was slap bang in the middle 

of the Icelandic volcanic ash grounding 

of most of Europe's air traffic. As a 

result, I spent three days on the road by 

bus and train followed by a ferry journey 

to get back to the UK. 

there, I had to nip out and buy some extra warm clothes. 

Far from my best experience if I'm 

honest, with the fishing not exactly 

providing a lasting memory either. Not 

that I'm surprised. It was early in the 

year on the tail end of a particularly cold 

winter. So cold in fact that while I was 

I was there actually for reasons other than fishing, but being so close to the River Ebro, over 

enthusiastically as it would turn out, I decided to book a couple of days fishing anyway, which were 

spent freezing my bits off in a small boat tucked in out of the wind failing to catch wels catfish close to 

the town of Tortosa. 

That said, Graeme Pullen went over there a couple of months later when things had warmed up to fish 

further in-land on the top side of the dam. There he had an absolute burster with cats to one hundred 

and eighty pounds, plus lots of big wild carp. 

So I would most definitely go back again. It's all about timing, and in that regard, mine was completely 

wrong. 

THAILAND 

Although I am and always have been an out and out saltwater boat fisherman, if I'm honest, with regard 

to fishing abroad, the best foreign fishing I have ever enjoyed, and the aspect I would be most happy to 

go back and repeat would without any hesitation be the commercial big fish lake fishing of Thailand. 

It isn't cheap, particularly with a guide 

who will collect and deposit you at your 

hotel in an air conditioned vehicle, as 

well as arranging food, tackle, and bait, 

plus anything else you might require to 

make the day a complete success. 

Phill Williams, Mekong Catfish, Bungsamran 

This then allows you to base yourself at 

a nice hotel in the middle of Bangkok, 

or over at the holiday resort of Pattaya 

for the night life, and still enjoy some 

of the best freshwater fishing in the 

world by day, for an international range 

of species and sizes of fish the likes of 

which you will find nowhere else on 

the planet. It's unique; it's breath 

479

taking, and it's most certainly not to be missed. 

The way it works is to decide on what it is you want to catch in terms of size range or species, then 

search the Internet on the basis of that. 

Though generally clustered within reasonably easy reach of Bangkok, understandably, there are also 

some excellent commercial fisheries either at, or close to all the main tourist destinations, including the 

holiday islands to the south. 

As most if not all are man made, it makes sense when you think about it to place them within easy 

customer reach. That said, not all will contain the same mix or size range of fish, and quality in that 

regard will be reflected in the ticket price. 

So while the list of potential species is reasonably finite, each fishery will be looking for some angle to 

make it that little bit different and stand out from the rest. It pays then to shop around, and maybe, as I 

have done, fish a different location every day. 

My first visit was to Bangkok where I'd arranged to meet up with Eddie Mounce of Fish Thailand. I'd 

flown over from Bali specifically for three days fishing with him, and had decided to kick things off 

with a visit to probably the most expensive fishery of them all, IT Monsters Lake. 

They say you only get what you pay for in this life, and in that regard, IT Monsters was worth every 

penny. Apart from two other chaps booked in for half a days lure fishing, I had the whole place to 

myself. 

On the bank just in front of the restaurant area was a live-bait tank full of three inch tilapia. Quite 

literally hundreds of the things. So many in fact that the guide threw handfuls in as loose feed which 

were met with huge swirls and slurps at the surface from big fish whose identity couldn't be seen in the 

murky muddy water. These were quickly followed by free-lined live-baits, and as just as quickly by 

hook ups. Within seconds of starting I was in. 

That first fish ran me ragged. It was arm wrenching. As soon as a bit of line was gained, twice as much 

seemed to be lost from the spool. 

Eventually, I had an amazonian red 

tailed catfish of around forty pounds in 

the net. Time then for a breather, or so 

I thought. But that wasn't to be, as the 

second rod already had another big red 

tail on the end of the line waiting for 

me, followed by another, and 

another....... 

Phill Williams, Barramundi on fly, Boon Mar 

runs that resulted in missed fish. 

As fast as you could throw baits at 

them they could be hooked up, and not 

always amazonian red tailed cats. I 

also had a couple of the indigenous 

Asian red tailed cats. Then the catfish 

seemed to go off the boil which 

allowed in other interesting species, 

including a spell when I kept getting 

480

These eventually turned out to be from alligator garfish, which with their long thin crocodilian looking 

mouths can be notoriously difficult to hook. But in the end, with the right strike timing, I managed a 

few, the best of which would have been well up into double figures. 

Around lunch time the fishing generally seemed to noticeably slow down. This was an every day 

occurrence, or so I was told. The fish seemed to get their heads down and sulk in the midday heat, and 

boy was it humid and hot. It was at this point that we started to wander around the margins looking for 

any activity and throwing live-baits at it. 

An interesting period in many respects, as it brought in quite a wide range of other smaller but no less 

fascinating species, the most unusual of which was a giant featherback. Pacu, which are giant fruit 

eating piranhas, a species I was already familiar with from the Amazon, and giant snakeheads which I'd 

caught before in Malaysia were also in the mix 

One of the lure fisherman eventually hooked up and landed a nice arapaima, by which time the red 

tailed cats had switched back on for another couple of hours of arm wrenching shoulder aching fun 

towards late afternoon. 

The next day was in theory going to be a little less physically demanding. Least ways it should have 

been, but not by any great margin. I'd decided to try Boon Mar Ponds, which isn't a commercial fishery 

at all. It’s actually a high turn-over fish farm churning out quality barramundi for the table. A large 

complex with dozens of square ponds starting with small fish at one end progressing through to larger 

specimens at the other, as fish are graded and moved on to produce what is required. 

Another blisteringly hot and very humid day too. Obviously, not all the ponds are available to fish in. 

The one we were directed to held fish in the sixteen to eighteen pound bracket, the bulk of which, if not 

all of them, had never seen a lure before. So you can imagine the carnage. 

Keen to get a couple of early fish 

under my belt, I started off casting 

soft plastics on a small lead head. 

Then once that tick was on my list, it 

was over to the fly rod, which was the 

main objective of the day. 

Two rods, two Amazonian Red Tailed Cats first throw out 

Casting big heavy flies tied on strong 

heavy hooks is never easy. Leastways 

I never find it so. I'd had quite a 

large selection of different gaudy 

concoctions tied up, but for whatever 

reason, picked out quite a lightly 

dressed scruffy looking tarpon fly I'd 

brought back from the US years 

some ago, though in all honesty, any 

pattern would probably have done. 

I didn't need to use anything else all day. Eventually the barramundi had all but destroyed it, yet still 

they kept coming back for more. It was merciless, both for them and for me. 

I had taken along a fladen nine foot vantage travel rod paired up with a maxximus lever drag fly reel 

loaded with a weight ten floating line and plenty of backing, the bulk of which I saw pretty much every 

time I hooked a fish. 

The speed at which these things can go is particularly impressive. So too are their aerial abilities. A fly 

fishing paradise, with lots of power packed good double figure barramundi hungry and ready to feed. 

481

My final day was to a fishery which Eddie normally uses to kick a week long booking off, and to close 

with. A lake where back then he was offering a money back guarantee if you didn't catch a fish topping 

forty pounds. How many fisheries dare make an offer like that. Bungsamran right in suburbs of Bangkok 

city justifiably can. 

This is quite a large lake surrounded by open fronted bungalows with fishing platforms looking out on 

to the water. Essentially, the fishing is either for mekong catfish or siamese carp, both of which can 

easily top one hundred pounds at this particular venue. 

The lake record carp if my memory serves me right is something like 264 pounds. On the flip side, 

siamese carp are neither numerous nor are they easy to catch, so the majority of people tend to 

concentrate on the mekong cats. 

There are also some huge arapaima in this lake, which as air breathers, you will see topping here and 

there over the course of the day. Not that you are liable to catch them, as both the carp and the cats are 

vegetarians, whereas the arapaima are strict carnivores. You can't deliberately fish for them there either. 

After some unfortunate historical incidents in which large arapaima died, deliberate fishing for them 

was stopped, which is a pity, as some of the specimens that have been left to munch their way through 

the many smaller bait fish the lake also contains, are now up in the many hundreds of pounds. 

Phill Williams, Giant Featherback Pound for pound, I would rate mekong catfish as the hardest 

fighting freshwater fish I have ever come across anywhere. 

The nearest comparison I can make is a big powerful tuna. They never give up, have immense reserves 

of power, and they stay deep, tearing off line right until the moment they are engulfed by the landing 

net. 

Worse still, some would run straight at you and swim between the wooden stoops holding up the fishing 

platform which meant they were actually behind you. But you couldn't turn to face them because they'd 

gone underneath with so many potential snags. 

482

In terms of approach, we used a very large method feeder loaded with a grapefruit sized ball of paste 

made up from rice husks suspended under a sliding float. The float was there not so much for bite 

indication as maintaining fishing depth, as once a cat had picked a bait up it would be off, tearing line 

from the bait-runner spool. And they were relentless. 

From start to finish it was every egg a bird, with an incredibly brutal mauling guaranteed. Mainly from 

fish in the forty to sixty pound bracket, with, as you'd expect, progressively fewer numbers as the size 

range increased beyond that, though hundred pounders were reportedly common enough. No worries 

then in terms of the price refund guarantee ever needing to be met. 

In the end it became more akin to punishment. I'd caught sixteen of the things and couldn't physically 

take any more. Yet as soon as a fish was disgorged, Ali, my personal guide, had the rig baited up and 

out looking for yet another. I tried to get him to stop by pleading with him that I needed a rest, but 

nothing. The only way to escape was go for a walk around the lake. 

Unfortunately for her, my wife Dawn was sat at the back of the bungalow under the fan reading a book. 

Like a machine, Ali just kept on casting, then turned to her and said "you, lady, wind in this fish". 

By the time I got back Dawn was struggling with catfish number three. Needless to say I got it in the 

neck for deserting her. But at least it let her see that contrary to what she had previously said on many 

occasions about me going away enjoying myself, it wasn't necessarily always the case. 

My next visit to Thailand was five 

years later, by which time Eddie 

Mounce had set up a fishery of his 

own. He was still doing all the other 

stuff as well, but had based himself a 

couple of hours to the west of 

Bangkok at a purpose built water he 

called Jurassic Fishing Park, where 

the big attraction was the availability 

of siamese carp. 

Normally at locations such as 

Bungsamran, it can take a couple of 

days to get a carp result. At Jurassic, 

you can expect at least a couple and 

more in a single session, plus you get 

Phill Williams, Siamese Carp Jurassic Park Lake 

to put a second dead-bait rod out for 

arapaima which can well top two hundred pounds. A very pleasant fishery way out in the countryside, 

with excellent dining facilities, plus on site accommodation for those that might want it. 

For my part, I just wanted either an arapaima or a siamese carp. I didn't unfortunately get the arapaima, 

but I had a few nice carp to fifty five pounds, one of which ran me peg to peg along the entire length of 

the lake. 

Very powerful fish with huge shovel like tails and the strangest of faces, with their eyes, for whatever 

reason, set way down the side of their head. Very odd. But very good fish to catch on halibut pellets, 

both on the bottom and suspended under a float with a few fed in loose every so often. 

I can understand why people want to catch them and rave over them when they do. There were also a 

few small amazonian red tailed cats just to add a bit of extra variety to what in 2015 was still a fairly 

new fishery only just reaching maturity, but with a very promising future when that time does eventually 

come along. 

483

TUNISIA 

While there is the possibly of a few half decent fish left swimming about in the Mediterranean, to all 

intents and purposes, the place is an angling desert. Plentiful numbers of fish and lots of potential species 

ticks for the list, but quality wise, rarely if ever anything worth bothering with due to the relentless way 

the place is, and has for so long been over fished, with anything and everything regardless of size or 

species being taken for the pot. 

And so it was when I found myself on 

the Med's southern shore looking 

seaward from Tunisia in north Africa. 

Lots of people fishing from virtually 

every vantage point with their almost 

obligatory plastic buckets containing 

tiny dead fish. 

A similar story down at the fish market 

too where anything over a pound in 

weight stood out like a beacon of hope, 

its size exaggerated by the swath of 

tiny specimens on the counters 

surrounding it in every direction. 

What I did find unusual about Tunisia, 

Assorted small Breams 

certainly at Sousse close to where I 

was based, was that some of the shops 

actually sold ragworm for bait. Tiny 

little things in damp moss, but live-bait none the less. Not that it made much difference. 

Every evening just before getting showered for dinner, I would nip across the road and have a few casts, 

and without fail, every session I would catch the same single species to the total exclusion of all else. 

Gilthead bream it seems are the dominant fish in these parts. Certainly from the beaches. 

Out in the boat it was a slightly different story. Still hardly any fish and nothing much bigger than half 

a pound, but with breams of several species now making the frame on what was advertised as a big 

game fishing trip. All in all, a very frustrating waste of time, totally in keeping with Mediterranean 

expectation. 

484

PART THREE 

INDIVIDUAL TARGETS 

THE CATCHING OF SPECIFIC SPECIMEN FISH 

Bucket List status – Incomplete 

This part of my bucket list is a collection of individual fish target weights as opposed to personal bests 

or species head counts. The sort of thing that most fishermen other than genuine pleasure anglers and 

pure match specialists have as an agenda in some form or another. 

My particular take on things, while it isn't exhaustive, has most certainly been exhausting in the sense 

that a lot of travelling has gone in to catching a lot of very big fish, with a lot of equally exhausting near 

misses and frustrating failures along the way, with one tick that clearly now is never going to grace my 

list, arguably the most elusive of the bunch........the big one. 

NATIONAL RECORD FISH 


Way back in 1970 when the embryonic version of what would ultimately become my bucket list, my 

life-long quest, and now this book was beginning to emerge, I'm pretty sure I would have settled for 

any national record, never mind a British record. 

But, times and ambitions evolve and move on. That was the year I joined the Leyland and Farington 

Boat Angling Club, and for the first time in my sea angling life, I had some measure of regimented 

order and camaraderie. 

Almost immediately, my début trip 

came around taking us to nearby 

Morecambe, which may initially sound 

a million miles away from any record 

breaking potential or influence, but 

bear with me here. 

One of the local shrimpers took us out 

on a grim blustery day to fish the 

channel just up from the stone jetty, 

where the only thing I can remember us 

catching was shed loads of sea 

scorpions, a species you rarely if ever 

see there these days. 

Shrimp Boat Morecambe 

tender, and the skipper started rowing them back to shore. 

Obviously, the trip eventually came to 

an end and we motored back to the 

nearby moorings, at which point, the 

first half of the party piled into the 

485

I was in the larger second batch, which, with the extra weight, as you might expect, put the little 

displacement boat further down in the water to the point where it shipped a few bits of swell in over the 

back wetting whoever was sat there, and as you do, we all laughed. 

That was until more than a little bit of swell suddenly swirled in over the transom, and very quickly, the 

boat went down, which with me as a none swimmer, and nobody wearing life-jackets, made for a 

particularly memorable day, though for all the wrong reasons. 

Thankfully, with toes just about touching the bottom at shoulder depth, and with everybody holding on 

to each other in the tide, working as a huddle, we eventually all made it safely back to shore crab fashion, 

cold and wet, but very relieved. 

That incident had a profound effect on me and what would ultimately become my future as a life-long 

small boat angler. But there were more immediate considerations here, because our next trip was to 

Loch Ryan fishing with a man that would ultimately become my mentor. 

This was with Davy Agnew, who chartered out of Lady Bay aboard a sixteen foot clinker built Mackay 

Viking powered by twin four hp Seagull outboards, and throughout that trip, flashbacks of the water 

swirling in over the transom at Morecambe haunted me to the point that I almost decided I couldn't do 

it anymore and should look for a safer hobby. 

Almost, but not completely. For Davy took me under his wing and eventually helped me not only rebuild 

my confidence, but ultimately become a small boat fishing enthusiast, and for that I will forever 

be in his debt. 

I would think that Davy must have been in his seventies 

even back then. A bald headed, thick set, mild 

mannered Scot, who was very measured, very calm, and 

very deliberate in everything he did. That was until the 

day he had a fourteen pound turbot up at the side of the 

boat on his own rod and could no longer contain 

himself. 

At the first rushed gaffing attempt he completely missed 

the fish, and with the second wild swipe, he somehow 

managed to part the trace. Fortunately, the fish lay 

momentarily stunned on the surface, and seconds later, 

at the third attempt, it was in the boat. 

That day I also caught quite a sizeable tub gurnard at 

four pounds four ounces, so Davy had me take the two 

fish down to Don McDiarmids tackle shop in Stranraer 

for official weighing where the Gurnard went on to take 

the Scottish record, beating the previous best by 

something like three ounces if my memory is correct. 

As I hinted previously, in those very early days, as 

records go, I could quite easily have settled for that. 

Except that the following September, again out from 

My angling hero & mentor, Davy Agnew Lady Bay with Davy, mixed in amongst a batch of 

thornback rays came a spotted ray, which because it 

was a club first, was weighed and witnessed in a way that most of the other fish we caught usually 

weren't. 

486

Dove-tailing very nicely into this story, also around that time, I had just gotten to know Dr. Dietrich 

Burkel from Glasgow, who was about to become the Scottish Federation of Sea Anglers (SFSA) fish 

recorder. 

Dietrich had been looking long and hard at the list he would inherit, and had expressed grave doubts 

about a number of its inclusions, one being a spotted ray of something like sixteen pounds, which also 

held the British and European records at the same time. 

I don't know the politics here. But I do know the outcome. The suspect inclusions were all given the 

elbow. In the case of the so called spotted ray record, mainly because of its size which was way too big 

for such a small growing species, plus some uncertainty apparently regarding official identification. 

As a result, that record slot, in the company of a few others, was thrown open to claims, and I was 

subsequently invited by Dietrich to submit my fish, which I did, as I fortuitously had all the relevant 

support data in place which so easily might not have been the case. In fact, it wasn't the case when the 

BRFC later ejected the standing sandy ray record, more of which later. 

What I didn't initially appreciate here was that as part of a knock on process, I was also about to take 

the British and European records too, all in one fell swoop. 

To some extent, and for quite a wide 

range of reasons, depending on 

species and where it's caught, that 

sort of multiple record slot filling 

wouldn't automatically happen today. 

Many anglers are now no longer 

willing to kill inedible fish simply to 

see their name on a list, and every 

credit to them for that. 

Unfortunately, and to some extent I 

can understand why, national fish 

recorders seem completely unwilling 

to accept rule changes to the extent 

that in many anglers eyes, and sea 

anglers in particular, records have 

become something of an irrelevance. 

Another of my Scottish influences, Dr. Dietrich Burkel 

Most anglers these days prefer to concentrate on personal bests, based either on weights they obtain 

outside of the prescribed rules such weighing in a boat, which the BRFC would find totally 

unacceptable, or in the case of large fish such as skate, derived from very well prepared weight 

estimation charts based on empirical measurements, which again, fish recorders say are not good 

enough. 

If anglers are not prepared to claim records for whatever reason, and these days there are many who 

won't, then what is the value of an official record to those record holders who are willing to jump 

through all the necessary hoops, when everyone knows there have been bigger fish which for 

conservation reasons weren't claimed. 

Quite simply, it devalues the standing records. So in their current format, record fish lists are 

meaningless. What they need is a good shake up to reflect what modern anglers want as opposed to 

what out of date fish recorders think they want. A point I put to the British Record Fish Committee 

(BRFC) in the format of a scientific paper in 2009 exploring the many problems they must face up to, 

while at the same time offering potential workable alternatives. 

487

I also put those same points and more to BRFC chairman Mike Heylin in a two part audio interview, 

and while he as an individual was sympathetic, it's now 2015, and still nothing has changed. 

Let's take a more detailed look now at some of the problems I highlighted in that presentation as to why 

many anglers are no longer making claims, and sea anglers in particular, because coarse anglers don't 

face the same in-boat weighing difficulties and potential need to kill situation often facing saltwater 

anglers. 

Two reasons in particular why claims are not forth coming are that, as previously stated, people don't 

want to have to kill say a large bass or a tope to make a successful claim and are happy just to ignore 

the records, and also, for some species, it is now illegal to bring them ashore anyway. They can be still 

be fished for, weighed, and photographed, but must be returned alive at the point of capture. 

Two working examples of this legislative protection are skate and tope. Yet the BRFC still insist in 

their most recently published claims procedure that all potential record fish must be weighed on solid 

ground, and not in a boat, if a claim is to be considered. Should that then be seen as an invitation to 

commit an offence?. That's not for me to say. But certainly it could be interpreted that way. 

When last approached by me on this 

subject, the Scots were equally 

unwilling to accept anything other than 

records carefully weighed on firm 

ground. Yet the Welsh are now quite 

happy to stray from that requirement. 

Ian Burrett - In boat weight estimation 

So much so that they already have 

records for tope and smoothhound 

which weren't weighed on the shore, 

all of which brings into doubt the 

subject of Welsh national records 

being slotted into the British or 

European lists where the qualifying 

rules are different, more of which 

later. For now it's probably better not 

to cloud the debate by wandering off 

track. 

Weight estimation charts can be extremely reflective. I have deliberately avoided the word accurate 

here, because that in itself would be in-accurate. 

The better ones have been painstakingly put together based on many hundreds of actual weighing and 

measuring sessions across the entire size range for the species in question, and in so far as they are often 

no more that just a few percentage points out when comparing estimated weights to actual weights, as 

it's the same for everybody, where is the problem?. 

People either accept that weight estimation for some species is the only way forward, or have a record 

fish list in which certain categories are allowed to stagnate because claims can no longer be made, 

despite fish bigger than the listed records quite legitimately being caught but could not be claimed. 

It has to be said that weight is only one way of expressing the size of a fish. It's a good way, and one 

we have all grown accustomed to so therefore feel comfortable with, but it does not have a monopoly. 

In America for example, fish lengths, including a list of IGFA world records, are often given as a nose 

to tail length measurement. 

488

I suggested in my representations, not only to the BRFC, but also the Scots, Irish and Welsh, that they 

might want to take this one stage further by requesting a girth measurement at the widest point as well, 

or in the case of skates and rays, between the wing tips. 

By multiplying length and girth together, you then arrive at a representative points score. The fatter or 

longer the fish, the more points it will generate in the same way that it would pull the needle around 

further on a weighing scale. 

The difference is, this could be done quickly and accurately in a pitching boat, after which, with all the 

usual safeguards of photographs, witnesses etc. in place, the fish could then go back at the spot from 

where it was taken, in some cases as required by law. 

I further proposed that they run these scores in an additional column next to the existing weight records, 

in effect creating two parallel lists – one each for those willing to kill fish and others insistent on 

returning them. 

A second alternative was to consider creating a separate sporting species record list for those fish which 

anglers want to return and/or cannot legally be brought ashore. But yet again, no response. And no 

response either to my focusing their attention on a wide range of more general anomalies within the 

existing lists, which could so easily be rectified by a quick meeting and a bit of administrative tidying 

up. 

Perhaps they just don't take kindly to 'unqualified outsiders' highlighting their faults, mistakes, and short 

comings. 

For example, the sandy ray appears in 

the British record list when clearly it 

shouldn't. As new species come on to 

the list, and also in some cases with 

long standing inclusions where only 

one of the two available boat and shore 

record slots is occupied, such as for 

example the mako shark which has 

only ever been caught from a boat, the 

corresponding vacant slot is then 

declared open for claims, which is fine, 

but with a minimum qualifying weight, 

which is not fine. 

If a specimen is the biggest example 

ever caught, then it should be the 

Separate list for sporting species?? 

record without having to cross some 

artificial threshold. So why have qualifying weights at all. If elevated standards need to be met to make 

the list appear more respectable, exclude the current British six gilled shark boat record of 9½ pounds 

as they have been caught in excess of a thousand pounds in nearby Irish waters. 

Anyway, back to the sandy ray. A species listed with two qualifying weights, one each for both boat 

and shore, which in real terms means that in common with numerous other deep water species 

potentially available around the British Isles, none have ever been officially recorded on rod and line. 

Why then not either remove this empty inclusion, or for consistency, list all the other fish nobody has 

ever caught too, in addition to which I have a further axe to grind here. Back in the 1970's I actually 

caught a sandy say in the deep water off the Isle of Arran in the outer Clyde. 

489

At that time there was actually a bigger record weight listed, which in a much needed purge of doubtful 

inclusions was ditched shortly afterwards, by which stage I had no way of making a successful claim, 

as there had previously been no need for me to gather in what would then be required as supportive 

evidence. 

The first mako shark in around forty years was taken off Milford Haven in 2013, and blue fin tuna have 

not been recorded by anglers in the North Sea since the 1950's. What then are the odds I wonder of 

catching one or other at any weight from the shore, let alone a specimen in excess of the stipulated forty 

pounds qualifying threshold for consideration as a British shore record. 

Any shore caught specimen of either species would be worthy of a place in the list. The tuna though, 

which is edible, would present far less of a dilemma than the mako. Why would anyone want to kill a 

mako then dispose of it. But if they didn't, even if it made the qualifying weight, it still wouldn't count. 

That said, and I'm not sure to what extent the BRFC are aware of this fact, but not all the records they 

have listed have complied with the letter of their laws anyway. 

I know of one, a stingray, which was definitely weighed in the boat, and suspect that the current common 

skate record may well have been also, as the boat which took it had a purpose built weighing gantry 

fitted so that they could all go back, as indeed they all should. 

Let's move on now to other potential wrongful inclusions such as the sunfish, anglerfish, and 

smoothhound. Irish fishery scientists insist that sunfish don't intentionally feed on anglers baits, and as 

such have both removed and barred the species from their list. Yet here in the UK we still record it. So 

who is right and who is wrong?. 

The same sort of scientific opinion question can again be asked with regard to the two smoothhound 

species Mustellus mustellus and Mustellus asterias, the common and starry smoothhounds respectively. 

Irish research scientist Dr. Ed Farrell 

has shown through DNA analysis, that 

in European waters, despite some 

smoothhounds having spots while 

others don't, both are the same species. 

In short, so called common 

smoothhound simply doesn't occur at 

our latitude. Yet BRFC thinks 

otherwise. 

UK Smoothhounds – one species or two?? 

question as to which one holds the current record. 

Scotland and Wales are currently 

considering their position on this 

dilemma, while the Irish now list just 

the one species. Then there is the 

subject of a second angler fish 

species being discovered in our 

corner of the world, begging the 

On the subject of fish identification, there will be times when somebody authorised by the committee 

in question will need to see certain fish species to be sure that they are what is being claimed, and this 

goes for freshwater as well as saltwater, though in freshwater it should be far less of an ordeal to keep 

something alive until the cavalry gets there. 

Using the anglerfish as a worst case scenario, everyone knows what a generic anglerfish looks like, but 

distinguishing Lophius piscatorius from Lophius budegassa requires an almost forensic investigation. 

490

Fortunately, most of the recorded species have features which could, if carefully recorded with a decent 

camera, allow positive identification based on photographic evidence alone so that the specimen 

concerned could be released if its captor so wished. 

This may well turn out to be a vitally important point, particularly if on-board weighing or some other 

way of arriving at a representation of size or estimation such or using my suggested points system is 

ever adopted, because as previously mentioned, some species which can still legally be caught, 

measured, and photographed by anglers, can no longer be brought ashore. 

If there isn't some move towards recognising and resolving this issue, then why continue to list those 

species as available for claims. 

The same is also true of the freshwater schelly, which at the time of writing is still listed, but is protected 

from any form of human interference under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Yet the wels catfish, 

which isn't even native to the UK, has had its record suspended while other alien foreign imports have 

not. 

My next big gripe, again on the saltwater scene, but backed up by coarse angling records, is having a 

two tier list. In the coarse fish list, all species are given equal status in a straight forward roll call of 

names. Not so the saltwater list, where records coming in at under a pound are given second class billing 

in a separate mini species list. Where is the consistency there I wonder. 

Where too is the consistency within the saltwater system of having the British boat caught comber listed 

at one pound thirteen ounces in the main list, which automatically generates a vacant shore angling slot, 

then give this a minimum qualifying weight set at twelve ounces making it by definition a mini species. 

Would it not be better to simply include ALL saltwater species in the one list with boat and shore options 

available to each, and with all vacant slots simply left open to claims by the biggest example that comes 

along, instead of some artificial qualifying threshold. 

Talking to BRFC chairman Mike Heylin during 

our audio interview, the exclusion of the wels 

catfish was put down to a combination of it not 

being indigenous, plus unscrupulous activities 

with regard to stocking and manipulating potential 

record status. But again, let's see some consistency 

here. 

Isn't exactly the same true of carp. Or is the money 

generated by carp fishing now so big as to get away 

with that sort of indiscretion, even though the 

BRFC make no secret of the fact that they would 

not only like to see all alien species removed from 

their record lists, but also from the country, and 

that includes the carp. 

Why then not rainbow trout too which are also a 

foreign import, and have in the past been grown on 

to record proportions for introduction to fisheries 

where only certain people are invited along to fish 

for them. 

Why separate mini species records?? 

Why also list the walleye, which is an American 

species of zander accidentally introduced to the 

491

fens way back in the 1930's. Beneath its inclusion are the words "list closed" which I take to mean no 

further claims will be considered. 

In truth, no further claims are likely ever to be made anyway, as according to John McAngus who was 

a member of the Great Ouse River Board team responsible for introducing our current stock of European 

zander to the Fens in 1963, the fish in question was seemingly an accidental stray in amongst a failed 

experimental introduction of American black bass where its presence was over-looked, so as a never to 

be repeated one-off, it shouldn't be included in the list anyway. 

The game fishing record list isn't immune to anomalies either. Rightly or wrongly, the grayling is 

considered in some anglers eyes as belonging on the coarse fish list, yet in common with all the other 

freshwater game species, because it has that small fleshy bump known as an adipose fin in front of its 

tail, it quite rightly appears in the game fish list. 

Why not then the schelly, which also has an adipose fish, yet somehow finds itself residing amongst the 

coarse fish species. And why is the sea trout Salmo trutta listed as a separate species from the brown 

trout Salmo trutta. Wouldn't it make more sense simply to have one Salmo trutta with migratory, non 

migratory, and ferox options. After all, the ferox stands at least half a chance of coming out of the 

ongoing science relating to brown trout genetics as a separate species, while the migratory version of 

the brown trout never will. 

My final comments on the current 

state of fish recording are political. 

The Welsh and Scots have their own 

record lists, and rightly so, with fish 

caught in their territorial waters also 

qualified to appear in the British 

record fish list which covers the entire 

United Kingdom of Great Britain and 

Northern Ireland. 

Northern Irish fish can also appear in 

the combined Irish record list which 

goes across borders, and again, rightly 

so. But what about English fish. 

Ferox – a separate species or not. 

Following on from the failed 

devolution referendum in Scotland 

during 2014, the prospect of England going it alone in specific instances has suddenly become a very 

hot topic, and once again, rightly so. This then raises the question of when are English anglers also 

going to get their own records in addition to the current list they share with the rest of the UK. 

There would still by a joint British record list. But to make this work, the four contributing countries 

need to sit down and thrash out an agreed set of rules that are adhered to by all concerned, so that where 

applicable, records from any of the four member nations can automatically be promoted to the overall 

British record list, which currently is not the case. 

In theory they already can. But a tope record from Wales which has either been estimated or weighed 

aboard a boat, as is currently the case, can't make it on to the British record list as the current BRFC 

rules stand. 

The sunfish, smoothhound and anglerfish anomalies would also need to be addressed. Meanwhile, 

anglers will continue to catch record fish and refuse to make claims, as I have done myself for species 

492

not mentioned in this section of the book, but which are discussed in Part 1 under their appropriate 

species headings. 


EUROPEAN RECORD FISH 


Record spotted ray taken from Loch Ryan in 1974 as previously discussed both above, and as part of 

the one hundred species role call in part 1. 

NOTE: This fish was weighed at five pounds five ounces 

and amended down by me to five pounds two ounces after 

taking into consideration the official calibration of the 

scales, which showed them as reading three ounces over. 

However, as a point of historical accuracy, that three ounce 

adjustment was unfortunately made a second time by the 

Scottish record fish committee, and subsequently passed 

forward to British and European fish recorders, when in fact 

the true weight was three ounces heavier than shown. 

To be fair, this was a problem unknowingly caused in the 

first instance by me making the adjustment before making 

the claim, all of which is now academic, as the record has 

since climbed steady over the years to its current 2015 level 

of 8 pounds 10½ ounces. 

WORLD RECORD FISH 


The greater the prize, theoretically, the 

greater the input of effort required to 

achieve it. Or so you would think. But in 

the case of an International Game Fish 

Association (IGFA) world record, all 

may not be as it appears. 

Ally Gowans fly fishing for Pollack, Luce Bay 

I say this on the basis that if I was told I 

had to break an angling record, any 

record, whether that be Scottish or Welsh 

all the way through the various tiers up 

to world level, and that my life depended 

on it, without hesitation I would opt for 

an IGFA world record. 

493

Why?? Because based on species numbers, available categories and all the rest, the opportunities are so 

much more numerous, on top of which, many species have vacant slots waiting to be filled, while others 

could so easily be beaten as they currently stand, particularly if you study the line class and fly fishing 

tippet opportunities. 

Back in 2003 while out tope fishing in Luce Bay aboard Ian Burrett's boat 'Onyermarks', at some stage 

during the day long chatter, the subject of fly fishing for pollack drifted in to the conversation. 

Immediately my ears pricked up. Apparently, one of Ian's regular parties from up in Scotland's salmon 

belt had been down float fishing for pollack close in around the Mull of Galloway, when one of group 

raised the possibility of getting down deep enough with a fly outfit and large sandeel pattern to see if a 

pollack would take it. 

All sorts of line and leader options were discussed, at which point Ian said that the lures would not need 

to go all the way down, because pollack will come up under a meal passing overhead and pick it off at 

any level, so long as the water was clear enough to get a visual on it. 

And so the concept of fly fishing for pollack in south west Scotland was born, with salmon angler Allan 

Everington the main driving force. 

I remember suggesting to Ian that this would make an excellent subject for a YouTube video and a 

magazine feature, so he arranged for Allan and a couple of his salmon fishing chums to come down and 

demonstrate all that they had learned on camera. Everything, including the rods, braked fly reels, line 

choice, and range of imitative patterns was up for discussion. 

Also, their casting techniques and the right areas to fish in the various little coves dotted around the 

Mull, where slack periods of tide can vary dramatically, even on such a local scale. 

What this does is allow the lures on their various breaking strain tippets to be worked well down 

amongst the fish on the drift, where in the past, the group had already boated specimens on the fly well 

over a number of current IGFA records, all of which were released unclaimed as is Ian's boat booking 

policy. 

It would be easy for anyone reading this 

to dismiss unclaimed records as 

exaggeration. What you have to 

appreciate is that Ian Burrett, who is 

projects director for the influential 

marine conservation group the Scottish 

Sea Angling Conservation Network 

(SSACN), will only take bookings on 

the basis that all fish other than 

mackerel which are required for bait, 

are carefully returned to the water alive, 

otherwise, don't make the booking. 

On top of this, freshwater anglers like 

Pollack taken on fly 

Allan and his mates tend not to have 

the same seek and destroy mentality as 

some sea anglers, so pretty much 

everything goes back anyway. And that includes records, be they the IGFA world tippet records that 

were our primary target, or the Scottish record ballan wrasse which I also took on the same day while 

fishing a bait after all the filming was done. 

494

Opportunities to realistically and successfully fly fish in saltwater here in home waters are limited by 

water depth, water clarity, and the fact that most home waters species tend to feed at or on the bottom. 

Mackerel, bass, coalfish, and pollack are the most likely targets when suitable conditions can be found, 

though there may well be others. 

Fortunately, four names there which rate amongst the hardest fighting and most sporting home water 

species we have, so a bonus there too of sorts. 

Pollack and coalfish in particular are very powerful fish. I remember acclaimed salmon angler Ally 

Gowans getting his first pollack on a standard salmon outfit and being amazed at the small size of the 

thing after the scrap it had put up. 

Size for size, far better than any freshwater species. And therein to some extent lies a problem, 

particularly when trying to break IGFA world tippet records. 

A typical weight seven outfit around the Mull of Galloway would very probably get destroyed. Based 

on experience, Allan and his party had brought along rods in the AFTM ten to twelve weight range. 

Reels too need to be up to the mark. Suitable capacity to take plenty of backing is a must. But of far 

greater importance is having a good braking system and anti-reverse to save your knuckles getting a 

battering from an uncontrollably fast rotating handle. 

Allan's choice was a penn 4AR saltwater fly reel with a number of spools carrying a range of line 

options, from intermediate through to an orvis 600 grain fast sinker. But it's water clarity and speed of 

drift that will have the biggest say in which line ultimately to choose. 

The remaining items are a selection of 

quality, reliable, IGFA rated spools of 

monofilament for use as tippets, and of 

course, a selection of large sandeel 

pattern flies up to maybe four inches in 

length, which I personally find difficult 

to cast. 

Fortunately however, fishing on the 

drift, you don't have to cast far if you 

are happy to snake out the remaining 

length required using the ground 

coverage of the boat. It's a personal 

thing. Allan and his party were all 

proficient casters. I on the other hand 

prefer to use a combination of the two. 

Pollack & Coalfish patterns 

No need for much if anything in the way of retrieve rate either. Again, the drift of the boat can provide 

much of the fly movement required. 

Watching the salmon lads, they would use a combination of the drift and a very slow figure of eight 

which they would speed up a little if or when the drift died away, and in particular when they felt a fish 

nipping at the lure to try to induce a more positive take, which when it comes, will see the fish grab and 

kick for bottom in one continuous movement negating the need to strike. 

Striking runs the risk of pulling the lure away from the fish. When a pollack is ready it will hook itself 

as it grabs and dives, so why not just leave it to get on with it. 

IGFA tippet record categories go from one Kg through to ten Kg, which in imperial measures is roughly 

two pounds to twenty pounds breaking strain. 

495

From memory, on the day, the Scottish lads stuck to two, three, and four Kg, sometimes taking bigger 

fish on the lighter breaking strains, and certainly getting smashed up by very big fish up into double 

figures even at the heavier end of the range. 

Somewhere in the region of forty pollack were caught and released that visit, three of which when 

weighed quickly in the boat in flat calm conditions, well beat existing IGFA records. 

At one point I even suggested taking the boat in to nearby West Tarbet Bay to comply with the IGFA 

weighing rules, which state it must be done on solid ground, but they weren't bothered, so the fish went 

straight back. Knowing they'd beaten the records was good enough for them. 

Claiming an IGFA record however doesn't automatically mean the fish in question has to be killed. 

Providing the weighing is done in accordance with all the rules and suitable photographs are taken with 

a tape measure in shot, the fish can still go back. The tippet then needs to be retained and must 

accompany the claim to ensure it parts at or under the breaking strain being claimed. 

Coalfish action Cushenall, Northern Ireland Some companies guarantee their monofilament to 

meet IGFA standards. Understandably, these are a 

little more expensive. Otherwise it's a case of the usual witnesses and scales accuracy certification, all 

of which, along with the records themselves, is detailed on the IGFA website. 

That trip, and a repeat with yet more unclaimed records the following year, convinced me that this 

would be my best chance of ticking off the world record I so badly wanted. So when an opportunity to 

go over to Northern Ireland came up which included the potential to catch coalfish on the fly, as you 

might imagine, based on my earlier Scottish fly fishing observations, I jumped at it. 

That trip was to explore the potential of Hamish Currie's thirty foot charter fishing RIB 'Predator II' 

working out from Cushendall. All sorts of inshore and offshore options were on the cards, dependant 

of course on the weather, one of which was a couple of hours around the farmed salmon cages anchored 

out in the middle of the bay. 

496

Hamish Currie is the only home water charter skipper I have ever come across who actually guarantees 

his clients fish. When, or if things aren't going to plan, a couple of drifts around the salmon cages usually 

saves any strugglers on-board from suffering a blank and earns him a wage, the reason being that huge 

shoals of coalfish have taken up residence under the nets where they wax fat on any high protein pellets 

missed by the salmon which then fall through the mesh. 

And when I say wax fat, that is precisely what they do. Initially, fishing with traditional soft lures on 

fixed spool outfits was producing fish to double figures, which on any tackle would give more than a 

good account of themselves. So much so that I was starting to have second thoughts about putting a fly 

tied to a four kg tippet into the water. 

IGFA rules state that fish must not be chummed up, so throwing in pellets, which we had onboard, 

would reflect neither the spirit nor the legality of things. On the other hand, to get a feel for how things 

might ultimately go, as an experiment, that's exactly what we did, and sure enough, a huge dark ball of 

writhing coalies came up into view almost the instant they picked up on the sound of the pellets going 

in, followed immediately by my fly. 

But you had to be quick. Very Quick in fact. Mopping up the handful of pellets, the ball of fish was so 

tight and the boats drift in the wind and tide was so great, that by the time the fly got down to depth it 

was miles away from the fish. 

Far better than not to feed at all and keep working the cage edges trying to interest more scattered fish 

as they mooched about waiting for their next meal, which is exactly what I did. 

Getting takes wasn't a problem. Holding on to them without parting the leader as I fought to steer 

powerful fish from under the net and away from the anchor cables was a nightmare, and as a result, I 

lost several good fish in quick succession. 

I say good fish, but judging by the size of the best fish I 

eventually landed, which was a little over four pounds, they 

may well not all have been monsters. They just go so well. 

Extremely powerful fish. 

Eventually, I did start to get the better of a few down at the 

lower end of the size range, which I have to confess I kept, 

as at that time we were using coalfish up to around five 

pounds apiece as bait for common skate, which meant I 

wouldn't have to call in at Carlisle on the way up to 

Lochaline to pick up a frozen supply the following spring. 

As a result, the official IGFA four Kg tippet world record of 

four pounds four ounces which I had weighed on a certified 

scale in a grocers shop, went on to catch me a common skate 

of one hundred and forty five pounds. 


Phill Williams, IGFA tippet record 

497

A TROUT IN DOUBLE FIGURES 


I don't really know why I added a double figure trout to my 'must do' list, as my favoured aspects of 

still-water fly fishing are loch styling on the bigger reservoirs such as Rutland; fishing a suspender 

minkie in some quiet reservoir back water, or working through a selection of fry patterns around the 

jetties and boat moorings in August and September on Draycote. 

Appreciating that while any of those 

three approaches could theoretically turn 

up the odd bigger fish, it would not be the 

path I would deliberately choose for 

shortening the odds of a double figure 

trout. But sometimes in this life you have 

to do what you have to do, and with the 

challenge set, I needed to go about 

finding a resolution to it. 

When I first started dabbling with fly 

fishing it would have been easier to get a 

double figure trout than it is today. 

Expensive, but given time, fairly readily 

achievable at fisheries such as Avington, Dever Springs, Lechlade, and right on my own door step, 

Pennine, which were all competing with each other to grow on and be responsible for huge, occasionally 

even record rainbow trout. 

Not so much brown trout though, as these were more difficult, or should I say, more money and labour 

intensive to grow on, and would invariably sulk for weeks after being introduced, making them 

frustratingly harder to catch. But of course, a far greater prize when one is persuaded to take. 

Dever Springs seemed to have the monopoly on that particular score. Big rainbows on the other hand 

would often not see out the day. 

I'm not sure where I actually sit on this particular issue. Growing on these huge fish is an art form in 

itself. Catching them has also developed a tactical approach all of its own. 

Some were undoubtedly caught by simply casting blind. Pennine for example wasn't clear enough to 

spot and sight cast to fish in the way that both Avington and Dever Springs are. 

My problem comes from the fact that it wasn't always a level playing field, with big fish often being 

stocked on press days, or for the potential benefit of some celebrity big name, and reputations were 

most certainly enhanced as a result. 

If the management team had nominated undisclosed random introduction dates at the start of the season 

and stuck to them giving everybody a 'raffle' chance, I might be persuaded. But they didn't, so I'm not. 

I have done sight casting, jiggling, and all the rest in the gin clear waters of both Dever Springs and 

Avington. Graeme Pullen and I made a number of YouTube video's at both fisheries where we were 

guests, and while we weren't unfortunately in a position to target the monsters of historical legend, 

mainly because by that stage the ultra big fish bubble had burst, we none the less had some very good 

fish thanks to the high quality general stocking policy at both fisheries. 

Graeme had a targeted sight cast sixteen pounder at Dever which was quite a nice fish, and we both had 

quite a few around the eight pound mark at Avington jiggling tiny weighted nymphs on their noses 

498

through holes in bushes, around submerged tree roots, and under floating rafts of leaves on our of 

proportion ultra-light five weight outfits. 

Not exactly fly fishing as most regular practitioners would 

recognise it though. A world of people skulking around 

peering into the water, fearful of casting until they spotted 

something worthwhile in case they inadvertently hooked the 

wrong size of fish which would count against their 

compulsory kill all bag limit. 

Also, anglers with noisy ratchets removed from their reels 

so they could sneak line off for casting without alerting 

other 'stalkers' that a big fish had been located. And people 

often not even casting at all for much of the time as they 

dangled small heavily weighted nymphs down on just a 

fluorocarbon leader, twitching it as much to trigger an 

aggression response and grab as opposed to persuading the 

fish to actually feed. 

Graeme and I had a selection of leaded nymphs tied 

specifically for the occasion by Syd Knight, including 

Graeme's own pattern, the fire bug. That's what I had on 

when I spotted a good sized fish lurking around some tree 

roots behind an awkward line of bushes. 

Phill Williams, Avington Somehow, I managed to get the rod through and started 

twitching the tiny lure a foot or so away from the fishes 

nose. It didn't like that at all. Several aggressive charges were made. Eventually, probably having driven 

it half mad with rage, I saw the white inside of its lips indicating that the bug had been sucked in, and 

knew that if I didn't strike instantly, it would be blown out again. That was my best Avington fish of 

the day. 

I never fished Lechlade so I can't really comment there. But I did on a number of occasions fish Pennine, 

which I hoped would be the provider of the required big trout tick on my list. That unfortunately didn't 

happen, though I saw a few doubles come out there from time to time. 

My best was somewhere in the region of eight pounds, and what a fiasco that turned out to be. The 

leader attachment loop came off my floating line as I was tackling up, so I tied a knot in the end of the 

fly line and attach the leader directly behind it. What I neglected to do unfortunately was clip off the fly 

line stub close enough to the knot. 

I don't know what fly I was fishing. Probably some lure or other as it was winter time if my memory 

serves me well. So, I pulled the fly line through the end eye, flicked the offering into the water at my 

feet, then left it there while I pulled the required length of line from the reel and stretched it straight. 

That done, it was time to make my first cast. 

As I lifted the lure from the water to start false casting, it was immediately taken with barely more than 

a yard or two of fly line out. Then to make matters worse, in all the excitement, I inadvertently drew 

the temporary knot back through the small aperture of the end eye on the rod where it became lodged 

because of the stub, leaving me to play quite a reasonably fresh fish on nothing more than the leader. 

Happy days. 

499

It was around this time that I was introduced to wild fish 

expert Dr. Malcolm Greenhalge, who at the time was still a 

college lecturer, but about to retire as a fortieth birthday 

present to himself to see if he could make a living out of 

angling journalism. 

Part of that plan included writing books, two of which were 

already commissioned and required illustration with both 

line drawings and photographs, which is where I came in. I 

was given the job. And as he lived just a few miles down 

the road from me, we also started doing a bit fishing 

together, both for pleasure and for the camera. 

Malcolm had somehow got himself involved with a new 

single species specialist group based up in the Scottish 

Highlands called Ferox 85. 

Essentially, they were a bunch of fishery scientists working 

at Fascally, studying such diverse subjects as whitefish and 

char populations in Scottish waters, lead if that's the right 

word, by Ron Greer and Alistair Thorne. 

Malcolm had managed to blag a selection of suitable fishing 

gear including echo sounders for them to use in some of the 

most inhospitable situations you could ever wish (or not 

wish) to fish in. 

Malcolm Greenhalge, Ferox Trout 

Huge, deep, cold, thermally stratified peat stained lochs, which when the wind blew, which it usually 

did, could throw up breaking rollers equal to anything I would ever have to endure while small boat 

fishing at sea. 

Gradually over time, patterns had started to emerge. Things like seasonality, water depth, lure or bait 

selection and the like. Yet still there were many freezing cold blank days spent getting battered by the 

elements, interrupted infrequently by an occasion take or boated fish. 

Collectively, they once racked up thirteen successive blanks. And now Malcolm was trying to sell this 

to me as he'd been invited up to fish with them and thought I might want to accompany him. 

So, on the allotted freezing cold wild day in April, we made the long trek up there to stay at Ron's house, 

which as if to condition us for what was to come was also freezing cold, devoid of a wife to run the 

place, and where we were served a huge equally freezing cold pie to eat as he'd forgotten to turn the 

oven on prior to us going to the pub to get warm, as he normally didn't bother to cook. 

Rannoch was our designated loch, fishing from two orkney longliners – Malcolm, Ron and myself in 

one, with Alistair, along with a couple of the other group members in the second, fishing a patch of 

water that looked like well stewed tea with huge rollers on the exposed side, and just about manageable 

conditions on the other. 

Thankfully, Ron decided we would work the sheltered margin, explaining the dead-bait trolling set up 

that was to be my rod. A powan of around a pound was rigged up using a stiff wire inserted internally 

from mouth to tail and bent to give it a banana shape. From the split ring holding the wire there were 

two runs of trebles to trace wire in case a pike hold, one set inserted along each flank. 

In the water, at minimal trolling speed on the outboard, this bait rotated in a huge vibrating circle, which 

in the low visibility conditions would be crucial. Various sizes of flat D-shaped leads were also available 

500

to adjust the working depth, depending on the requirements of the day. In contrast, Malcolm and Ron 

would be fishing large lures. 

I can't recall what Ron had on, but 

Malcolm's was a deep diving rainbow 

trout patterned rapala. These lures can 

work as deep as twenty feet under the 

right trolling conditions, and again, 

leads or even diving vanes were 

available to increase that depth if 

needs be, all of which to a huge extent 

is governed by the movements of the 

char shoals according to seasonality, 

water temperature, and the rest. 

For more detailed information, take a 

look at Ron Greer's excellent book 

'Ferox Trout'. On this particular day, 

Char deadbait rigged to troll 

it was decided that the thirty to forty 

foot contour was the favoured 

working line, and so far as it was possible, keeping an eye on the echo sounder close to the tiller, that 

was what we followed. 

Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long. Shortly after heading off down the loch, my rod slammed over 

and line was pouring from the reel. Quickly, the other rods were brought in, while at the same time 

trying to keep the boat from being blown too far out into open water and getting broadside on to the 

waves. 

To be honest, I don't recall too much about the fish on the line. I think my brain was as frozen and 

useless as my fingers. But eventually it appeared through the deep 'cold tea'. A large dark shape with a 

huge kype, and some of the biggest and most amazing spots on its flanks that I'd ever seen. Then it was 

in the net. 

A big cheer and an out-pouring of Gallic obscenities quickly followed as both boats motored in to the 

shore to weigh, photograph, and hopefully release the enormous fish, which tipped the scales at fifteen 

and a half pounds. I had my double, and a proper wild fish into the bargain. What a feeling. 

Alistair immediately sedated it in a bath 

of MS222 to do all the necessary science 

stuff. Then, after a quick photograph, it 

was time to bring it back round for 

release, except that it then unfortunately 

bellied up. 

Despite repeated further attempts, 

nothing more could be done, and so a 

wider selection of photographs was able 

to be taken. But since those early days, 

it's been found that sticking at the revival 

attempts for longer can ultimately pay 

off, though that knowledge hadn't been 

acquired at that time. 

501

Back out onto the loch, the dead-bait and lures were reset, and next up was Malcolm with an even more 

beautiful twelve and a half pounder on the rainbow trout patterned rapala, and still with a good hour or 

more to go before our lunch of jam butties and barely luke warm coffee. 

Ron later had a third smaller specimen of around six pounds to the boat, which unfortunately slipped 

the hook at the very last moment. 

The remainder of the session produced nothing, as did the following day. But compared to thirteen 

consecutive blanks, in ferox terms at least, this was an absolute fish fest. Not only had we caught two 

amazing doubles, but both had gone to ferox virgins, neither of whom had even seen a ferox trout before. 

Since then obviously, the groups expertise has come on in leaps and bounds. Shortly after our visit, 

Alistair took the record up to nineteen pounds ten ounces on Loch Awe, a record which has since 

climbed to thirty one pounds twelve ounces, again from Loch Awe, where even bigger fish are known 

to exist, or to have existed, based on actual specimens from this huge and especially difficult water to 

fish. 

Indeed, I believe it was here that the thirteen consecutive blanks occurred, leading to the term 'relentless 

group' being coined in recognition of the efforts both required and put in with regard to gaining more 

knowledge of this enigmatic fish. 

Loch Awe, as seemingly empty as it's vastness can appear at times, is the undoubted home of the biggest 

ferox trout. It's also the most hospitable in terms of allowing people to fish, both from their own boats, 

and from locally hired craft. 

Phill Williams & Ron Greer, Ferox Trout Loch Rannoch 

Many of the other highland lochs are 

virtually un-fishable in that sense, 

including Loch Rannoch which 

produced my fish, and where Ferox 85 

have negotiated access for their work. 

But let's not forget the deep Cumbrian 

lakes, most of which also have ferox 

trout. 

Windermere fairly regularly produces 

them to pike anglers baits. We also 

deliberately took a nine pound ferox 

on Crummock Water from a hired 

boat, and I had my best ever pike on a 

ferox outing to Coniston. 

The key to ferox potential is having 

small shoaling fish to feed on, which usually means char, but could be anything providing the numbers 

of prey items are there, including other brown trout. 

Currently, ferox trout are generally viewed as being individual brown trout offspring which turn to fish 

feeding at a very early age, breed far less frequently than their typical more generalist feeding siblings, 

and can far out-live them too, with I believe, ages in excess of twenty years having been recorded. 

Some scientists one the other hand think that ferox trout breed true, and as such are a separate species, 

or at the very least, a sub species. The same is also suggested for the various ferox-like trout in some of 

the bigger Irish loughs. On the other hand, huge cannibalistic brown trout have been taken from man 

made English reservoirs where they can't be anything other than Salmo trutta. 

502

One of the recorded audio interviews I have archived is with Ron Greer, where amongst many varied 

related topics, the speciation question was raised. In his view, ferox are not a separate species. His actual 

comment was "all ferox are brown trout, but not all brown trout are ferox". 

For me, the jury is still out. 


A BASS IN DOUBLE FIGURES 


In Part One, where I looked at all the home waters listed species on an individual basis, I have made 

very clear my position with regard to bass. An important fish, but one which has never really played a 

major role either in my planning or thinking. For while I have always been both happy and willing to 

boat fish and occasionally shore fish for them whenever opportunities have arisen, and have long 

championed their cause in my role as a recreational fishing representative on the North West Inshore 

Fisheries and Conservation Authority, I've never been obsessed to the point of making a great play at 

targeting them, preferring to enjoy those that have come along when they come along, while still 

enjoying everything else just as much when they haven't. 

Why then you may ask this urge to catch a double figure 

specimen as part of my bucket list project; an objective which 

will never fit the definition of being an easy task to complete, 

and one that has and will continue to become increasingly 

more difficult over recent time. 

The answer may well be because a double figure bass should 

be on every red blooded anglers wish list, and in that regard, 

I am no different. A truly iconic home water anglers fish. Yet 

there were times when I truly though this might turn out to be 

my Achilles heel. 

In truth, a double figure bass was a moderately late addition 

to my bucket list. I was fishing out of St. Peterport on 

Guernsey when I got the opportunity to go out with a bunch 

of local bass experts fishing a bank within distant view of a 

nuclear power station over on the French coast, somewhere 

just to the west of Cherbourg. 

Magic – double figure Bass 

In addition, we had a fisheries research scientist onboard, the 

plan being to catch as many bass as possible, grab a load of 

scientific data from each, then stick in a dart tag and have 

them back over the side ASAP. And what a trip that turned 

out to be. 

I remember seeing two double figure bass in the landing net being revived in the water at the same time, 

plus quite a few others putting in a show over the course of the day. I personally didn't get one. But it 

was at that point that I decided it was an achievable target, and shortly afterwards added it to the list. 

Actually, it was a repeat visit to Guernsey some years later that finally clinched the deal for me. A group 

of us has booked Dougal Lanes 'Midnight Moon' for a week with the primary objective of fishing the 

banks up around Aldernay wherever the weather allowed, trailing long flying collar rigs baited with 

503

live sandeel baits through the swirls, eddies, and over-falls, 

which betray the position of these fishing holding hot spots. 

Obviously, bass weren't the only fish we were after. I'm 

pleased to say that a few turbot, brill, and red gurnards also 

put in a show. But bass were the most numerous species by 

far, and as it would turn out, the biggest too. 

Towards the close of one particular day, we'd had the best 

part of fifty bass to around nine pounds when Dougal 

shouted lines up. Time to head back to St. Peterport, the pub, 

and something to eat. So as instructed, we all started 

cranking our reel handles, when I noticed a little more 

weight than expected on my line, though not so much that I 

thought anything in particular about it. 

If I'm honest, it felt like somebody else's hook had caught on 

my line on the way up. It was then that I noticed everyone 

else's gear was already in. Next thing I remember was seeing 

this huge grey torpedo darting about just under the surface, 

then seconds later, Dougal had it in the net and on the deck. 

Phill Williams, Bass 13 lbs 2 ounces On-board it weighed thirteen pounds one ounce, though 

later when re-weighed back at port it turned the needle 

around to twelve pounds fourteen ounces, making it the second heaviest bass taken from Guernsey in 

the 1991 season, for which I was awarded an engraved tankard and given a very pricey bottle of brandy. 

But the real prize was of course the fish itself, which I have recorded as a PB at its original on-board 

weight. 

My only regret is the circumstances of the catch. I had no idea there was even a fish on my hook until 

the final few seconds, and certainly not at any stage until we emptied the landing net was there any 

indication of just how big it would turn out to be. 

So on the one hand, a much needed potentially difficult to obtain tick on the list, but on the other, what 

a waste of such a magnificent fish. The kind of encounter you dream of as giving a truly memorable 

epic battle, but which in reality gave itself up with barely a whimper. 

A FISH IN EXCESS OF ONE HUNDRED POUNDS IN FRESHWATER 


Not being a freshwater specialist, or even a regular freshwater angler, initially, this particular strand of 

the bucket list concerned me. With hind-sight however, due to an ever growing number of commercial 

as well as wild fishing opportunities, providing you are willing to travel and inevitably invest both 

money and time, potentially this now should be one of the easier ticks to put on the list. But don't expect 

to be able to achieve it here in the UK any time soon, if ever at all. 

With the wels catfish is currently suspended from the British record fish list, and as a result, with some 

measure of interest having now been lost in the one species all of Britain's ton up aspirations were riding 

on, looking further afield is currently the only viable option, though in all honestly, with the British 

Isles geographically lying outside the wels natural comfort and growth zone anyway, even without the 

record suspension, breaking through the one hundred pound barrier on home territory was always going 

to be a very big ask. 

504

Wels Catfish - now excluded from the British Record Fish List 

On a more positive note, providing you are willing to widen your angling and travel horizons and go 

about things in an organised systematic manner by identifying a target species, then a stretch of water 

you know has big enough specimens constrained within it, if you want it badly enough, it should only 

be a matter of time, bearing in mind that what at face value might appear to be the cheapest option, 

could well turn into something very much more expensive if repeat visits due to initial failures 

subsequently have to be made. 

So nominate wisely, which for me means exploring the possibilities of quite a short species list 

comprising wels catfish, mekong catfish, arapaima, siamese carp, the various sturgeons, and the Asian 

freshwater stingray species Himantura chaophraya. Nile Perch are another, though for reasons of 

political instability are perhaps left off the list. And still, depending on the chosen wording of the 

challenge, even then there are potential pit falls. 

By this I mean, is it to be a one hundred pound freshwater fish, or a one hundred pound fish caught in 

freshwater. There is a difference. Unsure myself, I have tried fishing for both, with differing degrees of 

success. 

But first things first. Let's try to settle the argument about freshwater fish or fish caught in freshwater. 

Wels catfish, mekong catfish, arapaima, and asiatic carp are true freshwater fish and therefore fit the 

bill whichever way you look at things. But with sturgeon and stingrays, unfortunately it's far less clear 

cut. 

My understanding of the various sturgeon species life cycles is that at some stage this involves time 

spent in saltwater, though I've also heard of land locked populations of some species with smaller 

specimens tenuously managing to hang on and survive. 

505

With the stingrays it seems, the jury is 

still out. I've caught them in the foothills 

of the Andes a good three thousand 

miles or more upriver from the sea, so 

there is no way that particular species 

retains any measure of saltwater 

component to its life cycle. 

Clearly, either evolution or rapid within 

population adaptation has taken place 

there, as demonstrated can happen with 

land locked populations of bull shark 

trapped by dam building in Australia, 

which are known to be reproducing 

satisfactorily, despite having no return 

access route back to the sea. 

Phill Williams, freshwater Stingray 

Lake Nicaragua sharks are also bull 

sharks which have accessed freshwater where they have carried out fatal attacks. Now it seems the 

worlds genuine worst man eater has evolved, adapted, call it what you will, to occupy that indistinct 

grey area between saline and fresh. So maybe we should be adding bull shark to the list of potential 

freshwater targets too. 

The big stingrays caught on rod and line with weights up to five hundred pounds and more in the Bang 

Pakong and Mae Klong Rivers of Thailand, plus some of the adjacent rivers in the Thailand, Cambodia 

and Vietnam area, from a scientific perspective it seems, also currently sit in that no man's land between 

completely saline and freshwater life styles. 

Research is still ongoing to try to resolve the issue, though I would be surprised if runs back in to 

saltwater do not form part of their as yet to be fully documented life cycle, due to the close proximity 

of where in those rivers they prefer to live in relation to the coast. 

None the less, a fish I was more than happy to target myself, then had to pull back from due to the 

timing of my first visit to Thailand, which unfortunately happened to coincide with the height of the 

rainy season, filling the rivers up with highly coloured water and floating debris, making fishing them 

for anything impossible. 

Prior to fishing Thailand, and without 

researching things properly, I decided 

to go for a true freshwater 

thoroughbred by visiting the Amazon 

and fishing for arapaima. Bad decision. 

As there is already a complete account 

of my time in the Amazon in the Part, 

suffice to say here that targeting big 

wild fish in those parts is both a 

daunting as well as a potentially 

dangerous task, as scary encounters 

with bats after dark, electric eels, and a 

hunting puma all suggest. On top of 

this, the area is so incredibly vast and 

for the most part barely accessible. 

Arapaima 

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Okay, so you can access much of it by boat, and yes, arapaima, along with some very large catfish 

species do live in these waters, so where is the problem. Well, it all boils down to where exactly do you 

start. 

After the annual flooding of the whole region, when the water level drops, arapaima and other air 

breathing species often become trapped in receding jungle lakes, which might offer some sort of 

opportunity. But where exactly are these pools and how do you get to them. Far better I think to target 

arapaima in the stocked commercial fisheries around the world. 

If you want a guaranteed thoroughbred freshwater hundred pounder, then without hesitation, I would 

say head over to Thailand and base yourself smack in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Bangkok 

city centre, where each morning an air conditioned vehicle will pick you up at your hotel and whisk you 

away to whatever commercial fishery it is you have chosen, according to which particular species you 

have set as your target for the day. 

You may not even need to leave to Bangkok at all, as one of the best and certainly most physically 

taxing big fish waters, Bungsamran Lake, sits well within the city limits. There may well be better 

waters in terms of hundred pound plus opportunities, but if you want to get beaten up by big fish from 

the first cast to the last, then Bungsamran is the place to go. 

There are huge arapaima there too weighing many hundreds of pounds. You will regularly see them 

coming up to the surface gulping air. Unfortunately, due to a combination of their relative frailty and 

mis-treatment by anglers in the past, fishing with live or dead-baits, which is what you need as arapaima 

are predators, had been stopped when I last visited the place. 

Anglers must now stick with the vegetarian approach, that being no great hardship really, as both the 

mekong cats, which are so numerous that guides offer a money back guarantee for anyone not catching 

at least one forty pounder, and siamese carp, which have been taken there in excess of two hundred 

pounds but are far less common, can both be targeted without the chance of hooking up an arapaima as 

the rules dictate. 

Big mekong cats are easy to catch, and without equal in 

terms of brutal hard fighting abilities. Unless you are an out 

and out masochist, you won't manage to keep going there 

for the whole day. I certainly couldn't. I'd rented one of the 

open fronted bungalows with its fishing platform on stilts, 

and while I fished, the wife sat at the back under a large 

electric fan quietly reading a book. 

Ali, our guide, was a harsh taskmaster. The second a fish 

was disgorged, out went another float fished giant rice husk 

ball on the method feeder, and in no time at all, line would 

once again be pouring from the bait-runner spool. 

No time for a breather, and in all honesty, I have to say that 

mekong cats are the equal in slugging it out never say die 

terms to anything I've ever hooked up anywhere in the 

world, including tuna at sea. 

Mekong Catfish 

By early afternoon, and with sixteen of the things up to 

between sixty and seventy pounds to my credit, I decided 

enough was enough. But with Ali in attendance, the only 

way to escape catching yet another was not to be there, so 

I went for a walk. 

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Undeterred, like a robot, he continued firing out the baits. Unfortunately, not having me to pass the rod 

to and torture, he insisted that my wife Dawn take over instead. I can tell you that by the time I got back 

she was less than pleased. She'd had to bring in three big cats and he was just lining her up for a fourth. 

My options then were either call an early finish and make the short run back to the hotel, or alter the set 

up and try for the big carp, which, if you catch one every couple of days there is a result, and therefore 

would virtually guarantee my arms getting a rest. 

That unfortunately wasn't to be, as siamese carp swims need to be pre-baited just as carp swims do here 

at home, so in the end it was an early bath. 

They do regularly get hundred pound mekong catfish at Bungsamran. But with so many smaller fish 

between forty and sixty pounds in the place, that's where the bulk of the action will obviously come 

from. 

Shadow Lake on the other hand is a totally different proposition, and therein lies the beauty of fishing 

Thailand. The range of waters and species close to Bangkok is so vast, with many lakes specifically 

leaning to one particular species or other, giving each water its own unique angle. 

Arapaima to three hundred pounds are now available at a growing number of commercial waters there. 

I specifically targeted them at Jurassic Fishing Park, mainly because that particular water also had a 

very good head of siamese carp which I particularly wanted to catch, and in fact did catch to fifty five 

pounds, having already caught pretty much everything else on offer over there apart from arapaima, a 

fact which still needs to be remedied. 

Ironically, I finally succeeded in ticking off my freshwater hundred pounder with a wild fish caught in 

a wilderness location half a world away from the far east. Canada to be precise, fishing the mighty 

Fraser River in British Columbia based at Chilliwack, where white sturgeon up to a thousand pounds 

have been caught on rod and line, and where frighteningly, specimens up around two thousand pounds 

are known to exist. 

A location where all fish are tagged 

and released by law, and where 

statistically, one in every six sturgeon 

caught will be a treble figure fish. The 

big question then has to be, what are 

the chances of catching half a dozen 

fish in a session. 

Obviously, this is all boat fishing, and 

in terms of catching six fish in a day, 

you would be extremely unlucky not 

to succeed. That's not to say however 

that you are guaranteed to crack the 

ton. One day we had eleven fish 

maxing out at around fifty pounds, 

Siamese Carp 

then on a subsequent day caught two 

at one hundred pound plus as part of a 

five fish haul. It's all about percentages. The more trips you put in, the greater the probability, obviously. 

On the final day, Dave Devine who I was over there with and had already caught a one hundred and 

twenty five pounder, decided to take his wife out for the day, so my missus was persuaded to jump 

onboard in his place. She quite fancied catching a small sturgeon just to be able to say she'd had one. 

508

With this mind we motored off down to a quiet little backwater which we'd previously found to be full 

of fish up to around ten pounds, and to get the task done quickly so as to concentrate on the real job at 

hand, we decided that all the rods were hers, and thankfully, within minutes she was in. But not 

unfortunately with the ten pounder we had been aiming for. 

After quite a protracted battle with lots of begging for assistance, all of which fell on deaf ears, she had 

a one hundred and seven pounder in the boat. And there was I still waiting for my ton up fish. 

That fish, like most of the others, had fallen to a small bag of salmon eggs fished hard on the bottom on 

a very short trace. Scent here is crucial, certainly in the early part of the summer when we were there 

on account of the clarity of the water, which looks like dilute milk due to the phenomenon of glacial 

flour. 

Over the winter, the slowly creeping ice forming the glaciers grinds away at the bedrock creating a sort 

of talcum powder, which later, when the ice melts, colours the river to the point where visibility is 

virtually nil. 

Obviously, this can't be a year round problem, because the Fraser is one of the most famous multi 

species salmon rivers in the world, and fly fishing would be virtually impossible if it remained coloured 

in that way. 

Phill Williams, 155 pound White Sturgeon 

This was our final day before moving on to Vancouver, so a result was very much required, and quickly. 

Worried that Dawns big fish might have been it, our skipper Chad motored in to another quiet reed 

fringed back water, and after setting out the bigger baits, had me fish a couple of salmon eggs on a light 

509

float rig tight up to the margins, which resulted in me catching two squaw fish or pike minnows, the 

bigger of which might have made a pound in weight. 

We then raced over to a specific mark he had in mind, which in a jet boat is an experience in itself, and 

there the squaw fish was rigged up as a dead-bait which very quickly had me latched on to what 

eventually, after several powerful scorching runs, was the required target tick, coming out of the weight 

estimation formula at one hundred and fifty five pounds. 

Thailand, British Columbia, and the Amazon, as fantastic as these venues most certainly are in their 

very different ways, are not the only potential producers of hundred pound freshwater fish. Nor are they 

necessarily the most likely. For there are venues very much nearer home offering true freshwater species 

which can be fished at a fraction of the cost. 

Spain, France and Italy have excellent fishing for big wels catfish, and offer a wide range of guided 

trips for none freshwater anglers like myself to enrol on. Based on my limited knowledge of fishing the 

European mainland, I would say that the River Ebro in Spain perhaps offers the best chance of a quick 

fix. A friend of mine Graeme Pullen fished there and had cats to around a hundred and eighty pounds 

at the first attempt, with numerous big wild carp from the margins on a second rod. 

I fished it myself at Tortosa, which is way down-stream of the dams above which Graeme had fished. 

But I blanked, a fact explained by the early timing of my visit before the season had properly started as 

I was there primarily for other reasons, on top of which, it had been the coldest winter in living memory 

with loads of snow melt entering the system from the nearby mountains. So cold in fact that after the 

first day I had to drive into Tortosa and buy myself some additional warm clothing. 

It was grim. And apart from 

Warren Harrison, 90 pound Common Carp 

one half hearted take which 

was quickly dropped, that 

was it. Then, with a certain twist of irony, later in the same year, Graeme and I found ourselves fishing 

Anglers Paradise in Devon after an aborted sharking trip out from Boscastle, and there I caught myself 

a wels at the very first attempt. 

510

As a sort of prediction as well as a last loose end tie up before I close here, let me say that while it hasn't 

happened yet, never the less, one of our more familiar home waters fish, the carp, should not be 

completely ruled out here, though obviously not caught in the UK. 

In October 2014 I recorded an audio interview with Warren Harrison who lives about an hour away 

from me in Manchester. During the September he had caught mirror carp of ninety four and eighty 

seven pounds, plus a common carp of ninety pounds, and all in the same session at Euro Aqua lake in 

Hungary, where even European big fish can come with equally big price tags. 

At that stage, the lake was known to hold at least one fish topping a hundred pounds. Several weeks 

later, and reflecting the way in which the water is fed by its owner, Warren's ninety four pounder came 

out again, only this time at ninety nine pounds. Since then, fish weights (and presumably ticket prices) 

have climbed, and literally at the point of publication, Warren finally cracked the ton with a superb carp 

of 101.5 pounds. 


A SHORE CAUGHT FISH IN EXCESS OF TWO HUNDRED POUNDS 


Before we go any further on this one, let me repeat that while I regularly have and still do fish from the 

shore, I'm not by any definition a proper shore angler, being someone who is more inclined to dabble 

either while on holiday or when the weather keeps me from going afloat in the boat. 

There's a certain irony therefore in the 

fact that I should be a part of arguably 

the greatest beach angling catch ever 

made, due in no small part to the initial 

investigative work of Dave Lewis and 

Clive Gammon, plus the excellent 

guiding skills of Namibian international 

Johan Burger. So all credit to them. 

through. 

Dave Lewis, Bronze Whaler Shark Namibia 

Dave and Clive had reccied this trip the 

year before, which was 1998. From 

what Dave tells me, they didn't break 

any records during that visit. Neither 

the weather nor the fishing was 

outstanding. But the raw potential of 

the area certainly must have shone 

Based on that trip, the following February saw a group of ten put together by Dave, including myself 

and Dave Devine, make the long flight from London to Frankfurt, then on to Windhoek, where we 

swapped to a smaller plane for the final leg to our destination of Swakopmund on the Skeleton Coast. 

Swakopmond sits right on the very edge of the Namib Desert, which as I've explained in the full account 

of this trip in Part 2 looking at Namibia generally, can be the hottest place on earth, though at times 

down on the shore you wouldn't think so wearing two fleece jackets and still feeling rather chilly. 

This desolate stretch of south west Africa with its constantly shifting sands merging beach into desert 

where some of the inland dunes reach up to a thousand feet in hight, is touched by the Benguala Current 

bringing cold nutrient rich water all the way up from Antarctica. 

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As a result of this, and particularly in the mornings, the first few hundred yards of shore stretching back 

inland can be shrouded in a cool damp mist, which as it turns out is the primary source of coastal 

moisture upon which many creatures and any sparse vegetation locally depend. 

The sea water too is obviously quite cold, but it teems with life, including many predators, the largest 

of which are sharks, and in particular the bronze whaler or copper shark. 

Initially during our visit, Johan did much of the casting, allowing us all time to have a play until we got 

the feel and balance of the heavy duty outfits provided. Knowing now what was to come, you can easily 

see the reasoning behind the heavy choices made. Particularly having the reel seat low down the butt to 

allow the use of a butt pad. 

In contrast, the baits were quite small made up from gulley shark liver and blood rich gills bound 

together to form a sausage using elasticated thread. I've since tried this in UK waters using dogfish liver 

and gills for tope, and amazingly, didn't even get a touch. But I digress. 

So the baits went in, and the rubby 

dubby carcasses were staked out 

along the waters edge. We all knew 

what we were fishing for which is 

why we had made the trip. What we 

most certainly did not know was what 

to expect shortly after those first baits 

entered the water. 

After casting, we had the choice either 

of standing the rod up vertically in a 

sand spike, or holding it upright with 

the butt on the sand. 

With the pounding waves on the line 

rhythmically pulling at the rod tip, at 

Gully Shark liver and gills for bait 

first we wondered how we might 

recognise a bite. What a wasted piece of concern that turned out to be. When a bronze whaler shark 

picked up the bait, the rod tip would slowly pull down further and further leaving you struggling to keep 

hold of the outfit. 

We were told to strike at these fish several times, which we did. Whether that was always necessary in 

debatable, because when they picked up a bait they were most definitely having it, and away they went 

leaving the poor sole at the other end struggling to play catch up. 

One good thing about bronze whaler sharks is that for whatever reason, they appear to prefer to run 

parallel to the beach. Had they decided to go seaward, which they so easily could have done, we might 

not have landed as many as we did. But running either to the left or to the right meant that you could 

follow them, passing rods over and under other people’s lines who were also hooked up themselves. 

The singing of taut line in the breeze was seemingly constant. At one point I counted seven out of the 

ten of us hooked up at same time being dragged towards the horizon in different directions. But Johan 

would not allow people to be dragged too far as there are occasionally desert lions and hyenas in the 

area, which with a sea in front of you which is full of sharks, doesn't leave too many options for 

somewhere safe to run to. What a venue. 

An alternative strategy was to excavate a shallow depression in the sand and sit in it with your feet dug 

in hanging on for dear life, rather like fishing from a boat. Unfortunately, this often resulted in a 

stalemate situation with no likely winner unless something more decisive was done. 

512

Phill Williams & Johan Burger with 212 pound Bronze Whaler on UK surf outfit 

One option tried was to put the rod over the shoulder and walk off into the desert trying to physically 

drag the fish in closer, then rushing back towards the beach cranking the reel to gain some line. 

And so it went with some anglers vanishing off up the beach, taut singing lines, and Johan dodging 

between incoming rollers trying not to get soaked as he guided yet another big shark to within gaffing 

range. 

I should add here that although all the fish were gaffed, this was in the flesh towards the tail, and after 

a quick measurement, photographs, and tagging, all were released, which itself was quite a task. 

On the final day, which was breathless and blisteringly hot, Johan decided to take us for a short run in 

the opposite direction to where we'd done most of our earlier fishing to a place known locally as Donkey 

Bay. So, with no gulley sharks in the area for bait, we stopped off at the nearby town of Walvis Bay to 

put a box of large frozen mackerel in the truck. 

Obviously, by this stage, we'd all pretty much mastered the casting, which to varying degree's we were 

by then already doing for ourselves. 

We'd also all had more big fish encounters than you could shake a stick at. So whatever happened in 

this the closing session, to a large extent didn't really matter. All the boxes had already been well and 

truly ticked, except unfortunately my two hundred pounder, for which I was eight pounds short. But 

what the hell. Time to relax and to play, or so we thought. 

Having heard of kob to forty pounds taken just up the way the day before, four of our party decided to 

finish off the trip trying for some of those, leaving six of us, plus Dave Lewis, to have one final go at 

the sharks. And like the others, with nothing to loose by that stage, I fancied going completely solo on 

the sharks using my own UK surf fishing gear, which even if it wasn't up to the job and ended up broken, 

didn't matter as we were about to go home anyway. 

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This comprised a penn progression rod paired up to a daiwa LD50H reel loaded to the brim with seventy 

pounds breaking strain braid. To this I attached a trace borrowed from Johan, lashed a large chunk of 

still frozen mackerel to the hook, then sent it out seaward into the mirror calm water which had a shelf 

a short distance off where the colour changed from pale to dark blue signifying depth. 

The bait hadn't been in the water more than a few minutes when the characteristic pull down on the rod 

tip marked the start of business, and off I went being dragged along the beach. From the onset it felt 

like a particularly hefty fish, though it was difficult to say with any degree of certainty as I was fishing 

with a very much lighter outfit for the very first time. 

A good half hour or so later, Johan sent someone up the beach telling me to work the fish harder and 

turn its head before I completely vanished from view. "Doesn't he think I'm trying to do that already", 

I asked. 

So I piled on as much extra pressure as I could, and thankfully the fish duly responded by suddenly 

heading off back towards the main base area where everyone else was fishing. That fish came out of 

the weight estimation formula at two hundred and twelve pounds beating my previous best of one 

hundred and ninety two pounds, finally taking me beyond the double ton. 


A FISH FROM MY TRAILED BOAT IN EXCESS OF TWO HUNDRED POUNDS 


Catching a big fish from your own trailed boat, so far as the bucket list is concerned, doesn't 

automatically have to mean fishing UK or Irish waters, though taking account of the logistics involved, 

along with the availability of suitable target species, realistically it probably means exactly that. 

Actually, this is no bad thing, as home 

waters offer as good if not better 

opportunities of success than a great 

many more distant so called big fish 

venues. 

A two hundred pound fish anywhere 

worldwide is not to be sniffed at. The 

beauty of home waters is that you can 

more easily incorporate repeat attempts 

as a natural part of the learning process, 

which unless you get immediately 

lucky, could otherwise eat up a great 

deal of time, not to mention money. 

Quote: ‘I think we need a bigger boat’. Chief Brody, Jaws 

shark, six gilled shark, common skate, and blue fin tuna. 

The home water species theoretically 

capable of putting this particular tick 

in the required box, are mako shark, 

porbeagle shark, thresher shark, blue 

All potentially viable targets on paper, but in reality, and for various reasons, some more likely potential 

targets than others, particularly if you either need to do it quickly, or want to verify the size of the fish 

accurately and safely, while in some cases complying with the constraints of the law. 

514

Let's look at the pro's and con's of each in turn, starting with what I consider to be the least likely, 

working through to the most likely. Two fish tie as least likely candidates, these being the mako shark 

and blue fin tuna. In 2013, Andy Griffith fishing aboard the UK's top shark boat 'White Water III' 

skippered by Andrew Alsop took the first mako in UK or Irish waters in thirty seven years. 

Unlike porbeagle sharks, and to a lesser extent blue sharks, mako sharks are warm water oceanic 

wanderers. So if, as the climate scientists keep telling us, sea temperatures have been noticeably rising 

thereby increasing the likelihood of such an encounter over the past three decades and more, then we 

should have been seeing progressively more mako sharks rather than less. But we haven't. So how much 

time have you got to invest in that particular project. 

Moving on to unlikely candidate number two, back in 2010 I recorded an audio interview with a chap 

called Bill Pashby over at Scarborough. Bill had been the oarsman of a small rowing boat dropped from 

his fathers chartered trawler many miles out in the North Sea who would take out wealthy clients 

wanting to fish for what he called tunny, but we now call blue fin tuna. 

When the commercial herring boats were hand hauling their drift nets, damaged and still living fish 

would drop back into the water acting as chum for the big tuna, which would gather around some boats 

picking off the victims. 

Bill's dad would get a call to say which boats had them around and they would motor over, then drop 

the rowing boat down in which Bill and his tunny angler would row across. Doing this, his clients took 

dozens of fish to over eight hundred pounds. 

The tuna didn't suddenly disappear from the North Sea during the 1950's. But the herrings were certainly 

in danger of going down that route and something had to be done. 

The response was that a moratorium on herring fishing was put in place, which besides bringing about 

the total collapse of a way of life for many east coast fishermen and their wives who followed the 'silver 

darlings' from port to port, also marked the end of rod and line fishing for the big Yorkshire tunny, as 

there was no longer any means of locating them. 

Over-fishing by the Danes also had an 

effect by decreasing tuna population 

numbers. Then around the millennium, 

anglers became aware of big tuna 

running up the west coast of Ireland 

where they began targeting them with 

live-baits and trolled lures, eventually 

bringing specimens ashore to well over 

nine hundred pounds. 

Unfortunately, a great deal of 

investment in time and fuel was 

Alastair Wilson, big Blue Fin Tuna Warrior dinghy required to find the quickly moving 

tuna pods, on top of which, after just a 

few seasons, the Irish skippers such as 

Michael McVeigh and Adrian Molloy eventually had to remove the outriggers and fighting chairs from 

their boats as a sharp decline in numbers pretty much made searching for them in the vast open expanse 

of the Atlantic a no hoper. 

So again, as with the mako shark, not something to get too tied up with as one element of a much larger, 

and of itself, already highly time consuming life time quest. That said, more recently, an odd tuna has 

515

een taken well out off the coast of north west Scotland, which like the west coast of Ireland, is not 

exactly trailed boat territory. Or is it?. 

Quite literally as I was doing the final proof read before publishing, I received an email and photographs 

from Irish angler Alastair Wilson, who over a very short period involving several runs out from Teelin 

aboard his Warrior 165, caught and released a number of blue fin tuna to over 300 pounds. So it can be 

done. Something most definitely to keep an eye out for in the future, 

Next fish on the list is the thresher shark. I have friends who have not only successfully targeted the 

species from a trailed boat, but who succeeded with what most certainly would have been a new British 

record had they killed it and brought its body ashore for official on-land weighing as the BRFC rules 

demand. 

Sceptics might say it's easy to make big claims when you don't provide the evidence in the form of a 

body and weight certificate to back it up. Others however would pat them on the back for releasing 

such a magnificent fish. 

The anglers in question were Wayne Comben, who was on the rod and whose seventeen foot Wilson 

Flyer was the fishing platform drifting to the east of the Isle of Wight, and big shark expert Graeme 

Pullen, who captured the whole thing on HD video, including under water footage shot on a Go-Pro 

attached to a pole. 

The rough dimensions of the fish were taken, which put its weight at upwards of four hundred and fifty 

pounds. But the chances of deliberately catching any thresher, let alone a two hundred pounder, and 

from any boat never mind a trailed dinghy these days, are way too remote unfortunately even to 

consider. 

Blue Shark 167 pounds aboard ‘White Water’ out from Milford Haven 

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It may surprise some people here when I say that for me, the blue shark is the next fish on the unlikely 

list. The most numerous 'proper' shark in British waters, and a fish shown to be capable of throwing up 

the odd two hundred pound specimen. 

My reason for putting both the porbeagle and the six gilled ahead of it as likelier candidates, are that 

blues are an open water offshore species preferring depths of at least forty fathoms along the western 

Channel and Atlantic coasts, which for reasons of weather, are not always readily reachable in a small 

boat. 

Numbers and sizes have also taken a bit of a battering over the years due to commercial over 

exploitation, though Andrew Alsop working out of Milford Haven still does very well, including 

catching one fish of two hundred and twenty two pounds. 

The problem is that on top of the previously mentioned draw-backs, there simply aren't sufficient two 

hundred pounders about to be in with any sort of realistic chance, even if you get amongst good numbers 

of fish aboard your own boat. 

Now we're beginning to get into realistically achievable territory, starting with a fish not only well 

capable of crossing the two hundred pound threshold, but frequently the thousand pound barrier and 

beyond. And yes, despite the fact that the current British record stands at less than ten pounds, it is a 

more than realistic home waters target, with a friend of mine Mickey Duff from Liverpool having done 

it on a couple of occasions aboard his Warrior 175 while fishing for another species which is equally 

capable of cracking the double ton. 

The explanation is that he was fishing out from Kilkee in western Ireland, just to the north of the 

Shannon Estuary where charter boat skipper Luke Aston fishes an area he regularly takes big six gills 

from, and has authentically weighed specimens in excess of a thousand pounds. 

The big draw back with this area is its exposure to the elements. You could go there for a fortnight and 

not get out once due to the Atlantic weather, unless you tucked up well inside the Shannon fishing for 

tope, rays and huss, which is not the object of the exercise. 

Six gills on the other hand are a deep water species which tend to come up the steep slope into shallower 

water to hunt after dark. That said, Mickey wasn't actually fishing too far out, and it was broad daylight. 

It's that proximity to immediately deep water that is key here, and the outer Shannon has that aplenty. 

Mickey actually was fishing for 

common skate at the time in around 

two hundred feet of water towards the 

mouth of the bay when they made 

contact. Understandably, all the fish 

were released at the side of the boat. 

But realistic estimates put them 

between three and four hundred 

pounds apiece, which for six gills 

shouldn't even raise an eye brow. 

I mentioned earlier when talking about 

thresher shark prospects, Graeme 

Pullen, Wayne Comben, and a make of 

boat each of them owns called a 

Phill Williams, Porbeagle Boscastle 

Wilson Flyer. Well that same 

combination, only this time aboard 

Graeme's boat, took a porbeagle shark with a weight estimation in excess of five hundred pounds, again 

517

with Wayne on the rod and Graeme on the camera, which blitzed the media at the time, including the 

prime time national TV evening news. 

That wasn't the first big Porbeagle small boat encounter Graeme had been involved in over the years, 

so it can be done, and for my money, this is one of the hot favourite candidates, and a fish that I only 

narrowly missed out on myself. 

I had the invite from Graeme to be there that day, but unfortunately was unable to make it, leaving 

Wayne to jump in as my replacement. On the basis of the arm wrenching struggle Wayne ultimately 

then had to endure, whether or not that was a good or bad thing on my part is debatable, particularly as 

he is much younger than me. 

As ever unfortunately, in that neck of the woods there are drawbacks. Not the least of these are 

accessibility and personal safety, though as I've discussed elsewhere under the porbeagle shark sub 

heading, Boscastle, where this particular event took place, is a far better location that Bude which was 

previously used, though in reality that still isn't saying much. 

Bude with its rolling surf tables can be a potential nightmare both for getting out and coming in, 

regardless of how flat sea conditions might be out on the fishing marks. At least Boscastle with its ram 

shackle slipway is a predictably safer launch and retrieve, if only its availability was better. 

Boscastle is very much a high-water slip with access on and off the trailer only possible around the top 

of the tide, which as it pulls back, virtually empties the entire harbour, the entrance of which is also 

concealed inside of an 'S' bend opening through the cliffs making it difficult to find on the way back in. 

Once outside, that's it for ten hours regardless of conditions, with absolutely nowhere else to run if it 

suddenly cuts up. On the plus side however, early in the year around March and April when the biggest 

porbeagles are on the cards, they are only a short travelling distance away close in to some of the many 

headlands which protrude seaward all along this inhospitable stretch of coast. 

The final species, and the one I personally used to get my 

particular tick in the box is the flapper skate, formerly 

known as the common skate. 

When I first fished for big skate with Ian Burrett, Paul 

Maris, and Dave Hawkeswood, it was either the Sound of 

Mull or the Firth or Lorne according to the weather around 

our base at Lochaline. 

March and April is the main season, which up in the 

Scottish Highlands can be less than hospitable, with hail, 

snow, and wind a constant threat. 

If conditions were very bad, we also had the option of 

trailing over to nearby Loch Sunart which is especially 

sheltered, and from where we've taken some very big fish. 

You can also hire small self drive boats there at Laga Bay 

which Dave Devine and I have used to good effect in the 

past. 

In the early days you could launch at the salmon farm slip. 

More recently however, Salen and Resipole have become 

the preferred launch sites of choice, with plenty of good fish 

about immediately out from both. In fact, I've even seen 

Dave Devine, self drive Skate 

518

kayaks tied up to some of the buoys there fishing for and beating them. 

Obviously, when they hook up, they need to un-tie from and work clear of the buoy anchor rope ASAP. 

Fish to well over one hundred and forty pounds have been landed and released by the kayak lads fishing 

in this way. 

As with some of the other big fish mentioned earlier, fuller and more detailed accounts are given in the 

species run down in Part One and would only be repetition if we covered them again fully here. 

On the particular visit when I broke the two hundred pound barrier, we'd trailed our Warrior 165 up to 

Lochaline, which at the time offered good access, weather permitting, to our preferred destination of 

choice which was the Firth of Lorne opposite Oban, anchored up over on the Mull side. 

Small tides and fishing the slacks is when the majority of the skate action usually takes place, and it 

was doing just this, anchored up in over five hundred and fifty feet of water on soft ground that I had a 

two hundred pound plus skate in absolutely perfect conditions. 

The sea was like glass, the sun was shinning, and yet it was still only April. The tides were favourable 

too, plus we had plenty of bait. 

Normally back then that would be a coalfish of around three to five pounds, though dogfish, mackerel, 

and squid will also catch. This day however we had around a dozen two pound jacks from Ammo baits 

which were so hardy that you could catch more than one fish on each if needs by. 

Onboard with me was Dave Devine and Charlie Pitchers. Dave and I had both caught big skate before. 

Charlie on the other hand was a skate virgin. So we enacted the plan we always stick to, which is for 

each person to take the first fish on his own rod, then drop out, still leaving his rod fishing for the benefit 

of the others, until everyone has had a fish, after which it's every man for himself. 

Disgorging large Skate 

It's a fair way of doing things so that everybody feels they have 

a chance. But when the first take came along, which happened 

to be to my rod, I felt sorry for Charlie and invited him to take 

it, which he 'reluctantly' did. 

An inspired move as it would turn out. That fish came out of 

the weight estimation formula at just under one hundred and 

eighty pounds. That chart by the way is available online for 

printing and laminating on the catchalot home page. 

I then took the next fish on my rod which was two hundred and 

three pounds, followed quickly by another different fish of the 

same size and weight to Dave before the tide picked up and 

things went quiet. A smaller male fish of around the hundred 

pound mark later in the day completed the session. 

Since exploring out from Lochaline and the upper reaches of 

Loch Sunart, Ian Burrett has moved his spring and late autumn 

annual skate hunts to Crinan on the Sound of Jura. A far more 

sheltered proposition where the fish are often very much closer 

to base. 

It's almost like fishing in an enclosed lake, where only a good 

stiff breeze from the south west is likely to cause any real problems. Last time out fishing with Ian and 

Dietrich Burkel, we had high winds from the north bringing squally hail and snow, but still we were out 

comfortably fishing. 

519

Again it's very deep. And again there are some very big fish, but with a good head of smaller fish too, 

and if you put down a set of baited features while waiting for the skate, there is also a very real chance 

of a black mouthed dogfish. 

I have to say though that when conditions are right, I still rate the Firth of Lorne and Sound of Mull, 

both of which have a long historical track record of producing very big fish. 

NOTE: Unfortunately, few photographs were taken on my double ton day, and none at all of my fish 

due to the fact that we were filming the whole episode for a YouTube video. 

Associated audio interview numbers: 14, 31, 45, 54, 90, 109, 112, 123, 124, 137, 141, 153, and 188. 

A FISH IN EXCESS OF ONE THOUSAND POUNDS 


Thousand pound fish, or granders as they are called in big fish circles, are rare. For obvious reasons, 

the biggest examples regardless of weight for all fish species these days are now unfortunately on the 

wane. 

These are the individuals that for however long they've lived, 

have managed to avoid becoming sick or diseased, dodged 

predators in their many forms during the various phases of 

their development and growth, and up to the point of 

appearing on the end of someone's line, also previously 

managed not to get caught, either by anglers or commercial 

fishermen, all of which makes for one very fortunate fish. 

Other factors will also have been at work too, such as a 

genetic pre-disposition towards maximised potential growth. 

On top of all this, and despite fish having a theoretical 

capacity for indeterminate growth, only a handful of species 

have the actual capacity to become granders, even if and 

when all the odds are stacked in their favour. 

A few friends and associates of mine have managed to 

achieve this very significant milestone. Dave Lewis for 

example is one who got lucky in the lottery of who takes 

which strike during a marlin trip to Cape Verde, and came 

away with a fish of eleven hundred and twenty pounds. 

Pete Thorman, who I interviewed for the audio archives is 

Dave Lewis 1120 pound Blue Marlin another. A man who has caught a number of four figure 

great white sharks, including one well over two thousand 

pounds. Even back then, getting the necessary permits to catch, tag, and release great whites was 

difficult. These days it would be virtually impossible. 

So what is there left to aim for. Well, when I was over in Mauritius, UK angler Leo Kennedy had a 

grand plus mako shark on a live tuna slowly trolled for marlin. But like huge marlin these days, though 

there are still a few grander pelagic sharks, including tigers, knocking about still, it's not to the extent 

that they can be realistically deliberately targeted. 

One shark exception, though little fished for is the greenland shark, which like the six gilled shark is a 

sluggish, primitive, deep water species capable of some truly mind blowing dimensions. 

520

Because of the geography involved, not a lot is known about them, though they are occasionally caught 

by anglers, obviously around Greenland, but also nearer to home in some of Norway's deeper northerly 

fjords, where weights up to fifteen hundred pounds are not out of the question. So that's one which 

might be worth researching. 

Closer to home, Adrian Molloy in County Donegal, and Luke Aston a little bit further to the south, have 

been show casing some of the big fish potential on offer along the west coast of Ireland. 

As mentioned previously, Luke has actually put a fish of over a thousand pounds on the scales. A big 

six gilled shark in fact which was the best of a number of six gills his clients have caught. After 

weighing, that fish was put into cold store for research purposes with scientists from a number of 

countries clambering to get hold of it. 

Adrian's fish on the other hand was a blue fin tuna which fell just a few pounds short of being a Grander, 

though he has seen far bigger fish in the area. These however must be viewed as exceptional episodes 

in every sense of the word, with the realistic chance of any repeat not nearly so good as in other parts 

of the world. Even so, all is not lost. 

Several years ago, Graeme Pullen heard on the rumour mill that there was a chap in the Canary Islands 

who regularly caught very big fish, including granders. After some preliminary research, the location 

turned out to be La Restinga on the outer island of El Hierro, and the man in question, a Frenchman, 

was Miguel Gamito, who fortunately for us could speak English – one of the few on this tiny isolated 

island who could. 

Willing to take a chance, Graeme went 

over with his son Mike and Pete Scott 

where the trio were rewarded with a 

string of huge six gilled sharks, a 

number of which well topped the 

thousand pounds. 

fifteen hundred pounds. 

Whole Bonito for bait 

The following summer, he set up a 

return trip for himself, followed 

immediately by a weeks fishing for 

myself and Dave Devine. We flew in 

to Tenerife where we briefly met up 

with Graeme who was just about to fly 

out on his way back home. They'd had 

some absolute monsters between a 

thousand and twelve hundred pounds, 

plus one special fish that well topped 

Buoyed up by that, after a couple of beers and a few hours sleep in some grubby little hotel, we were in 

the taxi to Los Christianos harbour for the four hour sail across aboard the Fred Olsen ferry to Puerto 

de la Estaca. There we'd arranged to be met at the harbour and taxied down to the bottom end of the 

island to the apartment Graeme had just vacated. 

El Hierro is pretty much a crisp cinder of volcanic rock rising up from the deep ocean floor, the barren 

exposed tip of which is dry land. Quite a small, bleak, desolate looking place. A far cry from the general 

UK holiday makers perception of the Canary Islands. A place in fact where only locals tend to visit, 

and where English is very much an alien tongue. 

521

Thank goodness then for Miguel who at the time was living with his Austrian girl friend who ran a little 

food shop and was able to point us at the restaurant, bar, and car hire, not that there was very much 

choice available on any of those counts. 

One thing people should understand about El Hierro is that it's always windy. Very windy in fact. 

Throughout the entire summer, the north east trade wind blasts the eastern side of the island which is 

where La Restinga harbour is situated. 

I remember lying in bed that first night listening to the windows rattling and the wind quite literally 

whistling around the corner of building, thinking there would be absolutely no chance of going afloat 

the following day. Yet when we made it down to the quay, there was Miguel ready and raring to go. 

A quick look over the harbour wall showed white horses breaking as far as the eye could see. But you 

only need to sail a short distance to tuck in around the sheltered southern tip of the island to fish an area 

the locals affectionately call the 'Costa Calma', which is where the big sharks are. 

Because of the depth, Miguel had two buoyed permanent anchors in place. The first, maybe half a mile 

out was where he fishes for stingrays, with the second in very much deeper water maybe a mile of so 

off where he targets the six gilled sharks. 

To put the depths here into some sort of context, depending on the direction of the wind and the tide 

pushing on the outer buoy creating an angle in the rope, you could be fishing in as little as two hundred 

fathoms or as much as four hundred fathoms, as the island quite literally is an almost vertical rock wall 

climbing to the surface from the abyss, and unfortunately, six gilled sharks like to feed hard on the 

bottom. 

What normally happens is that the boat catches one big six gill, then moves to the inshore buoy to use 

up any remaining time fishing for stingrays. 

What Dave and I did was extend each of the days we fished 

to ten hours so we could stay tied up to the outer buoy, 

thereby, theoretically at least, giving us both a shot at a big 

fish, and sufficient time to get them in. For while six gills 

certainly don't put up much in the way of a recognised fight, 

their sheer bulk, coupled to the extreme water depth and 

blazing sunshine, makes it tough going to say the least. 

Imagine trying to winch in a wheely bin with its lid open up 

the side of three Blackpool towers stacked on top of each 

other under a blazing sun and you start to get the picture. 

One six gill in a session is enough for anyone. 

The bait was a whole bonito. When they are about you can 

sometimes troll up a few en route from the harbour. We 

were not so lucky and had to make do with frozen baits. But 

with food presumably quite scarce in a dark world often 

reliant on corpses falling from above to provide meals, the 

six gills aren't too fussed. 

Phill Williams into a big Six Gill 

That said, the buoy, which was marked by what appeared to 

be a large floating mattress or air-bed, attracted reasonable 

numbers of small dorado, some of which we caught on 

small lures cast to them while the shark baits were down. 

522

I even tried bottom fishing with small hooks and baits. This brought up all sorts of weird and wonderful 

stuff including bright red beryx. But that soon started to wear thin. I remember on one occasion that as 

soon as the baits had completed their very, very long drop, a shark bite developed, so it was straight 

back up again at high speed with my arms feeling like they were about to explode. 

When a shark took the bait, which was little more than just a few pulls at the rod tip even though we 

were fishing with non stretch braid, Miguel would release the rope to the buoy and start motoring away, 

which both helped set the hook and cleared the anchor rope. Then the work really began. A long, slow, 

arm aching pump to the surface that would probably take the best part of an hour. 

You might get the odd head shake or token dive. In many ways six gills fight like bull huss. In fact, at 

the surface they even look like bull huss, but obviously on a very much grander scale. And at the boat 

they still stick with the dogfish theme. You can easily hold one in place with just the trace and pretty 

much guide it around at will into a good tagging position, after which, the hook is either retrieved or 

the trace cut, allowing the fish to slowly make its way back down. 

Tagged fish are occasionally recaptured. So taking such a huge up and down with its enormous changes 

in pressure doesn't seem to be having too much of a detrimental effect, certainly not on every fish. On 

the other hand, tagged recaptures are still quite rare, which might also be saying the opposite. 

What it certainly does seem to say is that there is no shortage of huge six gills down there, a fact backed 

up by the rarity of scoring a blank. 

Unfortunately however, having the fish present and getting the takes doesn't necessarily mean you are 

going to have a successful day, or end up cracking the thousand pound barrier, because that is precisely 

how it ended up going for myself and Dave. 

By the last day, we still hadn't seen a grander. There had been some big fish, but quite simply, not big 

enough. So for the final session it was all or nothing. 

Thankfully, the fish themselves were in good feeding 

mood. Getting the takes was easy enough once the 

complicated drop down procedure was complete. 

Unfortunately, keeping them on the line was proving to be 

another matter. 

One parted company due to a faulty hook which 

straightened under the strain. Another just simply came free 

half way up, presumably due to a light hook hold, while a 

third fish got away as the taut braid parted after touching 

the sharp head of a screw in the diving platform at the stern. 

With all the baits out of the water, we sat down despondent 

for a spot of lunch, debating whether to call it a day and 

move inshore to finish off with a few hours on the stingrays. 

Miguel was up for that. But we were there to do a job, and 

as such, the opportunity might never come around again. 

Miguel with huge Six Gill at boat 

So having re-grouped and managed to find a few extra 

dregs of enthusiasm, the baits went down again, resulting 

this time in a six gill each with estimated weights at around 

four hundred kilo's, and a YouTube video. But not 

unfortunately four hundred and fifty kilo's, which is as near 

as damn it the one thousand pound equivalent. 

523

With Miguel now gone to Cape Verde and a more recent big six gill attempt at Ascension dogged by 

big oil fish attacking, and in some cases taking the baits, the likelihood of that one remaining tick 

required to complete my bucket list has now gone. For anyone else out there wanting the same, the 

flight to Ascension out of RAF Brize Norton is probably the best remaining option now. 


FOOTNOTE: There was also a time when, having studied the amazing story behind a fish known as 

the coelacanth, and the fact that during the early part of the twentieth century the species had suddenly 

re-appeared in the flesh having supposedly been extinct for sixty five million years, I considered adding 

that to the list as the final ultimate angling challenge. 

This fish which belongs to a group known as the lobe fins, one of which sharing a common ancestor 

with the Coelocanth, some three hundred and seventy to three hundred and ninety million years ago, 

left the water on an evolutionary journey that would lead all the way through to ourselves. 

That was Tiktaalik, predicted in terms of anatomical characteristics, timing, and location by Prof. Neil 

Shubin, who later led an expedition to look for its fossilized remains and eventually found them in arctic 

Canada. A fish that had extended the development of the extraordinary fins found in the Coelocanth to 

the point where it could crawl out of the water and support itself, either to feed on invertebrates that had 

already made the same transition, or to avoid predation. 

Like the people who re-discovered the Coelocanth to be extant by catching them on baited long-lines 

back in the late 1930's, I quite fancied catching one myself on rod and line. But those first specimens 

unfortunately came from the Comoros Islands just to the north of Madagascar. A politically unstable, 

often feuding island group accessible only from Yemen, which in today's religious and political climate 

would not be at the top of my must visit list, for which reason I quite naturally thought better of it. 

More recently however, coelacanth have started turning up in other parts of the world. Northern 

Sulawesi in Indonesia for example, and Sodwana Bay in South Africa close to the Mozambique border, 

where some amazing documentary video has been shot in water shallow enough for divers to go down. 

Ironically, I fished Sodwana Bay before their discovery there. Had I known of their presence at that 

time around a series of deep water caves just a few miles offshore, I might have been tempted to give 

that a go instead of chasing marlin and kingfish. But I didn't. And judging by the levels of international 

protection given to the species and the outcry that might have provoked had I succeeded, I think it's 

probably as well. 

524

PART FOUR 

OTHER STUFF 

PERIFERAL & HISTORICAL ANGLING RELATED TOPICS 

Bucket List status – Result 

THE EVOLUTION OF SMALL BOAT FISHING 

Back in the very early 1970's, just after I got married for the first time, I was persuaded by one of my 

new neighbours Fred Bell to get organised and broaden my angling horizons by joining the Leyland & 

Farington Boat Angling Club. 

Back in the 1970’s the keep everything mentality was rife. We all did it. 

Having taken his suggestion, I was almost immediately introduced to Loch Ryan in south west Scotland, 

and more importantly, to local angler-skipper, the late great Davy Agnew. A meeting that would have 

important implications for this section of the book. 

What this would ultimately do was lead my practical angling in the direction of total self sufficiency 

through small boat fishing, which was very much in its infancy at that time. 

Trailed boats back then were mainly small open displacement designs, invariably powered by seagull 

outboards, towed on rusting none galvanised trailers, and in that regard, my first outfit was no different. 

525

How could it not be. Choice at that time was extremely limited, besides which, my mentor Davy Agnew 

chartered from a sixteen foot clinker built mackay viking powered by twin seagulls. An outfit choice I 

would kind-of follow a few years later with a GRP mackay viking of my own powered by the same 

amount of power, but in the form of a single Johnson outboard. 

This would ultimately provide myself and Steve Lill with a quality of fish and of fishing that was head 

and shoulders above that which we have today, despite all the current advances in boats, engines, and 

technology. 

My encounter with Davy Agnew up at Loch Ryan also spawned another strand to my angling life. In 

1984, in conjunction with another long-time small boat fishing pal Brian Douglas, I got the green light 

from BeeKay Publishing for the first comprehensive subject specific book on small boat fishing ever to 

be written, entitled 'Dinghy Fishing at Sea', which I recently had a flick through for probably the first 

time in a good twenty years. 

I have heard it glowingly described in the same way I have described some of the classic articles from 

Clive Gammon, Brian Harris and the like in the next section, which truly is an exaggeration beyond 

exaggeration. Those articles and our book are not even in the same league. 

An archive piece, maybe. A classic, never. If anything, it now looks like an A5 version of some of those 

antiquated black and white fishing articles, the presentation of which I am often so critical of. But one 

very important thing it does do is demonstrate how far all aspects of boats, boat fishing, and technology 

have progressed. 

Technological advancement and changes in boat design were just about starting to creep in by the mid 

1970's. Initially we had nothing more technically advanced than a seafarer spot the ball echo sounder 

which was a flashing light on a circular calibrated dial indicating approximate depth. 

Our first VHF, and one of the first I was aware of in small boat fishing use on my patch at the time, was 

a hand held 3 channel affair boasting a 1 watt output for local line of sight chatter, and 5 watts for 

distance work such as the coastguard, much of which was cancelled out by the fact of it having such a 

small dumpy aerial. 

Once we'd worked that one out, a cuddy 

top aerial was fitted which improved 

things no end, shortly after which we 

started to see the first multi-channel 

fixed VHF units appear. 

These were as much statements of 

wealth as they were pieces of 

communication kit, because with so 

few other people having them, there 

was nobody else around to talk to 

anyway. 

‘Spot the ball’ echo sounder 

Today of course, you wouldn't dream of 

putting to sea without one. Even the 

lads fishing from kayaks have access 

to waterproof submersible handsets. 

Proper echo sounders were the next 

'toy' to really catch on, particularly amongst the early pioneers of dinghy wreck fishing in the Liverpool 

Bay area such as Dave Devine and Ken Mitchell, who would also regularly be seen towing a 

526

magnetometer behind the boat as they tried to pin point the exact position of wreck marks bought in as 

bearings from the Admiralty. 

These days you can pick wreck coordinates up online. Every man and his dog knows where these marks 

are and can find them with a repeat accuracy the likes of which was something akin to a sci-fi movie 

back then. 

We were still in the dark days of Decca, where sets had to be rented at great cost and used by overlaying 

existing charts with the green, purple and red lane configuration that took a maths degree to 

master, on top of which, the land based signals were unreliable and could be affected by natural factors 

such as atmospheric pressure and rain. 

As for the sounders, these printed onto paper with a red hot stylus burning the sonar marks onto it. 

Expensive to buy and expensive to operate, on top of which, you always had to have extra rolls of paper 

and a spare stylus handy, which, like the old fashioned gramophone needles, sometimes needed to be 

changed to get a meaningful result. 

As you can probably imagine then, we were up against it. The odds of finding fish and accurately 

repeating visits to precise marks were well and truly stacked against us. But, as I've already said, and 

this is not me putting on my rose tinted glasses here, we regularly caught more and bigger fish back 

then despite the poor odds. 

Perhaps not in the same mix, and certainly not some of the species we enjoy today such as 

smoothhounds along the Lancashire coast, which are quite a recent phenomenon. Imagine then how 

much better it might have been with today's outfits searching for yesterdays fish. Still, by increments, 

slowly we were getting there. 

Digital sounders were unfortunately 

still some way off, and when they did 

first arrive, were so poor you would be 

forgiven for thinking that the seabed 

was made up of a series of steps. 

It was like looking at a bar chart. No 

contours or bottom definition, and for 

a long time, no colour either. We did 

however get to move away from the 

large, cumbersome, expensive decca 

navigators with the eventual advent of 

the Navstar. Well, sort of. 

Navstar wasn't cheap. But it was small 

and compact, and for the first time 

Early digital sounder 

ever, it displayed in latitude and 

longitude. Unfortunately, this was 

little more than a conversion from the problematic land based decca signals previously mentioned, with 

all their frailties. Just a little more user friendly. 

At the same time, boats, outboards, and trailers, were also being dragged screaming and kicking into 

the modern era. The first none displacement trailed boat that I can remember being used by anglers was 

the thirteen foot CJR. A short, blunt, high sided full cathedral boat, usually powered by something 'as 

big' as a thirty hp two-stroke outboard. 

Looking at them these days you would shudder. But they opened up a whole new world back then. The 

ability to go more than a couple of miles from base and still have time to fish. 

527

I actually owned one of the later short 

cuddied versions, which I had at the same 

time as the larger mackay viking, and as 

such I am well placed to make an 

objective comparison of the two 

concepts. 

The good old bad old days 

The traditional displacement design it 

was argued had better sea keeping 

capabilities. But had it. Unlike the full 

cathedral which slammed and banged, it 

rode a good sea well on to the bow, then 

rolled like a pig at anchor in a beam on 

swell, and was a nightmare in terms of 

balance when two of you needed to be at 

the same side together to deal with a 

good fish. 

In the CJR, you could walk around anywhere on its flat deck and it stayed as steady as a rock. But the 

noise at anchor and the battering while under-way bow on into a sea was something else, the latter being 

particularly worrying in light of the flimsy way many of these boats were put together at that time. 

In construction terms, most of today's boats are about as good as it gets. Their layup is what it needs to 

be where it needs to be, with heavy duty woven roving matting sandwiched between the lighter chopped 

strand matting layers, plus additional strengtheners for added support. 

Back then, everyone was jumping on the band wagon, either through ill-informed home build from 

scratch, which many of us at some point or other did, or from equally ill-informed boat building 

companies popping up here, there, and everywhere, throwing together wafer thin poor quality hulls 

which were a very real danger to be out in. 

I remember going out fourteen miles to fish a wreck from Ainsdale aboard a supposedly top of the range 

eighteen foot boat owned by a friend of mine Pete Sharples, the make of which I won't name and shame, 

as the company still I think trades today. 

Conditions were such that we shouldn't 

have sailed, but we did, luckily as it 

would happen in the company of a 

smaller second boat. And we took an 

absolute battering. So much so, though 

we didn't know it at the time, that the 

cuddy bulkhead which went below the 

floor level but wasn't bonded to the hull, 

had been hitting the wafer thin hull as it 

flexed in the rough sea and had 

punctured it. 

Rusting, rotting trailers 

The first we knew about it was when the 

under floor cavity had filled and water 

began oozing into the fishing well 

though the bolt holes holding the 

pedestal seats in place. 

528

Luckily, Pete had installed a bilge pump, and thankfully the rubber mounted windows didn't get also 

pushed through by the pounding swells or we would have really been in trouble. None the less, it was 

still a long worrying journey back to the beach. 

Then when you got back to the shore, in anything other than mirror calm conditions, you had to face 

the nightmare of trying to get the boat back onto its trailer, the design and construction of which, in 

conjunction with the poor layup of these hulls, plus a lumpy sea lifting and dropping the hull on the 

rollers, was equally likely to put a hole through the bottom of the boat. 

Cathedral hulls, and later the much better riding semi-cathedral design, both of which had spawned the 

concept of long trailer skid supports sitting under the arches of the hull instead of tiny upright rollers, 

finally helped make getting boats re-trailered far less problematic. 

Trailers with proper rotating rollers and self centring cradles were still light years away, as was 

galvanising as standard, plus wheels, hubs, and bearings, designed specifically with heavy boats and 

marine environments in mind. 

Internally rusted trailer box sections which eventually snapped while winching on, or juggling red hot 

wheel nuts heated by seized up bearings on the hard shoulder of the motorway, which when you dropped 

them melted their way into the asphalt and had to be chiselled free, were all a regular part of the small 

boat fishing experience back in those pioneering days. 

Similarly, winch cables snapping and whip-lashing back, 

wheels that had sunk in the muddy sand being ejected from 

their tyres as the trailer was worked first one way then the 

other in an attempt to free it, and cheap unreliable hitches 

jumping off the car's tow ball. 

Incidents of one sort or another were the rule rather than the 

exception. If it wasn't having over-taking cars flashing their 

lights and pointing back alerting you of smoke pouring 

from the hubs, or tyre blow-outs due to all that weight being 

focused through one small area of a poor quality tyre, it was 

swampings as you tried to paddle through the breakers due 

to having no power trim and tilt, or struggling to get the 

anchor in by pulling the boat beam on to the tide while side 

anchoring in the days before the Aldernay ring. 

Small boaters today literally don't appreciate the difficulties 

their pioneering predecessors had to endure, which is why 

I felt that this brief resume of some of those early 

experiences might both educate and amuse. 

But, as I've said, those of us who experienced some or all 

of that catalogue of difficulties and more are now having 

Big Cod, tiny Seagull outboard the last laugh. For as good as you may think some areas, 

some marks, and even some species currently are in terms 

of productivity, none of it compares to the satisfaction in 

terms of achievement, discovery, and quality of fishing we enjoyed back in the 1970's and 1980's, and 

probably never again will. 

529

JOURNALISM TARGET 


Angling journalism has long been a passion of mine. Not so much from the perspective of being in the 

public eye, because I hate being on photographs, as anyone who has ever seen my trade mark miserable 

face in the magazines will probably well appreciate. 

I am however a creative person at heart who likes nothing better than to get up early in the morning, 

park myself in front of the computer with endless cups of coffee trying to wake up while all around me 

sleep, and put my thoughts, findings, and aspirations out there into the public domain in the hope that 

others might benefit. 

In the early days - the self taught no prior experience learning phase if you like when I can assure you 

nothing comes easy, particularly to an educational stray as I was in my school years, to actually get 

something published was an achievement, and a very occasional achievement at that. 

Every article accepted rode on the back of several that weren't, which you had to take on the chin and 

learn from, or could have learned from, if only rejection came with some measure of constructive 

criticism to help avoid making the same mistakes again. 

But, editors being busy people, and in particular the case of Peter Collins who back then headed up Sea 

Angler, some simply wouldn't like you for whatever reason, despite never having met you, and as such 

would tell you nothing, making guidance of any sort very difficult to come by. 

So you would plod on, learning by a combination of default and reading what other people got 

published, until eventually getting a handle of sorts on what it was that editors were looking for. 

Probably my biggest step forward came not from the right words, but from my illustration. Few if any 

of the all time greats I either met or fished with, such as Clive Gammon, even owned a camera, let alone 

took pictures. In many cases their descriptive writing was so good you could conjure up suitable imagery 

in your own head without the need for pictures. 

530

But endless pages of print unfortunately doesn't draw in potential spending browsers in places like WH 

Smiths. Good illustration on the other hand does, and magazine editors were well aware of that fact, 

even back in the days when black and white pictures looked little better than ink poured onto blotting 

paper. 

You can't beat a big eye grabbing catch to stimulate the urge to read on and spend money. So investing 

in a quality SLR camera certainly helped me, followed later by a second for transparency work when 

the occasional colour page started to creep in. 

And the rest as they say is history, leading up to digital where we find ourselves today. No more waiting 

for colour transparencies to come back from the processors only to have the disappointment of not a 

single one of them good being enough to use. 

The digital age has well and truly seen off disappointments and set-backs of that sort, and in that regard, 

I did a bit of the pioneering leg work there too, having the first ever fully digitally illustrated fishing 

article published of a wreck fishing trip out of Pwllheli aboard 'Judy B' skippered by Dave Carey. 

This was a pre-planned article trip sanctioned by my then boss Jim Whippy, who at the time was editor 

of Boat Fishing Monthly. As usual, I covered the trip on colour transparency film, but also took along 

an’ early days’ 3.3 megapixel digital camera which I used to duplicate the coverage in the hope of 

building a digital library for the days when this medium would eventually become the norm. 

On the Monday morning, I mentioned this to Jim and 

asked whether he could use it, to which he replied he 

didn't know, but if I put the pictures onto a disc and 

sent it through with the transparencies he would ask 

the publishers, who amazingly said yes. And so in 

2001, the first full digital fishing article was published 

in BFM. 

Some years later, before smart phones with their 

onboard high resolution cameras hit the scene, I also 

had the first article illustrated on a mobile phone 

camera in 2010, again in Boat Fishing Monthly, and 

again from Wales, this time fishing Holyhead Deep 

aboard Gethyn Owen's boat 'My Way'. 

As you might expect, initially in the very early days, I 

was happy to get anything published anywhere. But 

with success comes bigger objectives, and when the 

opportunity presents itself, obviously you make the 

progression upwards, which usually comes as a 

stepped affair covering a lot of different, and in many 

cases now extinct magazine titles. 

Picture from first ever digital article 

So much so, that when I started to think seriously 

about drawing up the tick list which would eventually become my bucket list and the basis for this book, 

I got to thinking how satisfying it would be to target having something published in every sea angling 

title, which as far as I am aware I have managed, plus as many of the various freshwater titles as I could 

provide material to of a suitable standard beyond simply having it there just for the sake of it. 

Books then become an evolutionary next step in that process, though until now, with just the one under 

my belt, and with having had so much else on the go including my research and historical archiving, 

time has tended to steer me away from that particular medium. 

531

Dinghy Fishing at Sea written in conjunction with Brian Douglas back in 1984 is my official 'claim to 

fame' there as they say, though I did do quite a bit of work on the Dorling Kindersley Encyclopedia of 

Fishing published in 1994, plus the illustrative work for two game fishing books written by Dr. Malcolm 

Greenhalge entitled Trout Fishing In Rivers, and Lake, Loch & Reservoir Fishing, both published in 

1987. 

532

And now here we are with the bucket list, which I hope is as much historical as it is practical, published 

as a free digital download in the hope that it gives something back to a pursuit that has given me so 

much, and as with the audio recordings detailed in the appendices, another piece for the national 

archives which future researchers can dip in to get a taste of what fishing could be like, if only the 

legislators would get their act together. 


AUDIO INTERVIEWS ARCHIVE 


For a variety of reasons, not the least of which has been lack of technical resources as much as neglect 

or lack of will, far too many opportunities to record and archive angling history have already been lost. 

Many of the so called all time angling 

greats whose names and contributions 

are still revered are no longer with us, 

and while their thoughts and example 

lives on by way of their writing, think 

how much better it would have been to 

have had those lessons delivered 

verbally straight from the horse’s 

mouth. 

Assorted digital recorders 

terms of quality of fish stocks. 

Not only that, but also put into the 

context of the time to give some feeling 

of historical basis against which to 

compare what we have today, and 

measure how much we have 

progressed on the technical front, 

while at the same time regressing in 

With that in mind, I set myself the ambitious target of recording two hundred audio interviews, 

including as many of the top names and most meaningful contributors to angling across its entire 

spectrum as I could still find, while at the same time trying to anticipate potential big names for the 

future and grabbing them too. 

My only regret is that the idea came to me way too late to catch up with more of those most deserving 

of having a microphone poked in front of them. But as the list will hopefully show, not in all cases (see 

appendix 1). 

Not that long ago, this type of project would have been difficult at best, and impossible at worst. Let's 

not forget that even now, old obsolete video equipment doesn't stretch that far back in time, with the 

first consumer camcorders entering the market place as recently as 1983, and digital cameras arriving 

on the scene a good decade or so later. 

Small digital voice recorders only became widely available around the turn of the century. So humping 

around huge, heavy, poor quality recording equipment back then, had anybody even thought to use it 

for archive purposes, was hugely prohibitive. Is it any wonder then that so much opportunity has been 

missed. 

533

Thankfully, that no longer needs to be the case. For even if archive minded people are not willing to 

invest in tiny pocket sized voice recorders and HD quality video cameras, still there is no excuse, as all 

the quality recording equipment you could ever want and more can now be found in a typical smart 

phone. 

So get out there and use the technology. Take lots of pictures; video things of potential historical 

interest, and record conversations with interesting people on historical or controversial topics, then as 

importantly, archive it. 

It doesn't have to be professionally presented. Lord knows, mine isn't. I'm no natural on either audio or 

video, as many of my efforts will testify. But it's not the interviewers contribution that matters. It's the 

interviewee being encouraged to contribute that is important. 

All the audio interviews I have recorded have been properly archived for future researchers to access. 

For immediate public access, I have also put them into the podcast folder of my own website Fishing 

Films and Facts, which again is a none profit making opportunity for me to put something back into a 

pursuit which over the years has given me so much. 

But my site unfortunately won't be available forever. The video's it hosts perhaps may well be thanks 

to YouTube. But the audio recordings, for the moment at least, have no permanent online home. Instead, 

these are housed in the National Sound Archive in London under the collection title C1486 – Phill 

Williams Angling Interviews. 

The same interviews have also gone to the Angling Trust and to Angling Heritage, the later also holding 

copies of everything audio, video and photographic I have ever produced. And it doesn't end there. 

Wales and Scotland, though for some reason not Ireland, have sound and vision archives of their own 

which I have also fed appropriate material into, in addition to which, most English counties also archive 

local historical audio-visual contributions, and they too have received copies of material relevant to 

them. 

So there is plenty of archive opportunity out there. Not only to record, but to preserve, and I strongly 

urge people to do this when suitable opportunities present themselves. 


Ph. D RESEARCH 


Having been offered the option of 

voluntary redundancy as an electrician 

working on the truck and bus assembly 

line at British Leyland in Lancashire back 

in 1985, I was suddenly presented with an 

opportunity to go into full time university 

education, which was something I 

increasingly felt I wanted to do. 

Unfortunately, if that happened, having 

been a complete waste of space at school, 

unlike the usual age group going on from 

A-level college to university, in my case 

534

with no relevant qualifications, I was going to be disadvantaged to the point that even if I could get on 

a course, I would need to be learning at two levels simultaneously. 

At the same time as trying to absorb that which would be thrown at me in university lectures, I would 

also need to learn basic biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and statistical analysis on the hoof, 

then integrate the two strands in order to keep up and eventually pass the requisite exams at the end of 

the first year if I was to progress. 

A tall order in anybody’s book. But first things first. With the proposed redundancy payment calculated 

at just about sufficient to keep family life ticking over for the duration of the proposed three year course 

expected to be signed off in March of 1986, I at least had a slight advantage over that years intake from 

the A-level colleges, by virtue of the fact that I could apply many months before they would get their 

results, which is exactly what I did. 

The next problem was that I needed to find a place within daily travelling distance of home, which 

meant Lancaster, Preston, Manchester, or Liverpool. So, being a scouser by birth, I decided that 

Liverpool would be my first port of call. 

I don't know why, possibly because it sounded potentially easier to get in to, but I chose to try Liverpool 

Polytechnic first (now Liverpool John Moores University), where I was put through to Dr. Pete Wheeler 

in the department of biology, who having listened to what I was looking to do, invited me in for a face 

to face interview. 

What I didn't know at that time was that he was in a position to ignore any lack of formal academic 

qualifications and allow in a handful of mature students like myself, who after being vetted, if they 

appeared to be in a good position financially, and determined enough mentally, could have a shot at 

completing the three year course. 

During that interview, it seems I must have managed to convince him of that, as I was given the first 

official place on that years intake list scheduled to start in October. Enough time we both agreed for me 

to do a self-help crash course in all the relevant science subjects up to foundation level. 

Well, that was the theory. But as ever, true to past form, fishing had some say in how a great deal of the 

interim time period was spent, contributing greatly to one of the toughest years I can ever remember in 

my life. 

Thereafter it wasn't too bad. Having caught up to the others, and in years two and three learning stuff 

from scratch in common with the rest of the intake, it got progressively easier to the point where I came 

out of the process with a B. Sc (Hons) 2:1 in applied biology, which was exactly what I needed to 

progress to the second phase of my plan, which was to go forward into Ph. D research. 

Being married with two early teenage children 

obviously meant that I also had other 

responsibilities. Miraculously, by the time I had 

taken my final exams in 1989 and was awaiting 

the results, I had just enough money left to fund 

another couple of months. 

Fish farming 

Certainly not enough to get me through to results 

time. So job hunting became a priority, though for 

fall back security reasons, I also provisionally 

signed up for teacher training at Liverpool Edge 

Hill to give me a year of grant support which was 

still available during the late 1980's. 

535

Around the same time, while reading the angling papers, I spotted an advertisement for a vacancy 

working on coarse fish breeding research with a new organisation to be known as the National Rivers 

Authority (NRA), which was about to be split off from the various water authorities by the government 

as part of its water industry privatisation scheme. 

After much careful and concerned consideration I applied for it, was interviewed, and amazingly, at the 

age of almost forty two without my final results being available, I got the job, which was a bitter-sweet 

moment in that it meant while I would have an income, I was never going to be able to do research work 

full-time. 

Still, there was always part time. But either way, I would first have to find a suitable project, then a 

financial backer, which several frustrating years later I finally managed to do with Dr. John Manning 

of Liverpool University as a potential supervisor, the Environment Agency as the National Rivers 

Authority had then become as a financial backer, and with the three spined stickleback as a study subject 

for my research. 

Before looking in detail at the project itself, there are two fundamental preparatory pieces of information 

I would like briefly to put on to the table, the first of which is to remind people of the fact that physical 

adaptation to environmental change by living organisms is one of the corner stones of Darwinian 

evolution. 

Organisms best adapted to survive changing conditions through favourable helpful genetic mutations, 

when they pass these traits forward to their offspring, these can over time become incorporated into the 

population where they first occurred, giving those individuals inheriting them either a better shot at 

surviving the changes in question, or the opportunity to take advantage of any new niches which may 

open up to them as a result. 

By the same token, physical changes which are not heritable, and therefore cannot be passed forward, 

even though they may result from environmental change or stress, play no part in the evolutionary 

process. 

I make these points because as will become apparent when I get into more detail shortly, in terms of 

viability, my proposed project could have gone either way, so the evolutionary implications were very 

clearly there. 

Interestingly, one particular survival adaptation I did come across in sticklebacks was that in rivers 

where predation from other larger fish was a constant threat, increased length of the pelvic fin spines 

was almost universal, as this trait would make any individual having it that was subsequently taken by 

a predator extremely difficult to swallow, and therefore more likely to be ejected. 

Now for the research project in summary......... 

Most animals and plants exhibit symmetry in some form or other. In the case of anglers and most of the 

fish we seek to catch, this comes when an imaginary line is drawn from the top of the head to the feet 

(or in the case of fish, to the tail) along the centre of the body, the left side of which is in effect a mirror 

image of the right. 

I say most fish, because flatfish such as plaice and turbot which have deliberately settled out on the 

bottom on one or other side of their body do not conform to this pattern, instead having what it known 

as directional asymmetry. 

536

Deformed surviving Tope 

Most other animals, insects, fish etc. 

have left-right symmetry and invest a 

great deal of effort into maintaining it, 

for obvious reasons. Were that not the 

case, there would be very severe 

consequences similar to that which 

some disabled people unfortunately 

experience, except that out there in the 

wild there are no support workers 

looking out for them, and either 

predators or an inability to compete 

sufficiently well for food would 

critically disadvantage those 

individuals to the point where they 

would quickly be taken out of the 

equation. It's as brutal and as extreme 

as that. 

Obviously, the ideal is to have perfect symmetry, and as such, a great deal of effort is put into keeping 

this under the tightest of genetic controls. This however comes at a cost in terms of energy, with the 

greatest measures of effort going to those areas with the greatest ability to directly affect survival. 

As an example, for running purposes, it doesn't matter much if your left little toe is marginally smaller 

than your right little toe. But it would matter considerably if your left leg was shorter than your right, 

particularly if a predator attacks your family group and quite literally picks off the slow one at the back 

as everyone attempts to flee. 

As Darwin put it, 'survival of the fittest'. Quite literally in this case, which as cruel as it might sound, in 

the broadest evolutionary terms, is what keeps wild populations healthy. It's the law of the jungle. 

There is however another strand to all this. Fitness isn't just about the ability to escape predation. It's 

also about adapting to changing environments such as through the series of genetic mutations that led 

to say the giraffe evolving a longer neck and being able to reach leaves which its relatives could not 

reach at times of food shortages, and was therefore able to out-compete them in the survival race. 

Studies of animals and plants which have symmetry clearly show that traits like the little toe example 

mentioned previously, do not always show perfect symmetry. It's a trade-off between effort and energy 

input by the body, versus degree of disadvantage suffered. 

In other words, if it isn't life threatening, then that effort can be better diverted elsewhere, which is often 

what happens throughout the natural world. It's all down to prioritised importance, with some level of 

relaxation of perfect symmetry being tolerated. 

Symmetry loss of this type is invariably driven by a range of potential environmental stresses, with the 

body tending to make sure all the fight or flight faculties are in best working order first, before investing 

resources into combating minor imbalances in traits which clearly won't make any survival difference 

whatsoever. 

These imbalances, these asymmetries, are collectively termed fluctuating asymmetry, or FA, and are 

brought about by stress factors such noise, heat, pollution, and the like. Things which affect the body 

in a chronic way. In other words, problems that are life changing but not necessarily life threatening. 

Understandably, as with most animals and plants, fish like to live in pristine environments. To differing 

degrees however, some species can quite readily live in sub-optimal environments. I almost said live 

537

quite happily, but that would not be the 

case as evidenced by checking 

individuals and populations for signs of 

FA, which as has already been said is 

stress induced, which clearly 

demonstrates that they do feel under 

pressure. 

Sewage fungus, stressed environment 

Choosing to live in a polluted stressful 

environment is not the same as having 

the ability to do so when forced to. Some 

fish can do it, and none better than the 

humble three spined stickleback 

Gasterosteus aculeatus which can be 

found anywhere and everywhere from 

the most pristine water quality 

environments to the most grossly 

polluted. 

Some situations in fact where you might wonder how they survive in terms of available food, never 

mind other factors, as many of the small organisms they feed on have long since been wiped out. 

So much so, that when I was called to gather evidence for prosecution cases for the Environment 

Agency, if we found dead sticklebacks in the mortality mix, we knew we had something particularly 

nasty and serious to deal with, as these hardy little fish are usually always the last to go under. 

My Ph. D research was to explore the potential to use FA as a tool for quantifying environmental stress 

in sub-lethal situations, and to see if there was any sort of meaningful correlation between the degree 

of that FA, and the none natural sources of stress that might be causing it. In other words, did it have 

any potential value as a monitoring tool for use in situations where more conventional methods simply 

weren't appropriate. 

To understand the implications of this, you first need to understand how conventional routine aquatic 

monitoring and incident response is undertaken by organisations like the Environment Agency. 

This is done in two distinct yet 

complimentary ways. On the one 

hand there is chemical monitoring 

such as the analysis of water samples 

to determine what pollutants might be 

present, while on the other, biological 

monitoring using macro-invertebrates 

to determine both the acute as well as 

the chronic environmental stresses 

present in rivers and streams, both as 

part of a routine program, and at the 

time of major incidents, to provide 

immediate before and after the event 

information to present to the courts. 

Chemical sampling means filling a 

bottle and requesting either a specific 

or a suite of analytical tests be carried 

out. The draw back there is that unless 

Biologist kick sampling 

538

you dip the sampling can in at the precise moment a potentially short lived but lethal slug of pollution 

is passing through, then it can be missed. It's as critical as that. 

Invertebrate sampling done by trained biologists is considerably more forgiving, the evidence from 

which is presented on the basis of presence or absence. Life or death. There is no in-between. 

In other words, animals you would expect to find and were previously there in a particular body of 

water according to its chemical composition, are either in decline, or have disappeared over time, 

pointing towards a chronic water quality problem. Or they can be gone altogether and suddenly, which 

would be an acute water quality issue that is invariably, though not always, the result of illegal or 

accidental contamination. 

Be aware though that natural sudden invertebrate and fish kills can also result from rapid deoxygenation 

leading to suffocation in the hotter summer months brought about by algal blooms. 

Invertebrate surveying involves a simple technique known as kick sampling. The biologist stands in the 

water at a specified location with a submerged fine mesh sample net on a pole positioned immediately 

downstream of him or herself, then starts disturbing the bottom substrate with the feet to dislodge any 

small animals living in or on it, which are carried by the current into the net. 

In the case of routine kick sampling, this is done at strategic points such as either side of an input of 

interest, or downstream of a tributary. 

Pollution incidents however are different. The lead investigating officer, which was my role, would first 

determine the primary point of input, then have both kick samples and chemical samples taken either 

side of it while going about the business of back tracing the source by means of drainage plans, dye 

tracing, chemical comparisons, and the like. Sometimes even water divining rods. 

The presence and absence of invertebrates either side of the point of input is invaluable on two levels. 

Firstly, it shows what should, and indeed would have been present had the pollution incident not taken 

place. Secondly, based on what animals are missing or found dead on the downstream side, which in 

severe cases could be everything for many hundreds of yards, conclusions can be drawn regarding the 

severity and even composition of the offending material, which has often long since gone through by 

the time any investigation gets under-way. 

Without going into too much detail, 

different types of kick samples will 

have different durations, but typically 

these will last between one and three 

minutes. The sample is then released 

into a large observation tray with a few 

inches of water in it where the animals 

are identified and counted, resulting in 

a designated score being arrived at. 

Pollution related fish kill 

typically be the case for other mayfly species. 

In most cases, identification will be 

down to genus level. There are 

however a few specific instances in 

which species too are important, such 

as Baetis rhodani, which is a mayfly 

larvae that is more tolerant of lower 

dissolved oxygen levels than would 

539

The higher the combined score, the better the water quality. So animals which need high levels of 

dissolved oxygen and pristine conditions, such as mayflies and stoneflies, score higher than species 

which can tolerate very low dissolved oxygen levels and gross pollution. 

Organic pollution tolerant animals include chironomid midge larvae and tubificid worms, both of which 

have the ability to store oxygen in their bodies using haemoglobin, which is the reason why, like blood, 

they are bright red. And accordingly there are all measures of tolerance in between such as water louse, 

freshwater shrimps, beetle larvae, and the rest. 

Pollutants fall in to two basic categories – those which are of themselves toxic, such as cyanide, and 

those which suffocate such as raw sewage. 

Not suffocation in the sense of clogging up an animals gills, though that can happen with some fine 

particulate materials in suspension. More a case of suffocation by virtue of being organic in nature and 

providing 'food' for the decomposer network such as bacteria, which then explode in numbers and 

therefore respiration loading, in turn depriving other animals of dissolved oxygen to take from the water 

to be able to breath. 

Under normal circumstances, the number of bacteria present at any given aquatic location will be in 

balance with the environment, where they are sustained by the decomposition of dead animals and plant 

material brought about by natural causes. 

Put an organic pollutant into the water such as silage liquor, or milk from dairy washings, both of which 

are hundreds of times more polluting than raw sewage, and you can very quickly have a major situation 

on your hands. 

Bacteria reproduce by splitting themselves into two units which each 'half' can again do every twenty 

to thirty minutes, dependant on species. Due to food availability, any given environment can only 

support so many bacteria, which is what keeps their numbers in check. Suddenly increase that food 

supply and you trigger a population explosion. 

For ease of calculation, let's say that bacteria divide in response to increased food availability every 

thirty minutes. One bacteria becomes two, then becomes four, and so on. At that rate, in ten hours a 

single bacteria can result in excess of one million offspring. 

Now imagine them all doing that at the same time. Overnight there will be literally billions of the things, 

and all requiring oxygen to survive, which deprives everything else in the water of the ability to breath. 

Fish can in theory swim away from the 

problem, though rapid onset inputs 

taking them by surprise, coupled to 

their inability to 'think' the problem 

through and make their escape, often 

sees them taken out anyway. 

Invertebrates on the other hand can't 

escape, which is what makes them such 

a vital source of data to present to the 

courts. 

Milk – one of the most potent organic pollutants there is 

But why is milk classed as an extreme 

aquatic pollutant. It's a food, and it's 

exactly that designation that makes it 

so lethal in this context. Milk has 

evolved to be quickly broken down for 

nourishment and growth, therefore 

540

acteria feeding on it, or other inputs such as silage liquor which is full of sugars, find it particularly 

easy to utilize, and as such have an absolute feeding and breeding field day. The ultimate party. 

As has been said, traditional biological sampling relies solely on presence or absence. Limited 

inferences can also be made from community mixes. But that's about as subtle as it gets. 

Clearly then, what was needed, was some way of accessing stress related data from living animals 

whose quality of life is very poor, but still they are hanging on in there full of information accumulated 

over their life-time, which typically for a stickleback is around three years. 

That's a lot of potential information if it could be accessed, particularly as it would allow investigators 

to look back over time using a single sampling event by collecting different age groups which would 

not be possible using other approaches. Something that can readilybe done by measuring the asymmetry 

in traits that are not important for out-right survival. 

Sounds simple. But first there were a number of very fundamental questions which needed to be 

answered to see if any of the data generated would be of value, the most important of which being, was 

there a direct and holding correlation between loss of symmetry (FA) and declining water quality of 

such an accuracy that one would automatically imply the other. 

Heritability and reversibility were two further fundamental considerations. If FA can be inherited after 

water quality has improved, then it would no longer be there as a result of that individual or populations 

stressed environment. 

Similarly, if it could be reversed should water quality improve, then the information wouldn't be stored 

as a record of stress over a life-time. Only when satisfactory answers to these questions were available 

could the viability of the project be assessed. 

Fortunately, in research science, a negative result, while it might be disappointing, can still be a useful 

result, and is most definitely a valid demonstration of research ability and technique. 

Investigating the reversibility question was going to take at 

least a year, and the heritability question, which involved 

running the reversibility experiment on to the next 

generation, would take the best part of a further year beyond 

that. 

In the meantime, I was still in a position to start running the 

main experiment, which if it turned out not to show the 

correlation I was looking and hoping for, could still be 

written up. But first things first. I had to construct a pond in 

my garden to house a sample of sticklebacks taken from the 

worst possible water quality fish holding scenario I could 

find. 

Based on routine EA biological surveys, this was a small 

stream on Merseyside listed as the poorest Class 4 habitat 

from which I hand netted one hundred mature sticklebacks. 

That sample was then split across two buckets, one 

containing anaesthetic solution, and the other, water from 

the stream itself for transportation back to their new home 

Electro-fishing for Sticklebacks in my garden which had been allowed to mature, and 

according to ongoing weekly chemical analysis, was a 

Class 2 environment where the 'fortunate fifty' would be left alone for a year. 

541

The other fifty in the anaesthetic bucket were later preserved in alcohol to provide baseline data against 

which to compare the pond experiment one year on. 

With that aspect of the project under-way, the next big job was to explore the potential for extent of 

asymmetry, and to determine which would be the best traits to use to get consistently accurate data 

from. 

For this, a pilot study was required looking for changing levels of FA at locations with good, bad, and 

intermediate water quality as determined by routine EA monitoring data, and all on the same 

watercourse so as to be sampling what was essentially the same base population. 

At this point I still needed to ascertain the best traits to use, so I took measurements left and right from 

as many paired traits as I could find, eventually settling on the nine best ones to be measured using 

thirty fish at each sampling site, and as I had hoped, these did indeed show that symmetry loss initially 

appeared to be greatest where water quality was poorest. 

On that basis then, though still obviously pending the results of the heritability and reversibility 

experiments, the long hard slog of identifying fifty suitable sites, hand netting thirty specimens from 

each, then laboriously measuring the same nine traits for the mathematical and statistical analysis later 

could proceed. 

The fifty sites in question needed to have an even spread, not only in terms of water quality ranging 

from pristine to grossly polluted, but according to historical EA data, they also had to have been that 

way of at least the previous three years to ensure that all fish sampled had been constantly subjected to 

the stresses of that particular location, which I have to say was very much easier said than done, 

particularly at the pristine end of the scale. Consequently, a great many potential sampling sites ruled 

themselves out. 

After their year in the garden pond, and with the Class 4 FA results to hand from the 'unfortunate fifty' 

providing the reversibility baseline comparison data, the fifty fish at liberty in the pond were netted out. 

By this stage unfortunately, probably due to predation either by birds or by cats, their numbers had 

declined to the low forties. However, on the plus side they had bred. So the offspring were put into a 

542

separate bucket for reintroduction later where they would be left for a further year, again with ongoing 

weekly water chemistry analysis to ensure the pond remained at Class 2 in terms of water quality for 

the duration of the heritability experiment. 

Meanwhile, as was the established sampling pattern, fish retained for FA measurements first went into 

an anaesthetic solution, then into laboratory alcohol for keeping and ultimately having their nine traits 

measured and FA levels determined for comparison to the fifty measured immediately after capture a 

year earlier. 

The hope was that the collective result from each of the two groups would be the same, indicating that 

despite improvements in water quality in the pond, FA cannot be reversed. 

Initially however, the data did not appear to show this. Despite the water quality improvement in the 

pond, the asymmetry differences were greater, which initially had me scratching my head. Then I got 

to thinking that this might be because of the extra year's feeding and growth. 

To cut a long story short, the one year older fish were typically twenty percent bigger than the other 

half of the sample, which mirrored the percentage increase in FA, establishing the fact that while FA 

might be halted in extent with water quality improvements, it cannot be reversed. Affected traits as they 

grow with the rest of the body continue to reflect the same measure of symmetry difference. 

As for the heritability experiment, that also went according to hope and expectation. When the offspring 

were eventually netted out to provide FA data, despite the fact that their parent population had come 

from a grossly polluted Class 4 watercourse, these fish having been born into a Class 2 environment 

and lived for a year with the reduced stress that brings, had asymmetry levels typical of what a Class 2 

water should impose on them according to FA measurements taken at other Class 2 sites. 

I now had the green light to start analysing the data I had been gathering for a good two years by that 

stage from the proposed fifty sites, which while the full data gathering exercise still had quite some way 

to go, did at least might give me a feel for the direction things were taking. In fact, after a great deal of 

time inputting and analysing data from my minitab statistical analysis package, this looked very 

promising indeed. 

Plotting FA against water quality 

showed a startlingly accurate mirror 

image to the point where I could 

confidently say that by taking a sample 

of sticklebacks from any given location, 

it should be possible to say with great 

certainty what the water quality at that 

site was. 

Moreover, by sorting the sample into 

different sizes and inferring these to be 

representative of different year classes, 

it should also be possible to estimate at 

what point a problem had started if it 

was more recent than the age of the 

oldest fish. 

Farm run-off stressing the environment 

So no more presence or absence 

decisions. The data these fish were 

recording within themselves could 

finally be down-loaded, interpreted, and used to make meaningful statements of a sort which could not 

543

have been previously made, and in situations where historical routine biological and chemical data was 

lacking. 

Recognising that as a field tool this was a much more onerous job than simply dipping a sampling can 

into the water or identifying and counting the results of a kick sample, the next step was to try to refine 

it into a much more workable user friendly analytical tool. 

To do this, I repeatedly ran the statistical analysis on a reducing number of traits, obviously keeping 

those traits offering the most consistency and greatest average discrepancies until the last, all the time 

looking to maintain a statistically significant result. 

This finally proved to be the case with a roughly halved workload being just as strong a predictor as the 

much lengthier more detailed investigation, making the use of fluctuating asymmetry a much less 

wieldy job than previously, while at the same time, a more versatile and more accurate predictor of 

environmental stress than macro-invertebrate sampling and water chemistry analysis. 

Something which could be applied to any type of situation, freshwater or marine, providing a suitable 

baseline data set was first established for an available species found at that location with tolerance of a 

wide range of environmental extremes. 

To put the project in to some sort of meaningful perspective, it's time to trot out a few facts and figures 

from the results. But before I do, I need to say a few words about the results presentation. 

Firstly, there are three variations on measuring and presenting FA data. The most obvious of these is to 

subtract the lower of the two measurements from the higher and take it as it is. This is known as absolute 

FA. Alternatively, you can take the same measurements and consider them as a percentage value, which 

is termed relative FA. 

The problem with these two approaches is that often data sets need to be rejected on the basis of 

statistically abnormal distribution, which is the bane of the field biologists life. 

For this reason, John Manning and I decided to try the novel approach of using the residuals of 

regression analysis which creates its own mean, and therefore always gives a normal distribution. 

The down side of this is that it is the weaker of the three approaches, but on the up side, if the correlation 

between the historical EA data and symmetry loss is strong enough, which in my case it was, a 

statistically significant result could still be obtained, which ultimately proved to be the case, allowing 

all of my measurement data sets to be used. 

The next variable to factor in is the way in which the results of macro-invertebrate kick samples are 

scored and interpreted. 

Again, there are three different approaches in regular use. The Trent Biotic Index (TBI) which is derived 

from a consideration of the effects of reduced community diversity and progressive loss of certain 

groups of clean water fauna; the Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) index, which assigns 

each family a score between one and ten according to its sensitivity to organic pollution, and finally, 

Average Score Per Taxon (ASPT) which is derived by dividing the BMWP score by the number of 

scoring families counted. 

Of the three, ASPT is regarded as being the most reflective and therefore most reliable. Consequently, 

plotting ASPT against regression residuals as shown in the graph below for the full fifty sites I 

investigated, gives the best correlation with which to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of FA as 

a monitoring tool. 

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RESIDS 

0.18 

0.16 

0.14 

0.12 

0.10 

2 3 4 5 6 

ASPT 

Regression Analysis of Residuals against ASPT 

The regression equation is 

MEAN RESIDUALS = 0.1934 – 0.01553 ASPT 

Predictor Coef StDev t P 

Constant 0.19340 0.01076 17.97 0.000 

ASPT -0.015535 0.003022 -5.14 0.000 

S = 0.01883 R-Sq = 35.5% R-Sq(adj) = 34.2% 

Analysis of Variance 

Source DF SS MS F P 

Regression 1 0.0093704 0.0093704 26.43 0.000 

Error 48 0.0170154 0.0003545 

Total 49 0.0263857 

As a result, in 2004 I received my Ph. D from Lord Owen (formerly Dr. David Owen, MP) at the 

Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, and can now say that contrary to the opinion many people have of students, 

545

amusingly, I am perhaps one of the very few in history who actually did do FA for seven years, and still 

came away with something to show for it. 

A full copy of the thesis entitled Fluctuating Asymmetry As A measure Of Environmental Quality In 

The Three Spined Stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus [L] by Phillip Williams 2004, is available in the 

archive of Liverpool University. It is also available online at Fishing Films and Facts. 

A LESSON FROM HISTORY 

At the bottom of the title page is a short adapted quote based on a genuine quote attributed to both 

Rudyard Kipling and to Cecil Rhodes, my version of which reads 'To be born a fisherman is to win first 

prize in the lottery of life'. This should read 'To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery 

of life', both versions of which are true. 

Taking my version one step further, let me also add that to be born a fisherman and to have been lucky 

enough to have lived at a time of relative peace and prosperity after two world wars, as well as at a time 

when there were still plenty of fish about to be caught, is like buying another lottery ticket and winning 

the big one for a second consecutive time. How lucky then am I. 

As an evolutionary biologist, I am 

very well aware of how much we as 

human beings owe to a whole range 

of catastrophes and other lesser 

calamities which have befallen our 

planet and its numerous earlier 

inhabitants over the millennia, 

ultimately paving the way for our 

appearance some 200,000 years ago. 

So loss of species, even of whole 

families of animals and plants, is a 

natural part of how evolution works, 

without which we wouldn't be here. 

Most scientists are now happy to 

accept this concept, both as a 

mechanism and a necessary process 

Over the millennia there will always be winners and losers 

for advancement, which makes me 

wonder why some then jump onto 

the extreme conservation band wagon of wanting to save anything and everything from the process they 

profess to embrace, locking life up as a frozen snap-shot in time, as if to deny the process they acclaim 

the necessary tools to continue its as yet unfinished business. Human beings are not the ultimate product 

of evolution. It's not so long ago that Homo heidelbergensis was in exactly the same position we are in 

now. Where is he now??. 

They (the tree-huggers) would argue, and with some justification, that much of what is currently driving 

evolution or species destruction forward does not come from natural sources, and therefore needs to be 

resisted. 

Deforestation, the plunder of the seas, and global warming driven by ignorance and/or greed, hardly 

fall within the natural order of things, despite the fact that some of these and other similar problems 

have played their part in a variety of ways at many different times for more than four billion years. 

546

An asteroid impact 66 million years ago saw the Dinosaurs and just about everything else off 

The current wisdom says there have been five major mass extinction events which have helped pave 

the way for life as we see it today. Responsibility for these is spread across such variables as volcanic 

activity, oxygen deficiencies, sea level changes, climate change, and extra-terrestrially sourced impacts 

such as the one which brought about the end of the dinosaurs, triggering the rise of the mammals some 

65 million years ago, though dinosaurs it has to be said were in trouble by that stage anyway. The 

asteroid impact merely dealt them the final blow. 

A not unreasonable question to ask at this point might be “What constitutes a mass extinction, and what 

possible relevance could this have to a book on fishing anyway”. Well, a mass extinction event is 

defined as a period in the Earth's history when abnormally large numbers of species disappear 

simultaneously within a very short geological time-scale, the most severe of which is known as the 

'great dying', occurring at the end of the Permian period some 252 million years ago, when 96% of all 

species disappeared. 

Looking back at the fossil record, the 'big five' and many lesser calamitous events can readily be picked 

out, despite the fact that 'sudden' in a geological context can be a longer time span even than modern 

humans have been in existence. A very important point to make, because other than an instant 

catastrophe such as an asteroid strike, real time 'sudden disasters' should take so long as to slip by unnoticed 

at the time, until some other 'intelligent being' in the future checks out the fossil record currently 

being laid down. 

The palaeontological record very clearly shows us that in real time, you don't see a mass extinction 

coming. Yet here we are equally clearly in the throes of what many scientists agree is an unequivocal 

sixth mass extinction event. One in fact which defies all the rules in that we not only know that it's 

547

happening, but can also see it happening, and at pace. Then, as with the plight of the European bass, 

with the exception of the usual vocal minority, we all throw our hands up in the air under a blanket of 

general apathy and say “what the hell”. 

Modern humans were forced to leave Africa around 60,000 years ago when dry arid conditions had 

their numbers down to around 2,000, and our own extinction was on the cards. Some took a route up 

into Europe, while others followed the coast around to Asia, eventually reaching Australia some 40,000 

years ago, and via a land bridge from Siberia, the America's less than 20,000 years ago, all of which 

dates just happen to coincide with the loss of all the large animal species which had previously thrived 

at those locations when left to their own devices. 

New Zealand followed, and in more recent times, the colonisation of smaller islands, many of whose 

long standing indigenous inhabitants were also quickly lost, the most recent and certainly most famous 

of which being Mauritius, where Portuguese and later Dutch sailors saw off the dodo through the 

predators they introduced, and by eating it themselves. The first sailors landed there in 1598. By 1755 

the dodo was extinct. 

So with total disregard, as a species, we instinctively exploit the environment and it's other inhabitants 

to destruction with a live for today sod the future arrogance. It's what we've always done, and no doubt 

it's what we will continue to do, despite the best scientific evidence saying that it simply cannot continue 

in this manner. And never more so than in the oceans of the world where we literally can't see what's 

going on, and as such, most people simply don't give a damn. 

Fishery ministers ignoring warnings from the experts they 

employ to advise them, typifies the way in which a strong 

vocal minority in the shape of the commercial fishing 

industry run the show. Yet using the government’s own 

statistics generated by their Sea Angling 2012 survey, in hard 

cash terms, it seems that commercial fishing contributes 

considerably less to the wealth of the nation than angling 

does, but still has the ear of government, both at home, and 

more importantly, at European level where the real damage 

is being done. 

As has already been said, by definition, mass extinction 

events are extensive and sudden, though not so sudden as to 

be observed within an individual life-time. Yet I can look 

back over my 50 years of sea angling, which doesn't even 

qualify as the blink of an eye on a geological time-scale, and 

confidently point a finger at several examples of change, 

most of which, though not all, fall into the negative category. 

What I've tried to do in Part One which looks at home waters 

species, is wherever possible, include some flavour of the 

About to sort the catch history of species and fisheries according to my experience 

of them, some of which makes very stark reading indeed. 

And while my wanting the plunder to stop might fly in the face of my earlier jibe at the 'lets save 

everything' conservations, from an angling perspective, something needs to be done and fast. 

In terms of losers, inshore cod fishing in the Clyde sea lochs, along Lancashire's Fylde Coast, and off 

Balcary immediately come to mind. Offshore cod fishing in the North Sea out from Whitby is another 

example, not to mention the common skate which was once regularly found in many parts of the UK 

and is now struggling to forge a come-back along Scotland's west coast, plus of course the well 

documented plight of the bass. 

548

As a point of balance, I should also mention winners, which for the moment seems to be spear-headed 

by the ever increasing range of the Smoothhound, and to some extent, also the extension in range of the 

black bream, though it should also be noted that the bream appears on the struggler's list too in terms of 

many of its old traditional haunts along the Sussex coast. 

And let's not forget the lesser spotted dogfish. How could 

we these days, though chance would be a fine thing. At 

times there seems to be little else available to catch in some 

areas. So the term 'winner' is perhaps a touch inappropriate 

in that context, with most other species falling below the 

transition point between hanging on in there and just about 

doing okay. 

Back in the 1990's, research scientist Edward Wilson 

published a statistically supported current extinction rate 

prediction across all life forms of three species per hour. 

This equates to a staggering 27,000 per year. Now, less 

than thirty years later, that figure has been revised to 

several hundred per day, with the caveat that the current 

free for all, particularly in terms of over-exploiting coastal 

seas and increasingly the deeper oceans, must cease 

immediately to have even the remotest chance of dragging 

things back from the edge of the abyss. 

Another survey done by the World Wildlife Fund states 

that populations of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have 

declined by 49% since 1970, and that species such as 

mackerel and tuna which are relied upon for food, have 

fared even worse with 74% drop, adding that fish are being 

caught faster than they can reproduce. 

The Lesser Spotted Curse 

It's a demonstrable fact that industrialized commercial fishing typically reduces biomass by around 80% 

within fifteen years of commencement, and as technology improves, this will increasingly move away 

from continental shelf exploitation to the open ocean, where large species such as marlin and tuna are 

already in trouble. 

One of the audio interviews linked to this book (No. 114) is with Dr. Ruth Thurstan who has published 

a number of papers on historical commercial pressure. The use of otter trawls started to catch on in 

Britain around the 1820's, at which time it was towed under sail. Unfortunately, accurate records were 

not kept until 1886, so a range of interviews leading to witness statements done at the time for the 

intervening period is all we have to go on, an extracted example of which for the north east of England 

points to a perceived 64% decrease in white-fish stocks within the interviewee's career. 

Accurate records kept between 1867 and 1892 show this trend continuing, with a statistically supported 

decline of 66%. Based on this, plus of course actual observations, by the 1880's, even trawler owners 

were openly calling for area closures and for protected nursery areas and spawning grounds. Sound 

familiar??. And now more than a century later, at a time when despite diesel power and advances in 

electronic technology make commercial fishing even more efficient, it now takes a demonstrated 17 

times more effort for the same result, and still we are doing no more than talking about getting to grips 

with problems identified by our ancestors. 

Anglers, including more recent converts than myself, have witnessed at first hand undeniable decline. 

It isn't difficult to see once you stop burying your head in the sand. Yet still the deniers, and those with 

549

550

a vested financial interest in mopping up every last fish to the point at which pursuing the few that 

remain is no longer financially viable, say there isn't a problem. 

For me personally, nearing the end of what has been an incredible angling journey, it's true, there isn't 

a problem. I won't be around to suffer the consequences. Granted, I might have fewer miles left on my 

clock than those just starting to fish. But in a hundred years’ time when we've all gone up to the big 

stock pond in the sky, at least I can say I took part at the best time of all, when not only were there fish 

to be caught, but we also had good access to them. 

A time when the wrecks were full to capacity and big cod or bass didn't only exist in photographs. No 

LRF for us. And now unfortunately, unless something is done and quickly, for my money at least, there 

is little future prospect now looming up of anything much else. 

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APPENDIX 1: AUDIO INTERVIEW ARCHIVE 

This archive of audio interviews with a wide range of top angling figures is available both on the website 

Fishing Films and Facts, and as a collection at the National Sound Archive of the British Library under 

Collection No. C1486 Phill Williams Angling Interviews. 

The overall collection entry is http://sami.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=CKEY7528353 

The angling collection entry is http://sami.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5?searchdata1=C1486{087} 

Copies are also held by the Angling Trust, Angling Heritage, and at a variety of regional and county 

archives according to the geographical location of either the interviewee or the interview content. 

Podcast Interview 1: Ian Burrett, Luce Bay: Recorded in 2009. Humberside sea angler Ian Burrett 

loved the Luce Bay area so much that he moved home there to set up the highly successful Onyermarks 

charter business. Ian is also a great advocate of conservation and a founder member of SSACN. 

Podcast Interview 2: Mick Riley, Sea Rescue: Recorded in 2009. Mick Riley, sole survivor of a 

dinghy angling tragedy off Lancashire's Fylde Coast talks about the events leading up to that day, the 

feeling of isolation and desperation of the situation, and of his eventual rescue. Given a hard time later 

in the press, un-justifiably as it would turn out, here he puts the record straight and tries to persuade 

other small boat anglers to be more safety conscious. 

Podcast Interview 3: Gethyn Owen, Holyhead: Recorded in 2010. Gethyn Owen is an ex-Welsh 

International boat angler turned successful charter skipper operating out of Holyhead. A measure of that 

success is anglers fishing aboard his boat 'My Way' having successfully claimed the Welsh records for 

tope, spurdog and smoothhound, which in each case was returned to the sea alive. 

Podcast Interview 4: Frank Bee, Morecambe Bay: Recorded in 2009. Veteran angler Frank Bee 

talks about his long commercial and charter fishing career, and how that influenced the charter angling 

scene both at Fleetwood and in Morecambe Bay. Later, when he retired from chartering, he bought 

himself a small boat, which amongst many good catches was responsible for the North West cod record 

of 42 pounds. 

Podcast Interview 5: Phill Williams, Fylde Cod: Recorded in 2010. As a dinghy angler who was 

present and participated in the famous Flyde coast jumbo cod fishing era between the mid 1970's and 

mid 1980's, Phill Williams takes a realistic as well as a nostalgic look at this probably never to be 

repeated event. Many huge cod were taken very close in to Lancashire's Cleveleys shoreline. But it 

wasn't a case of success guaranteed, as very often there would days with little or no reward for your 

efforts, at times in weather and sea conditions at the limit of what the small un-sophisticated boats back 

then could handle. 

Podcast Interview 6: Tony Parry, Rhyl: Recorded in 2010. Tony Parry, skipper of 'Jensen II' based 

at Rhyl in the summer, and Liverpool over the winter months, talks about the history and current status 

of both fisheries, plus his thoughts on renewable energy in the form of offshore wind farms and their 

direct and indirect effects on fishing and fish distribution. 

Podcast Interview 7: Phill Williams, North Lancashire: Recorded in 2010. The top side of 

Morecambe Bay on into the Duddon Estuary was once alive with summer cod, plaice, tope and bass. 

Vast catches could be made there on a regular basis. Then it started to slip into decline. Here we look 

at the area in its 1970's and 80's heyday. 

552

Podcast Interview 8: Graeme Pullen, Billfish: Recorded in 2010. Graeme Pullen has devoted a large 

portion of his life to the pursuit of huge fish, and in particular marlin. Here he talks openly about billfish 

species on a worldwide as well as a European basis, explaining some of the developments in both 

techniques and pin pointing new hot spots that he has been responsible for. 

Podcast Interview 9: Stuart Barrett, Dever Springs: Recorded in 2011. Dever Springs trout fishery 

in Hampshire has a well-earned reputation for cultivating and producing big and even record sized 

brown and rainbow trout. Its gin clear chalk stream fed lakes also make it one of the country’s premier 

stalking waters. Stuart Barrett from the fishery discusses a range of issues regarding big fish rearing, 

stocking, and catching. 

Podcast Interview 10: Jason Owen, Pwllheli: Recorded in 2010. Pwllheli has long been a very 

popular summer charter angling venue, but also has a lesser known full year round potential too where 

it offers a huge diversity, depending on the size of the tides, which includes reef, wreck, bank and open 

ground fishing. Charter skipper of 'Haf Aled' Jason Owen explains. 

Podcast Interview 11: Graeme Pullen, Sharks: Recorded in 2010. Big fish expert Graeme Pullen 

talks about all aspects of fishing for big sharks both worldwide and in UK waters. 

Podcast Interview 12: Graeme Pullen, Trout stalking: Recorded in 2010. For some, stalking big 

trout in the gin clear still waters of Hampshire became not only a pilgrimage, but an art form. Here 

Graeme Pullen looks at the history as well as the techniques behind the phenomenon. 

Podcast Interview 13: Pete Thorman, Gt Whites: Recorded in 2010. Monster fish and great white 

shark enthusiast Pete Thorman talks about what it was like to catch huge sharks for a tag and release 

scientific research program off the coast of South Africa. 

Podcast Interview 14: Bill Pashby, Tunny: Recorded in 2010. Between the 1930's and 1950's, 

Scarborough was the hub of big game fishing in the UK. Here Bill Pashby recalls his time spent taking 

out wealthy customers fishing for giant blue fin tuna, or as he calls them, tunny. 

Podcast Interview 15: Ron Greer, Ferox Trout: Recorded in 2010. Ferox 85 is a single species 

research and study group set up in 1985 to look into all matters scientific and angling with regard to 

wild ferox brown trout. Much has been learned about this enigmatic fish by the group over that period, 

not too mention the fact that its members have also taken the British rod caught record to new heights. 

Now in its silver jubilee year, co-founder Ron Greer talks about a wide range of subjects relating to the 

group and ferox fishing in the UK. 

Podcast Interview 16: Ian Burret, SSACN: Recorded in 2010. As projects director of the 

conservation lobby group Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network (SSACN), Ian Burrett talks 

about the groups history, achievements, and future aims. 

Podcast Interview 17: Andy Bradury, Fleetwood: Recorded in 2010. As the sole charter boat left 

operating out of the port of Fleetwood, 'Blue Mink' skipper Andy Bradbury talks about his transition 

from small boat angler to charter skipper, and the prospects for visiting anglers over the year. 

Podcast Interview 18: Zyg Gregorek, Royal and Grand Slams: Recorded in 2010. Graeme Pullen 

discusses tackle and tactics for the tarpon, bonefish and permit grand slam, then goes on to talk with 

Zyg Gregorek, the only man in history to achieve three different royal slams by catching every species 

of billfish, every species of tuna, and the IGFA's nominated list of nine different shark species. 

Podcast Interview 19: John McAngus, Zander Introduction: Recorded in 2011. John McAngus is 

the last surviving member of the team responsible for the controversial introduction of zander to the 

Fens back in 1963. A time when fishery managers could do pretty much what they wanted. Here we get 

the full story of what he describes as 'that fateful day'. 

553

Podcast Interview 20: Wayne Comben, Langstone: Recorded in 2010. Greaeme Pullen joins Solent 

small boat specialist Wayne Comben for a days mixed fishing and boat talk out from Langstone Harbour 

aboard his 17 foot wilson flier. 

Podcast Interview 21: Neil French, Littlehampton: Recorded in 2010. Greame Pullen interviews 

Littlehampton charter boat skipper Neil French about the prospects for visitors to the Sussex port, and 

for information on the techniques he uses to get the best out of what is available. 

Podcast Interview 22: Mick Duff, River Mersey: Recorded in 2011. Over recent years, the River 

Mersey, both inside during the winter, and outside over the summer, has earned itself a well-deserved 

reputation for being one of the most consistent sheltered boat fishing venues in the country. Here Wirrall 

small boat club member Mick Duff gives us a guided tour. 

Podcast Interview 23: Mick Duff, Peeler Crabs: Recorded in 2011. Arguably, the top bait on the sea 

angling scene is peeler crab. Unfortunately, it has something of a mystique surrounding it, particularly 

in terms of long term keeping and having it ready to order. Here small boat expert Mick Duff spells out 

the whole process of trapping, holding and bringing peeler crabs on. 

Podcast Interview 24: John Rawle, Uptide Fishing: Recorded in 2011. As the co-inventor of uptide 

fishing along with Bob Cox back in the 1970's in and around the Thames Estuary, Essex charter skipper 

John Rawle explains the history of this highly successful shallow water boat fishing technique, and how 

to get the best out of it in terms of tackle, terminal rigs, and approach. 

Podcast Interview 25: John Rawle, Islamorada: Recorded in 2011. Essex charter boat skipper and 

co-inventor of the technique of uptide fishing, John Rawle takes a detailed look at both strands of his 

charter fishing life here at Bradwell in the UK, and Florida the USA, comparing and contrasting his US 

experiences in terms of fish catching and conservation to our side of the Atlantic. 

Podcast Interview 26: Frank Shaw, Newhaven: Recorded in 2010. Graeme Pullen interviews 

Newhaven charter skipper Frank Shaw on a range of local topics. 

Podcast Interview 27: Mick Riley & Phil Denham: Recorded in 2009. Mick Riley, sole survivor of 

a dinghy angling tragedy off Lancashire's Fylde Coast talks about the events leading up that day, the 

feeling of isolation and desperation of the situation, and of his ultimate rescue. Given a hard time later 

in the press, un-justifiably as it would turn out, here he puts the record straight and tries to persuade 

other small boat anglers to be more safety conscious. His RNLI rescuer Phil Denham also tells the story 

from his perspective. 

Podcast Interview 28: Dick Farrer, Side Winder Trawlers: Recorded in 2011. Veteran Fleetwood 

trawler skipper Dick Farrer talks about his days on the old side winder trawlers running up to Iceland, 

both before and during the cod Wars. 

Podcast Interview 29: Mike Roden, Game Angling Guide: Recorded in 2011. Full time fly fishing 

guide and instructor Mike Roden talks about fly fishing and guiding in the north west. 

Podcast Interview 30: Chris Roberts, Salcombe: Recorded in 2010. Salcombe charter boat skipper 

Chris Roberts talks to Graeme Pullen about the inshore, offshore, and estuary prospects from the port. 

Podcast Interview 31: Frank Vinnicombe, The Mako Man: Recorded in 2011. In the 1970's and 

early 80's, Frank Vinnicombe reputedly caught more mako sharks for his clients than every other boat 

and angler put together, earning himself the nick name 'the mako man'. 

Podcast Interview 32: Martin Bray, Looe Blue Sharks: Recorded in 2011. Martin Bray, as did his 

father Jack before him, operates the tackle shop and one time boat booking office on the quay at Looe 

in Cornwall which was the hub of shark fishing in Britain, adjacent to the headquarters of the the Shark 

Angling Club of Great Britain. Then gradually, things slipped into terminal decline. 

554

Podcast Interview 33: Zyg Gregorek, Anglers Paradise: Recorded in 2011. Zyg Gregorek owns the 

luxury multi-lake and accommodation complex known as Anglers Paradise at Halwill in Devon. Here 

he talks about the initial concept through to its completion and its prospects for the future. 

Podcast Interview 34: George Wilson, Highfield Lakes Fishery: Recorded in 2011. George Wilson 

is the manager of the widely acclaimed Highfield Fishery at Hambleton on Lancashire's Fylde Coast. 

Here he talks about the construction and management of the fishery. 

Podcast Interview 35: Dave Builth & Rodney Burge, Amble: Recorded in 2011. Dave Builth 

skippers the charter boat 'Upholder' out from Amble, while Rodney Burge was her previous owner. 

Both are members of the Amble lifeboat crew, and in their different ways, both know much regarding 

the history of sea angling along this part of the Northumbrian coast. 

Podcast Interview 36: Andy Owen, Port Dinorwic: Recorded in 2010. Andy Owen operates the 

angling catamaran 'Morgan James II' out of Port Dinorwic on the Menai Strait where he has two 

contrasting options to offer his clients. The first of these is deep water wreck fishing out in The St. 

Georges Channel, the other being inshore reef, bank and open ground fishing for a vast array of popular 

species including bream, bass and tope. 

Podcast Interview 37: Dave Christy, Bait Digger: Recorded in 2011. As a bait digger for many 

years, Fleetwood based Dave Christy has a vast reservoir of knowledge on the distribution, gathering 

and keeping of marine worms for angling bait which he shares with us in great detail here. 

Podcast Interview 38: Nathan Lumb, Pole fishing: Recorded in 2011. Pole fishing is a very quick 

and precise approach to catching fish in a freshwater match situation. Here, still water pole match 

fishing expert Nathan Lumb takes us on a step by step journey through the technique. 

Podcast Interview 39: Tammy Fisher, Female Charter Deck Hand: Recorded in 2011. Female sea 

anglers are quite a rarity, even in todays enlightened times. Women crewing or skippering offshore 

charter boats in the UK are almost unheard of, making Tammy Fisher, who works aboard 'Katie Louise' 

fishing for tope and cod along the Norfolk and Suffolk coastlines respectively, something of a different 

find. A short but interesting insight into the work and plans of this 21 year old lady sea angler. 

Podcast Interview 40: Dave Taylor, Aberystwyth: Recorded in 2011. Aberystwyth has long been a 

favourite sea angling destination, particularly back in the 1970's and 80's when porbeagle sharks were 

present in good numbers. As with the rays, shark numbers unfortunately have gone into decline. But 

there have been winners too, particularly the black bream. And throughout that time, Dave Taylor who 

skippers 'Aldebaran' has been taking parties out looking for them all. 

Podcast Interview 41: Dr. Ed Farrell, Smoothhounds: Recorded in 2011. Dr. Ed Farrell discusses 

his research work showing conclusively that despite claims to the contrary by anglers and fish recorders, 

only one smoothhound species, the starry variety, is found in northern European waters. 

Podcast Interview 42: Rod Taylor, Coarse Fish Farming: Recorded in 2011. Coarse fish farming 

as a science was introduced to the UK in the wake of the Toxteth riots in the 1980's for river re-stocking, 

particularly around the Mersey Basin, wherever and whenever water quality would allow. At the 

forefront of perfecting these techniques was Rod Taylor, who explains both flow through as well as 

recirculation fish breeding and keeping. 

Podcast Interview 43: Phill Williams & Brian Douglas, Fylde Cod: Recorded in 2011. As dinghy 

anglers who were present and participated in the famous Flyde coast jumbo cod fishing era between the 

mid 1970's and mid 1980's, Brian Douglas and Phill Williams take a realistic as well as a nostalgic look 

at this probably never to be repeated event. 

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Podcast Interview 44: Phill Williams & Brian Douglas, Fenit: Recorded in 2011. A story of an 

exploratory dinghy trip by Brian Douglas and Phill Williams to Tralee Bay in Co. Kerry Ireland which 

produced a wide variety of ray species including the rare bottle nosed ray with specimens of 140 pounds. 

Podcast Interview 45: Mick Duff, Dinghy Six Gilled Sharks: Recorded in 2011. Surprising a lot of 

people, a six gilled shark in excess of 1000 pounds, the first ever grand plus fish from around the British 

Isles, was caught off the Irish port of Kilkee in 2009. But years before that, dinghy angler Mick Duff 

had already found their whereabouts. 

Podcast Interview 46: Jeff Carroll & Bill Gibson, Char Trolling: Recorded in 2011. Plumb line 

trolling a string of lures over deep water for char on Coniston in the Lake District is a tradition that goes 

back many generations. Here modern day practitioners Jeff Carroll and Bill Gibson explain the process 

and talk about the life history of the char. 

Podcast Interview 47: Ian Heaps, Ex World Coarse Angling Champion: Recorded in 2011. World 

and European coarse match angling champion Ian Heaps talks about his glittering career, his angling 

techniques, and his school of angling at Holgan Farm in West Wales. 

Podcast Interview 48: Eric Hope, Lakeland Guide: Recorded in 2011. Cumbrian angling guide Eric 

Hope from Hemmingways at Keswick talks about his guiding throughout the Lake District, and the 

fishing he offers for pike, perch, salmon and wild trout, including some huge ferox trout. 

Podcast Interview 49: Dave Lewis, Namibian Shore Sharks: Recorded in 2011. Dave Lewis and 

Phill Williams look back at what was arguably the most productive shore angling trip ever made which 

produced in excess of 15,000 pounds of fish to almost 300 pounds from the steep surf beaches of 

Namibia's skeleton coast. 

Podcast Interview 50: Jamie Soons, Kayak Fishing: Recorded in 2011. Kayak fishing at sea is one 

of the fastest branches of fishing in the UK. Here kayak regular Jamie Soons talks the subject through 

thoroughly from buying and kitting out to monster common skate. 

Podcast Interview 51: Dave Lewis, Guided Sea Angling Trips: Recorded in 2011. Over recent 

years, fully inclusive organised angling adventures to all corners of the world have become an integral 

part of the modern sea fishing scene. One such a guide is sea angling journalist Dave Lewis who talks 

here about the scope, potential, and strong points of the trips he accompanies offered by Anglers World 

Holidays. 

Podcast Interview 52: Mick White & Jack Shine: Recorded in 2011. Jack Shine is an Irish shore 

fishing legend. Sadly, he died in 1997, but his legacy of over forty porbeagle Sharks caught from the 

shore has never been repeated, not even with one fish, and possibly never will be. Towards the end of 

Jack's life, Mick White spent quite a bit of time in his company documenting his achievements which 

he details and shares with us here. 

Podcast Interview 53: Bob Fitchie & Phill Williams, Salmonid Slam: Recorded in 2012. Back in 

the 1970's, Phill Williams and Bob Fitchie set out to catch a salmon, sea trout, brown trout, rainbow 

trout, brook trout, grayling, schelly, and char each all in the same season as a salmonid grand slam. Bob 

Fitchie actually completed it becoming arguably the first person ever to do so. 

Podcast Interview 54: Andrew Alsop, Welsh Sharks: Recorded in 2011. Both Milford Haven charter 

boat skipper Andrew Alsop and the port itself are fast making their names on the shark fishing scene. 

Already the British blue shark record has been beaten and released as one of a number of fish topping 

two hundred pounds, with hundred pounders a regular occurrence, and fifty sharks taken in a single 

day. 

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Podcast Interview 55: Dave Beecham, Canaries Carp: Recorded in 2011. Because the Canary 

Islands have no natural lakes nor indigenous freshwater fish species, local farmers rely on dammed 

reservoirs for crop irrigation purposes to which they have introduced carp to prevent weed growth. In 

the high temperatures there, these fish have thrived and grown big. Ex-pat UK carp angler Dave 

Beecham guides visiting anglers on all-inclusive trips to these lakes where fish in excess of thirty 

pounds are regularly caught. 

Podcast Interview 56: Ronnie Campbell, Loch Etive: Recorded in 2011. Much of the development 

of the common skate fishing in the Firth of Lorne, and of the spurdog fishery in Loch Etive is down to 

local charter boat skipper Ronnie Campbell, who discusses the fishery, its problems, and his regrets at 

the way the Loch Etive side of things are going, citing his own responsibility in the way things have 

turned out. 

Podcast Interview 57: Steve Ball, Fylde Coast Shore Fishing: Recorded in 2012. Fylde Boat 

Angling Club shore section member and local shore match angler Steve Ball takes us on a tour of the 

Fylde coast, suggesting features, marks and tactics along the way. 

Podcast Interview 58: Mick McCallum, England Shore Fishing International: Recorded in 2012. 

Blackpool shore match angler Mick McCallum charts his progression through the ranks to representing 

England and winning a gold medal at the home internationals, then on to the world championships, 

before becoming totally disillusioned with the squad, its south coast bias, and its politics. A no holds 

barred discussion of the entire topic, plus a wealth of tackle and tactical information used to get him to 

the top. 

Podcast Interview 59: Dougal Lane, Guernsey: Recorded in 2012. The Channel Islands have long 

been an extended trip stopover for south coast charter boats. Here local commercial skipper/charter boat 

skipper Dougal Lane looks in detail at the wreck, reef and bank fishing within easy reach of his base on 

the island of Guernsey. He also gives an insight into finding and positioning over wrecks, plus details 

of a dramatic rescue. 

Podcast Interview 60: Steve Quinn, England International Boat Squad: Recorded in 2012. Ex- 

England International boat angler Steve Quinn looks at the whole boat match angling scene, as well as 

providing a wealth of top quality tackle and tactical tips which he used to get into, maintain his squad 

place within, and ultimately win medals with, including gold, as well as becoming European cod 

champion. 

Podcast Interview 61: Clive Gammon, Reflections: Recorded in 2011. Out of all the sea angling 

greats who helped shape today's sea angling scene by helping its transition from the old ways of the 

1950's and 60's to those of the 21st century, Clive Gammon is the one held in the highest esteem by the 

vast majority of people. 

Podcast Interview 62: North West Boat Club History: Recorded in 2012. Much of what we 

commonly see in small boat fishing clubs today has its origins in pioneering work done by a handful of 

Lancashire small boat anglers more than forty years ago. Here we explore the history of the Fylde, 

Wyre, and Blackpool boat angling clubs, with founder members from each. 

Podcast Interview 63: Stuart Cresswell & Willie Kennedy, Tagathons: Recorded in 2011. As a 

response to the Scottish government demanding hard data demonstrating the need for marine 

conservation, the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network (SSACN) organised a spurdog tagathon 

on Loch's Sunart and Etive. So popular was this, and so revealing in terms of factual data that it has 

now become an annual event along with others at Luce Bay for tope, and Crinan for common skate 

added to the diary. Here event organisers Stuart Cresswell and Willie Kennedy discuss both the concept 

and the events. 

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Podcast Interview 64: Steve Quinn, Coarse Fishing Legends: Recorded in 2012. Ex-England 

International boat angler Steve Quinn actually started his angling career as a coarse match fisherman 

competing, and doing very well, against some of the all times greats such as the Ashursts, Ian Heaps 

and Ivan Marks. Here he gives his recollections of what these legends were actually like as people as 

well as anglers. 

Podcast Interview 65: Alan Sharpe, Boat traces: Recorded in 2011. Ex-England international boat 

squad member Alan Sharpe discusses his trace design and manufacturing business. Terminal tackle 

items are also discussed at length, along with his time in the England squad. 

Podcast Interview 66: Morris Clarkson, Spintec Salmon Lures: Recorded in 2012. Morris Clarkson 

of the Ribchester based workshop Spintec has been hand making bespoke salmon lures since the 1950s, 

including the flying C, devon minnow, and blair spoon. Quality not quantity is the company motto. He 

also regularly fishes with these lures on the River Ribble for salmon from where he has taken in excess 

of two hundred fish. Both aspects are discussed here in detail, along with a history of lure making in 

the UK. 

Podcast Interview 67: Les Hall, Cod Wars: Recorded in 2012. The last of the three cod wars between 

Britain and Iceland left the UK fishing fleet banned from within Iceland's two hundred mile unilaterally 

declared territorial limit, and our home ports such as Fleetwood doomed to terminal decline. But before 

the retreat, there were many skirmishes and incidents, some of which were never reported. Here 

Fleetwood trawler chief engineer Les Hall recounts some of them. 

Podcast Interview 68: Stuart McCoy, Barrow-in-Furness: Recorded in 2011. Renewable energy 

such as that from offshore windfarms is supposedly green energy, yet here we have the story of Barrowin-Furness 

charter boat skipper Stuart McCoy being prevented from picking up customers by energy 

company DONG, and of problems caused by electromagnetic fields from their power cables affecting 

fish, in particular tope. 

Podcast Interview 69: George Hemseworth, Fresh v Frozen Bait: Recorded in 2012. Throughout 

the famed Fylde coast jumbo cod era, besides going out in his own small boat rod fishing, Blackpool 

angler George Hemsworth also set lines on the beach on the winter night tides, taking cod far bigger 

than anything ever taken on rod and line, and always on fresh bait, to the point that he wouldn't even 

try if only frozen bait was on offer. 

Podcast Interview 70: Dave Roper, World Coarse Fishing Champion: Recorded in 2012. Against 

the odds, using maggots under a waggler from a conventional rod and reel outfit, Preston pole and 

bloodworm expert Dave Roper beat the Italians into second place on their own patch fishing the River 

Arno in Italy to be crowned 1985 world individual coarse fishing champion. 

Podcast Interview 71: Dr. Dave Shultz, Weather Forecasting: Recorded in 2012. Understanding 

and interpreting weather forecasts, while it may well be a science, and an inaccurate science at that, is 

crucial to all who put to sea in boats, including anglers. Here Dr. Dave Schultz explains in layman's 

terms how to get the best out of the weather information available. 

Podcast Interview 72: JJ McVicar, Plymouth Wrecks: Recorded in 2012. Though not the man who 

sparked off angler interest in wreck fishing back in the 1970's, Plymouth skipper of the 'June Lipet' JJ 

McVicar is most certainly the best remembered name from that period, and rightly so, for his exploits 

with massive catches of record breaking pollack, coalfish and anglerfish 

Podcast Interview 73: Justin Anwyl, Bass Fly Fishing Part 1: Recorded in 2012. Though popular 

in the USA, saltwater fly fishing is still in its infancy in the UK. Here, in a 2 part interview, Chichester 

bass fly fishing guide Justin Anwyl gives a very detailed and all-inclusive insight into the subject from 

the British perspective. 

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Podcast Interview 74: Justin Anwyl Bass Fly Fishing Part 2: Recorded in 2012. Though popular in 

the USA, saltwater fly fishing is still in its infancy in the UK. Here, in a 2 part interview, Chichester 

bass fly fishing guide Justin Anwyl gives a very detailed and all-inclusive insight into the subject from 

the British perspective. 

Podcast Interview 75: Simon Clarke, Wels Catfish: Recorded in 2012. Despite being an alien 

species, unlike zander, wels catfish have been welcomed by coarse specimen hunters, tempered by the 

fact that they have not exploded throughout the UK in the same way that the zander did. Catfish 

Conservation Group secretary Simon Clarke explores their history, habitat, and feeding requirements, 

and most important of all, how to catch them successfully on rod and line both in the UK and on the 

continent. 

Podcast Interview 76: Roger Beer, Conger: Recorded in 2012. To catch a conger in excess of fifty 

pounds from the shore is incredible. To catch a conger in excess of one hundred pounds from the boat 

is equally so. To actually catch both would be amazing. Here Devon angler Roger Beer, the only angler 

ever to have achieved this feat, talks about all things conger, particularly catching them from the shore. 

Podcast Interview 77: Peter Arlott, Kennet River keeper: Recorded in 2012. The Aldermaston Mill 

day ticket stretch of the River Kennet has been in the Arlott family for many years. Here river keeper 

Peter Arlott talks about the many problems the Kennet and other rivers in the vicinity currently face 

from water shortages, predation, and alien species. He also discusses fishing for quality barbel. 

Podcast Interview 78: Ian Gaskell, Fly Fishing Competitions: Recorded in 2012. Ian Gaskell, 

winner of the Lexus European fly fishing championship at Chew Valley gives a no holds barred detailed 

explanation of all aspects of competitive fly fishing using the loch style approach from a drifting boat. 

Podcast Interview 79: Chris Ball, Surface Carp Fishing: Recorded in 2012. Carp historian and 

legendary surface feeding carp stalker Chris Ball discusses his favourite subject covering everything 

from tackle and tactics through to baits and feeding. 

Podcast Interview 80: Kathy Barco, Florida Fisheries Commision: Recorded in 2012. Florida Fish 

and Wildlife Commission chairman Kathy Barco explains how state funded organisation has restored 

its coastal fish stocks from a very low ebb some years ago to a level which now supports a multi-billion 

dollar sport fishery, allowing it to justifiably call itself the sport fishing capital of the world. 

Podcast Interview 81: Wayne Comben, Rays: Recorded in 2012. Langstone small boat angler 

Wayne Comben talks about the tackle and tactics required to catch his favourite fish, rays, five species 

of which he has caught on several occasions all in the same day. 

Podcast Interview 82: Prof. Gerd Masselink, Coastal Engineering: Recorded in 2012. Quite often, 

shorelines and their fish holding features, plus water’s edge conditions for small boat launching are the 

result of work done by coastal engineers. Sometimes these can be beneficial, while on other occasions 

less so. Here Professor Gerd Masselink discusses specific engineering features and their potential 

effects on sea angling, using examples from Blackpool and Morecambe as specific case studies. 

Podcast Interview 83: Margatet Owen, Haaf Netter: Recorded in 2012. As always, there are two 

sides to every debate, and so far as salmon and sea trout are concerned, anglers think that commercial 

netsmen are responsible for taking far too many fish. Here salmon Haaf netter Margaret Owen talks 

about the sustainability of her fishing in the estuary of the River Lune. 

Podcast Interview 84: Martin James, Life Story Part 1: Recorded in 2012. While angling journalist 

and broadcaster Martin James may well have originated in Kent, as the voice behind BBC Radio 

Lancashire's At The Waters Edge, he is well known to many throughout the North West for his probing 

interviews. Here, in a reversal of roles, he is on the receiving end of the questions, looking back over 

his long and varied angling career. 

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Podcast Interview 85: Martin James, Life Story Part 2: Recorded in 2012. While angling journalist 

and broadcaster Martin James may well have originated in Kent, as the voice behind BBC Radio 

Lancashire's At The Waters Edge, he is well known to many throughout the North West for his probing 

interviews. Here, in a reversal of roles, he is on the receiving end of the questions, looking back over 

his long and varied angling career. 

Podcast Interview 86: Mike Millman, Legendary Journalist Part 1: Recorded in 2012. Think of 

the West Country and big fish from those parts, and to some extent, veteran sea angler Mike Millman 

will have been involved. An angling journalist for over forty years and now into his 80's, Mike looks 

back on the many highlights from what can only be described as the golden era of sea angling. 

Podcast Interview 87: Mike Millman, Legendary Journalist Part 2: Recorded in 2012. Think of 

the West Country and big fish from those parts, and to some extent, veteran sea angler Mike Millman 

will have been involved. An angling journalist for over forty years and now into his 80's, Mike looks 

back on the many highlights from what can only be described as the golden era of sea angling. 

Podcast Interview 88: Chris Ball, Reflections: Recorded in 2012. Carp historian and legendary 

surface feeding carp stalker Chris Ball discusses his early formative years and his advancement through 

both the weight ranks and fishery ranks up to the present time. 

Podcast Interview 89: Chris Ball, History of Carp: Recorded in 2012. Carp historian and legendary 

surface feeding carp stalker Chris Ball discusses the history of the species introduction to Britain, 

charting its advance in both size and prowess through to Richard Walkers forty four pound Redmire 

record Clarissa. 

Podcast Interview 90: Graeme Pullen, North Cornish Porbeagles: Recorded in 2012. Graeme 

Pullen lifts the lid on North Cornwall's inshore porbeagle sharks, then as an addendum, describes the 

day he and Wayne Comben caught and filmed the largest shark ever caught in British waters in May 

2012. 

Podcast Interview 91: Wayne Comben, Plaice: Recorded in 2012. Plaice are one of those species 

which all anglers love to catch. They are also a species which commercial fishermen prize, on top of 

which, when you do find them, they can be there in big numbers and are therefore vulnerable. Here 

Wayne Comben tells how best to approach all aspects of their catching, with a few cautionary examples 

of how best to ensure that they will continue to be there year on year. 

Podcast Interview 92: Tony Bridge, Gantocks Cod: Recorded in 2012. Back in the late 1960's to 

mid 70's, the place to be for monster cod from a small boat was Scotland's inner Clyde, and in particular, 

a mark known as the Gantocks, immortalised by three Edinburgh anglers known as 'The Trio'. Then 

almost overnight it was cleaned out never to be re-seeded. Fishing at that time with 'The Trio' was Tony 

Bridge, who gives us an insight into the fishing over the Gantocks mark, and also offers up some reasons 

for its rapid decline. 

Podcast Interview 93: Bill Briggs, White Water Worming for Salmon: Recorded in 2012. While it 

isn't held in the highest esteem amongst purist salmon anglers, upstream white water worming is not 

only a very skilful way of catching salmon in low water conditions, but if done properly, as Bill Briggs 

explains in minute detail here, can sometimes be the only way to fish on all rivers some of the time, and 

on some rivers pretty much all of the time. 

Podcast Interview 94: Graeme Pullen, Carp falacies: Recorded in 2012. New comers to carp fishing 

could be forgiven for thinking that electronic alarms, boilies and bivvies are the key requirements for 

success. Well it would appear not. Here Graeme Pullen explores an alternative approach to carp which 

not only catches lots of fish, but often does so when the boilie brigaide don't see enough action to get 

them out of their bed chairs. 

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Podcast Interview 95: Sven Hille, Baltic Trolling: Recorded in 2012. Due to its brackish nature, the 

Baltic Sea increases in salinity with depth, and decreases in salinity the further north and east you go. 

As a result, anglers are able to catch salmon, sea trout, cod, pike and garfish from the same spot, on the 

same gear, and in the same day. Obviously these fish also have preferences. Here German angler Sven 

Hille lays the whole situation on the line. 

Podcast Interview 96: Phill Williams BBC radio Lancshire: Recorded in 2012. Interview by Martin 

James for his BBC Radio Lancashire angling series At The Waters Edge. 

Podcast Interview 97: Pete Shaw, Exposed Coast Kayak Fishing: Recorded in 2012. Kayak 

instructor and angler Pete Shaw gives a detailed insight into kitting out, handling, and fishing from a 

beach launched kayak along an exposed west facing piece of coastline. 

Podcast Interview 98: John Horsey, Pike On The Fly: Recorded in 2012. Fly fishing for novel 

species is anglings big growth area currently, and for the most part in freshwater, that means pike. In 

particular, Chew Valley Lake in Somerset is the place to go, preferably with six times world fly fishing 

champion John Horsey who operates there as a full time guide. Here, for those preferring to do it on 

their own, John spells out the do's and dont's that should lead to success. 

Podcast Interview 99: James Pinder, Salmon Perceptions: Recorded in 2012. Salmon fishing is 

seen by many as elitist, expensive, even snobbish, and there are many reasons why this might be so. 

But is it really any or all of those things. Here salmon purist James Pinder explores a wide range of 

perceptions and misconceptions while also delving into the politics of it all to challenge those views. 

Podcast Interview 100: Sandy Armishaw, Angling Heritage: Recorded in 2012. Angling Heritage 

is a bespoke angling history repository with full charitable status, the patrons of which are Fred Buller 

and Chris Yates. Here its founder Sandy Armishaw explains fully what the organisations remit is, and 

how anyone and everyone can become involved. 

Podcast Interview 101: Mel Russ, Sea Angler Magazine Editor: Recorded in 2012. Sea Angler 

magazine editor Mel Russ talks through the history of Britains most successful ever sea angling 

magazine, from its birth in 1972 to present, and from its early black and white days to going electronic 

and inter-active in 2012. 

Podcast Interview 102: John Horsey, International Fly Fishing: Recorded in 2012. John Horsey, 

England's most successful international fly fisherman ever with six world championship gold medals to 

his credit, discusses the whole concept of international fly fishing competitions. 

Podcast Interview 103: Alan Yates, SAMF: Recorded in 2012. Arguably, one of the most influential 

England shore anglers of his day and without equal on the open match circuit, Folkestone angler and 

Sea Angler contributor Alan Yates talks about his match angling career, and how he would ultimately 

become a founding member of the Sea Anglers Match Federation or SAMF. 

Podcast Interview 104: Sid Pender, Mounts Bay: Recorded in 2012. Mounts Bay Sea Angling 

society is one of the oldest sea angling clubs in the country, and here its elder statesman Sid Pender, 

who has held most positions of office within the club, takes a detailed look at the organisation, fishing 

generally in the Penzance area, and how the future of Cornish sea angling looks. 

Podcast Interview 105: Mike Weaver MBE, Wild Trout Trust: Recorded in 2012. As a founding 

member and former chairman of the Wild Trout Trust, Mike Weaver talks us through the formation of 

the organisation, its aims and its successes, plus reflects back on his trout fishing career with some 

insight into his thinking, tackle and tactics. 

Podcast Interview 106: Charles Inniss, Fishing Inns: Recorded in 2012. Angling Inns were once a 

common feature in parts of the UK with none more famous than the Half Moon at Sheepwash in Devon 

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un by Charles Inniss. A life long salmon and sea trout angler, Charles Inniss also ran ten miles of the 

River Torridge, was secretary of the Torridge Angling Association, and knows much regarding the 

angling history of this classic game fishing river. 

Podcast Interview 107: Harry Whiteside, Salmon Netter: Recorded in 2012. Anglers and 

commercial fishermen will always be on opposite sides of the fence. But to understand any potential 

threat, anglers need to appreciate the commercial side of things too. This is particularly true of salmon 

netting. Here Ribble salmon netter Harry Whiteside talks the subject through. 

Podcast Interview 108: John Holden, Distance Casting: Recorded in 2013. Far and away the most 

influential shore angler/distance caster of the past forty years has to be Essex based John Holden. A 

former distance record holder, casting instructor, and current stalwart at Sea Angler Magazine, here is 

a man who knows everything there is to know on this particular topic, and is willing to share that 

experience with us all here. 

Podcast Interview 109: Robin Vinnicombe, Falmouth Mako's: Recorded in 2012. From his first 

mako encounter in the late 1950's up to the last ever British Mako Shark catch in 1971 which was aboard 

his Falmouth based boat 'Huntress', Robin Vinnicombe accounted for one in three of all mako sharks 

ever landed from UK waters. Now well into his 70's and wheelchair bound following a stroke, here he 

guides us through a detailed look at how he achieved what he did with this most enigmatic and highly 

prized angling shark species. 

Podcast Interview 110: Dr. Stephen Atkins, IFCA: Recorded in 2013. In 2011, Sea Fishery 

Committee's, which were responsible for policing inshore fishing activities, were replaced by Inshore 

Fishery and Conservation Authorities with seats on those authorities being given to various stakeholder 

groups including angling. Here North West IFCA Chief Executive Officer Dr. Stephen Atkins explains 

the working of an IFCA, plus explores measures which could be employed to help boost bass numbers 

both regionally and nationally. 

Podcast Interview 111: Ken Robinson, Scottish Shore Cod: Recorded in 2013. It's not that long ago 

that fish which would make the angling press these days, even from a boat, were regularly being caught 

from the shore in Scotland. Absolute monster cod in particular. Then suddenly, they were gone. Here 

Scottish cod record holder Ken Robinson reflects on the fishing back then at Balcary, what happened 

to it, and recounts the day of his record catch. 

Podcast Interview 112: David Turner, The Last Mako: Recorded in 2013. As the captor of the last 

mako shark in UK waters back in 1971, and having thoroughly researched the species for his new book 

The Shark Hunter, David Turner tells us all we need to know on the subject of mako shark fishing. 

Podcast Interview 113: Mike Winrow, River Ribble Barbel: Recorded in 2013. The River Ribble 

in Lancashire was illegally stocked with barbel during the 1970's. By the turn of the century, it was 

producing some of the biggest specimens in the country. Lancashire barbel fanatic Mike Winrow 

explains. 

Podcast Interview 114: Dr. Ruth Thurstan, Commercial Fishing Pressure: Recorded in 2013. As 

anglers, we've all seen change, particularly in the numbers and sizes of our more popular fish species. 

But this has been going on since the 14th century. Here, Dr. Ruth Thustan looks at historical catch data 

and relates this to what we are seeing in terms of fish numbers today, projecting it on to what we can 

also expect in the future. 

Podcast Interview 115: Phill Williams, The Target: Recorded in 2013. Back in the 1980's, Phill 

Williams set himself a target of 100 UK fish species, 300 worldwide fish species, a double figure wild 

trout, a 100 pound fish in freshwater, a 200 pound fish from a trailed boat, a 200 pound fish from the 

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shore, and a 1000 pound fish from anywhere. In addition there was to be a British, a European and a 

World record fish, plus a fisheries based Ph.D. This is the story of that quest. 

Podcast Interview 116: John Wilkinson, River Lostock: Recorded in 2013. Back in the 1960's, the 

River Lostock in Lancashire was devoid of fish. Now in 2013 it's full of the things ranging from coarse 

species to brown trout. There's even talk of salmon. Here John Wilkinson talks about the fish and the 

fishing, while Phill Williams explains how they came to be there in the first place. 

Podcast Interview 117: Mike Winrow, Specimen Perch: Recorded in 2013. Perch were once a 

prolific fish. Then in the 1960's, shallow ulcer disease all but wiped the species out in the UK. Now 

nearly fifty years on, from those few resistant survivors, the perch is back. But in the process, the 

balance of power in terms of which fisheries have the ability to produce specimen sized perch has 

changed radically. Here Mike Winrow explains. 

Podcast Interview 118: Ken Robinson, Shore Big Game Fishing: Recorded in 2013. Fishing abroad 

for hard fighting warm water game fish species can be a costly business if you fish from a boat or with 

a guide. Here shore angler Ken Robinson gives away a wealth of tips and locations for going it alone in 

Europe and America, with some quite spectacular results. 

Podcast Interview 119: Mike Winrow, Gravel Pits: Recorded in 2013. For still water species of 

coarse fish, far and away the most productive venues in terms of individual growth, particularly for 

bream and tench, are gravel pits left to fill with water when extraction work is finished. Here coarse 

specimen hunter Mike Winrow explores their productivity and getting the best from them tactically, 

with particular emphasis on specimen bream and tench. 

Podcast Interview 120: Dr. Dietrich Burkel, Scotland's First Porbeagle Shark: Recorded in 2013. 

Controversey has surrounded the catching of Scotland's first ever porbeagle shark by Dr. Dietrich 

Burkel off the Mull of Galloway back in 1971. Dietrich Burkel gives the definitive version of events 

which should now lay the issue finally to rest. 

Podcast Interview 121: Dr. Dietrich Burkel, Scottish Skate Tagging Program: Recorded in 2013. 

The common skate tagging program that has done so much to bring the Scottish population back from 

near collapse is taken for granted these days. But back in the early 1970's when the species received no 

help or protection, even from anglers, it was a very different matter. Here Dr. Dietrich Burkel talks 

about how he helped set the program up, then reflects on its success over the intervening forty years 

with SSACN now firmly in control of the project. 

Podcast Interview 122: Ken Robinson, North East Shore Fishing: Recorded in 2013. Ken Robinson 

is one of the best know shore match anglers on his native north east coast. An area of excellent fishing 

prospects. But equally, an area of extremes with regard to terrain and the tactics, and ability to extract 

the best from what's on offer. Here he discusses tackle, tactics, bait, venues and species, offering advice 

on how to be in with the best shot of a result. 

Podcast Interview 123: Luke Aston, 1000 Pound Irish Sharks: Recorded in 2013. The largest 

verified fish caught around Britain and Ireland was a six gilled shark of 1056 pounds taken in 2009 

aboard Luke Astons boat 'Clare Dragon' based at Carrigaholt on Irelands River Shannon Estuary. That 

said, his clients have caught and released at least three bigger fish, plus other six gills in smaller weight 

categories. Here Luke Aston talks about his encounters with these enormous fish. 

Podcast Interview 124: Michael McVeigh, Irish Blue Fin Tuna: Recorded in 2013. Though they 

had probably been there for many hundreds of years, back in 2000, it was suddenly realised that huge 

blue fin tuna were running up the west coast of Ireland very close in to the shore, and that through a 

process of trial and error, they could in fact be caught on rod and line there. Adrian Molloy eventually 

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took the record up to 968 pounds. The other key player in all of this was Downings charter skipper 

Michael McVeigh who charts the rise and fall of tuna fishing for us here off the Donegal coast. 

Podcast Interview 125: Mike Roden, Tenkara Fishing: Recorded in 2013. The ancient art of 

Tenkara fishing was developed in Japan for purely practical reasons, and again for practical reasons, it 

has recently been introduced to the UK where it is used to exploit running water wild trout and grayling 

situations in a way that conventional fly fishing cannot hope to match. Here Tenkara Centre UK director 

and game fishing instructor Mike Roden explains. 

Podcast Interview 126: Keith Philbin, Fleetwood Charter Boat History: Recorded in 2013. 

Fleetwood rose to prominence as the North Wests premier charter angling port during the 1970's, a 

position it held until the mid 1980's, when through the recession years of the Thatcher government, and 

costly fundamental changes to licensing rules, it suddenly nosed dived into decline to the point where 

there were no boats at all. That number has now risen to two. Here Kieth Philbin who operated two of 

the boats in Fleetwoods heyday talks about the rise fall of the ports fortunes. 

Podcast Interview 127: Gerry Foote, Gerry's of Morecambe: Recorded in 2013. If you want to 

know anything worth knowing about angling trends, or the recent evolution of fishing across each of 

its disciplines, the best person to ask is one of the big players in the retail fishing tackle trade, and in 

that regard, few are better placed than Gerry Foote, who for many years has owned and operated the 

tackle shop, mail order and worldwide online tackle business Gerry's of Morecambe. 

Podcast Interview 128: Andy Steel, England shore manager: Recorded in 2013. Ex-England shore 

fishing team member, selector, and manager, plus current SAMF secretary, Andy Steele talks over a 

range of topics regarding international shore fishing qualification, selection and duties. 

Podcast Interview 129: Brian Crawford, Freshwater Eels: Recorded in 2013. As well as being a 

big eel angler and author of two books on the subject of Eels and Eel fishing, Brian Crawford has also 

held a number of posts within both the National Angilla Club and the European Eel Angling 

Association, and is therefore very well placed to talk on all topics related to the subject. 

Podcast Interview 130: Dr. Paul Gaskell, Trout In The Town: Recorded in 2013. Why should urban 

and city centre streams and rivers be effluent channels or rubbish dumps, and why should potential fish 

habitat be deprived of that main ingredient in the recipe, the fish themselves. Here Dr. Paul Gaskell 

looks at an initiative he manages, aimed at bringing fish back to city centre locations through the Trout 

In The Town Project 

Podcast Interview 131: James Thorburn, Tope and Spurdog Study Project: Recorded in 2013. 

After working as projects officer for the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network gathering in and 

processing tag recapture data from Luce Bay, Loch Etive and the Firth of Lorne, James Thorburn was 

offered the chance of turning the project into a full Ph.D. Here he talks about the project and its 

preliminary findings at the end of a day tagging out in Luce Bay. 

Podcast Interview 132: Alex Wilkie, Everything On Fly: Recorded in 2013. If it can possibly be 

caught on the fly, Alex Wilkie will try for it, both in freshwater and at sea. Even fish which many think 

are impossible on the technique, Wilkie will still try for them and has had more than his fair share of 

success. Here he talks through those fly fishing ambitions and successes, with a full run down of the 

tackle and tactics required. 

Podcast Interview 133: Tony Lofthouse, Fishermans Friend: Recorded in 2013. Fishermans Friend 

is a small medicinal lozenge produced in Fleetwood, originally to aid the fishing industry in the 1860's, 

but more recently as a remedy of global marketing importance in a wide range of flavours and strengths. 

Here MD Tony Lofthouse talks about the history of the company and its commercial fishing links. 

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Podcast Interview 134: Mike Heylin, BRFC Part 1: Recorded in 2013. Part 1 of a two part interview. 

As chairman of the British Record Fish Committee, Mike Heylin knows only too well the depth and 

breadth of the job his committee faces to drag itself into the 21st century, a fact highlighted by an array 

of often awkward questions, all of which he takes here in his stride. 

Podcast Interview 135: Mike Heylin, BRFC Part 2: Recorded in 2013. Part 2 of a two part interview. 

As chairman of the British Record Fish Committee, Mike Heylin knows only too well the depth and 

breadth of the job his committee faces to drag itself into the 21st century, a fact highlighted by an array 

of often awkward questions, all of which he takes here in his stride. 

Podcast Interview 136: Dave Lumley, Hartlepool: Recorded in 2013. The charter angling boat 

'Famous' has operated out from Hartlepool in a number of different guises and with different skippers 

at her helm. Currently a purpose built Blyth Cat, here her skipper Dave Lumley looks at the fishing in 

this corner of the north sea, and reflects back to the boats earliest days in the hands of Tom Williams 

during the 1970's. 

Podcast Interview 137: Andy Griffith, Shark Grand Slam: Recorded in 2013. It's been the best part 

of forty years since a mako shark has been caught in UK waters. Then Andy Griffith comes on the scene 

fishing with Andrew Alsop out from Milford Haven and takes a world first grand slam of a blue shark, 

porbeagle, and mako, all over one hundred pounds and in the same day. 

Podcast Interview 138: Allan Everington, Pollack Fly IGFA: Recorded in 2013. Scotland's Mull of 

Galloway is a world class pollack fishery where numbers of excellent fish come within range of fly 

fishing techniques from a small boat close in to shore. Here Allan Everington, who has bettered existing 

IGFA tippet records for the species on a number of occasions, talks through the tackle and the tactics 

required. 

Podcast Interview 139: John Inman, Canals, Squats & Nationals: Recorded in 2013. Coarse match 

angling, and in particular club matches on canals seems to have lost its appeal over recent times. Here 

canal expert John Inman looks back over his very successful time match fishing in canals, and in 

particular with his key bait, the squat. 

Podcast Interview 140: John Inman, Commercial Coarse Fisheries: Recorded in 2013. Small 

commercial coarse fisheries and smaller numbers of anglers match fishing have led to a real change in 

match fishing attitudes over recent times. Here Bolton matchman John Inman assesses the value of these 

fisheries, and the best techniques to extract the biggest number and greatest variety of fish from them. 

Podcast Interview 141: Wayne Comben, Threshers and Porbeagles: Recorded in 2013. In the 

course of just over a year, fishing from a trailed boat, Wayne Comben caught a record plus porbeagle, 

a record plus thresher, and along with Graeme Pullen, boated blue shark on the fly, and the largest small 

boat single session haul of blue sharks ever in the UK. Here Wayne relives those experiences. 

Podcast Interview 142: Michael Salmon, Secretary BASS: Recorded in 2013. Currently in its 40th 

year, BASS, the Bass Angling Sportfishing Society is an organisation devoted to getting bass the species 

firmly re-established in a sustainable way on the UK sea angling scene. Here the organisations secretary 

Michael Salmon explains. 

Podcast Interview 143: Prof. Mark Everard, Roach: Recorded in 2013. With hundreds of two 

pound plus and many three pound plus roach to his credit, Mark Everard is the country’s foremost 

expert on the subject of roach angling and all aspects concerning its biology. Mark is also the author of 

a number of books on the subject, and joins us here to talk over all aspects of his roach fishing life. 

Podcast Interview 144: Graeme Pullen, Blue Shark On Fly: Recorded in 2013. Two blue shark 

trips producing a fly caught specimen and the biggest ever trailed boat haul squeezed in between 

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catching a monster porbeagle and a monster thresher shark, again both dinghy caught, recalled by 

Graeme Pullen. 

Podcast Interview 145: Roger Beer, Shore Rays: Recorded in 2013. Shore ray expert Roger Beer 

discusses his tactics and tackle for catching an assortment of big rays from a variety of Devon rock 

marks, catches that have included shore records for both the small eyed and spotted ray. 

Podcast Interview 146: Dick Clegg OBE, MBE, England manager: Recorded in 2013. Without 

doubt, Dick Clegg has been not only the most successful national team manager in coarse fishing 

history, but also most successful manager in any sport engaged in by participants representing this 

country, resulting in an OBE and an MBE to add to his many trophies and gold medal wins, all of which, 

along with other aspects of his life, he discusses in candid detail here. 

Podcast Interview 147: Richard Peirce, Shark Trust: Recorded in 2013. Shark Trust and Shark 

Conservation Society Chairman Richard Peirce discusses sharks in UK waters, looking at the role 

anglers both can and do play in the science behind the trust's work. Suggestions for better handling and 

conservation generally by anglers is also discussed. 

Podcast Interview 148: Alan Scotthorne, the World’s Top Coarse Angler: Recorded in 2013. With 

five world individual titles and numerous team titles, Alan Scotthorne is without equal the greatest 

coarse angler in the history or international match fishing. 

Podcast Interview 149: Sandra Scotthorne, World Champion Female Coarse Angler: Recorded 

in 2013. Ladies in angling are quite a rare commodity. Ladies in Coarse match angling well capable of 

taking on and beating their male counterparts are almost unheard of. Here five times world team gold 

medal winner and twice individual world champion Sandra Scotthorne takes an in depth look at the 

lady’s international scene. 

Podcast Interview 150: John Bamford, Friends Of The River Yarrow: Recorded in 2013. While 

the group, Friends of the River Yarrow formed primarily to ensure the entire environment on and around 

the River Yarrow in Lancashire has been restored, there is no denying that fish have probably been the 

main beneficiaries. It has quite literally gone from running sewer to running salmon, and stands out as 

an object lesson to others who may want to restore lost fisheries to their former glory. 

Podcast Interview 151: Dave Trafford, Canal Match Fishing: Recorded in 2013. Back in the 1970's, 

Dave Trafford was a keen and successful coarse match angler who took a time out from angling, twenty 

five years in fact, before coming back onto the canal match angling scene, by which time so much had 

changed. Now able to compare and contrast the two era's which are a generation apart, here he takes a 

look at those changes, plus his current match situation. 

Podcast Interview 152: Didier Dellanoy, French coarse angling world champion: Recorded in 

2013. French 2013 world coarse fishing individual gold medal winner Didier Dellanoy offers his 

thoughts on his win, his behind the scenes preparation including practise here in the UK, and the current 

England set up during a stay with multiple world champions Alan and Sandra Scotthorne. 

Podcast Interview 153: Paul Maris, Big Fish UK: Recorded in 2014. Paul Maris, who is one of the 

Essex Boys, talks here about his big saltwater fish exploits in the UK, including the biggest ever one 

man one day Common Skate haul which saw him constantly playing big fish for well over four hours. 

Podcast Interview 154: Eddie Mounce, MD Fish Thailand: Recorded in 2014. Eddie Mounce set 

up Fish Thailand as a business while back packing after graduating from university with a degree in 

fisheries management. Here he talks about the wonderful fishing, the fisheries, and the future of 

targeting some of the biggest freshwater fish in the world. 

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Podcast Interview 155: Ally Gowans, Scottish Salmon: Recorded in 2014. Ally Gowans is arguably 

the most inventive and skilled angler on the current salmon fishing scene. His fly the Ally Shrimp was 

voted by salmon anglers as the fly of the millennium. Here he discusses this and some of his other 

patterns, plus the fish weight calculator, conservation, fly fishing history, and of course salmon fly 

fishing itself. 

Podcast Interview 156: Paul Maris, Marlin World Championships: Recorded in 2014. Part two of 

a two part interview with Essex Boy Paul Maris. This episode looks at the Essex Boys big fish exploits 

abroad, and in particular the marlin world cup and completing the billfish royal slam. 

Podcast Interview 157: Leon Roskilly, Mullet: Recorded in 2014. To most sea anglers, mullet are 

looked upon as either un-catchable or hardly worth the massive amount of effort required for precious 

little return. But with the right approach, that need not always be the case. Leon Roskilly explains. 

Podcast Interview 158: Leon Roskilly, Angling politics: Recorded in 2014. Most anglers prefer to 

leave their hobby related politics to a small number of able volunteers who tirelessly work on our behalf. 

The least we could do then is support them. But to do this, we first need to understand the issues. Here 

Leon Roskilly explains IFCA's, MCZ's, and the Sea Angling 2012 survey. 

Podcast Interview 159: Alex MacDonald, Redgill Lures: Recorded in 2014. The most iconic lure of 

the twentieth century has to be the redgill. A small rubber eel devised by Alex Ingram of Mevagissey 

which revolutionised the world of wreck fishing. Now a part of the Sakuma portfolio and still catching 

lots of fish, particularly from the shore, here Sakuma MD Alex MacDonald looks at the lure and its 

history. 

Podcast Interview 160: Tommy Flower, Carp: Recorded in 2014. Carp are the 'in' fish currently on 

the coarse fishing scene, and while it hasn't always been that way, Tommy Flower wasn't around in the 

pre-boilie commercial fishing era, so who better to ask for a different perspective on the subject. 

Podcast Interview 161: Alex MacDonald, Gilthead Bream: Recorded in 2014. Gilthead bream first 

appeared on the scene in the 1980's, initially as occasional migrants, but eventually establishing 

themselves as regular visitors to certain estuaries in the west country where a targeted fishery has sprung 

up tapping into their hard fighting capabilities. Here Alex MacDonald of Sakuma Tackle sings the 

praises of the species. 

Podcast Interview 162: Tim Macpherson, Kingmere Bream: Recorded in 2014. Black bream and 

their habitat along the iconic Kingmere Rocks in Sussex are currently under so much threat that a 

campaign group has been set up to try to reverse the trend before all is lost. Instrumental within that 

group is Tim Macpherson who joins us here to explain the problem, and how both it and the potential 

remedies could have profound knock on consequences for other ailing fisheries around the UK. 

Podcast Interview 163: Jim Whippy, Boat Fishing Monthly Editor: Recorded in 2014. Arguably 

the most widely capped England boat fishing international ever, Jim Whippy talks about his sea fishing 

and his time at the helm of some of the country’s best known sea angling magazines. 

Podcast Interview 164: Alex MacDonald, Sakuma: Recorded in 2014. Alex MacDonald, MD of 

hook designers, manufacturers and importers Sakuma, talks about all aspects of hook design, choice 

and usage. 

Podcast Interview 165: Sarah Collins, GhoF: Recorded in 2014. Get Hooked on Fishing CEO Sarah 

Collins discusses the aims and successes of a charitable project designed to promote fishing to younger 

people, and in particular those with social problems. 

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Podcast Interview 166: Danny Parkins, Nocturnal Pike: Recorded in 2014. When you talk about 

lure fishing for big pike, probably the last thing you would expect to hear is a recommendation to do it 

after dark. Here pike enthusiast Danny Parkins puts the case for nocturnal lure fishing. 

Podcast Interview 167: Danny Parkins, LRF & HRF: Recorded in 2014. Light Rock Fishing (LRF) 

and Heavy Rock Fishing (HRF) are two lure based techniques which have really grabbed the shore 

fishing scene over recent times. HRF in particular for big ballan wrasse, which regular practitioner 

Danny Parkins talks about in great detail here. 

Podcast Interview 168: Dave Pakes, Commercial Bass On Rod and Line: Recorded in 2014. 

Commercial rod and line fishing for bass is no different to recreational fishing up to the point of selling 

the fish, which if all the necessary paperwork is in place, is the most sustainable method of commercial 

fishing out there. One other key difference is that the commercials also catch more fish, something we 

anglers could perhaps learn of a few lessons from. 

Podcast Interview 169: Chris Ogborne, Bass Fly Fishing Guide: Recorded in 2014. Chris Ogborne 

is one of those rare people to make the grade as multiple world champion fly fisherman, then switch 

codes to take up guiding fly fishermen at sea. In particular for bass, though the game fishing side of 

things for pleasure hasn't been entirely dropped. 

Podcast Interview 170: Brian Harris, Angling Magazine & Creel Part 1: Recorded in 2014. Ask 

anglers of a certain age which was the best fishing magazine ever published and most will say Creel, 

which later evolved into Angling edited by Brian Harris, a man who along with most of the contributors 

he recruited, is held in equally high esteem. Here Brian joins us for a two part interview about all things 

connected with his angling life. 

Podcast Interview 171: Brian Harris, Angling Magazine & Creel Part 2: Recorded in 2014. Ask 

anglers of a certain age which was the best fishing magazine ever published and most will say Creel, 

which later evolved into Angling edited by Brian Harris, a man who along with most the of contributors 

he recruited, is held in equally high esteem. Here Brian joins us for a two part interview about all things 

connected with his angling life. 

Podcast Interview 172: Carl McCormack, Coarse Angling Coach: Recorded in 2014. Once seen 

as something you might consider on say a foreign holiday, these days, more than ever before, the 

services of coarse angling coaches are being sought by youngsters, beginners, and people returning to 

fishing after a long break. Satisfying that demand are people like Carl McCormack, who besides helping 

his customers, has also coached his twelve year old son Callum to gold in the junior national 

championships. 

Podcast Interview 173: Steve Souter, Scottish Boat Match Champion: Recorded in 2014. Steve 

Souter has had, and continues to have a glittering international career fishing for Scotland, where he 

has won, often on multiple occasions, all that has been put in front of him. But being so successful is 

no accident, as he explains, along with his thoughts on a range of other topics. 

Podcast Interview 174: Neil Farnworth, CAST: Recorded in 2014. CAST North west is a Lancashire 

based charitable organisation set up and operated by Neil Farnworth with the aim of bringing disaffected 

youngsters into education and training by using angling as a primary tool for grabbing their 

interest. 

Podcast Interview 175: Terry Moseley, Disabled Angling Part 1: Recorded in 2014. Disabled in a 

sports accident while serving with the parachute regiment, Terry Moseley has almost singled handedly 

dragged the provision of access for disabled anglers kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He's 

also won his share of national and international medals in the process. 

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Podcast Interview 176: Terry Moseley, Disabled Angling Part 2: Recorded in 2014. Disabled in a 

sports accident while serving with the parachute regiment, Terry Moseley has almost singled handedly 

dragged the provision of access for disabled anglers kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He's 

also won his share of national and international medals in the process. 

Podcast Interview 177: Dave Taylor, Off The Shelf: Recorded in 2014. With the writing on the wall 

for distant water trawling, back in the 1970's, the Whitefish Authority financed a number of 

experimental trawling trips along the edge of the continental slope looking for new fish species to eat. 

The last of those trips was made by the Fleetwood trawler 'Jacinta'. On that trip was Dave Taylor who 

talks about the experience. 

Podcast Interview 178: Mike Thrussell, Angling Journalist: Recorded in 2014. Ever since the 

1970's, Mike Thrussell has made a wide range of contributions to sea angling through magazine articles, 

books, TV, radio, and as an angling tackle consultant, and as such, he has had a say in the success of a 

lot of other anglers along the way. And being of that generation, he is also fortunate to have mixed with 

several of the sea angling greats of the past - something he reflects on here. 

Podcast Interview 179: Dr. Malcolm Greenhalge, Life Story: Recorded in 2014. Dr. Malcolm 

Greenhalge is one of the most respected names on the game angling circuit, with particular emphasis 

on wild running water fishing. Here he talks about his early formative years and expresses a wide range 

of views in a manner best described as a real down to earth no nonsense reality check. 

Podcast Interview 180: Dr. Malcolm Greenhalge, Fly Fishing Characters: Recorded in 2014. 

Behind the names accompanying books and articles in the world of angling are a range of characters 

which the reading public by and large get to know very little about. Here Dr. Malcolm Greenhalge 

enlightens us on a few of those he has come across on the game angling scene. 

Podcast Interview 181: Paul Kilpatrick, Whitby: Recorded in 2014. After a dip in fortunes during 

the late 1990's, offshore boat angling at Whitby is right up there again with the best. But tactically 

speaking, it now bears absolutely no resemblance to what went before. Gone are the jiggers and muppets 

replaced now by shads, bait, and uptide fishing, pioneered for the most part by 'Sea Otter 2' skipper Paul 

Kilpatrick. 

Podcast Interview 182: Tony Kirrage, Tony's Tackle Part 1: Recorded in 2014. Tony Kirrage of 

Tony's Tackle in Eastbourne has represented England on both the carp and the saltwater shore angling 

scene. He has also won the carp world championships. Here he talks openly about all aspects of his 

angling and business including almost going to the wall with the shop. 

Podcast Interview 183: Tony Kirrage, Tony's Tackle Part 2: Recorded in 2014. Tony Kirrage of 

Tony's Tackle in Eastbourne has represented England on both the carp and the saltwater shore angling 

scene. He has also won the carp world championships. Here he talks openly about all aspects of his 

angling and business including almost going to the wall with the shop. 

Podcast Interview 184: David Kent National Federation of Anglers & Angling Trust: Recorded 

in 2014. The National Federation of Anglers governed coarse angling, and match angling in particular, 

for just over one hundred years. Here ex-NFA Vice Chairman David Kent looks at the history of the 

NFA and its new role within the Angling Trust. 

Podcast Interview 185: Warren Harrison, World record Carp Haul: Recorded in 2014. In 

September 2014, a trip by Manchester Carp angler Warren Harrison set the media on fire. Two carp 

topping ninety pounds apiece, plus others in the seventies and eighties as part of a 2.5 ton haul is the 

stuff of carp angling dreams, as Warren himself explains here. 

Podcast Interview 186: Jason Owen, Charter Boat Outboards: Recorded in 2014. Recent times 

have seen an increasing degree of interest amongst charter boat operators in switching from inboard 

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diesel power to large petrol driven outboard engines. Here, Jason Owen from Pwllheli discusses the 

pro's and con's of making the switch, and explores some of the new opportunities this should open up 

for him and his customers. 

Podcast Interview 187: Mark Bowler, Fly Fishing & Fly Tying Magazine: Recorded in 2014. Mark 

Bowler, editor of the prestigious Fly Fishing & Fly Tying, talks about his amazing rise to owner-editor 

of the magazine after initial rejections and no formal journalistic training. 

Podcast Interview 188: Bob Fitchie, Irish Tuna: Recorded in 2014. Around the turn of the century, 

the west and north coast of Ireland was treated to a short lived run of huge blue fin tuna with fish caught 

approaching a thousand pounds. Here Bob Fitchie recounts his memories of one such a trip. 

Podcast Interview 189: Wendy Patchett, England Ladies Fly Fishing Team Captain: Recorded in 

2014. Ex-England team captain and multi-medal winning fly angler Wendy Patchett talks about her life 

in competition fly fishing, offering a range of tips to other up and coming lady anglers. 

Podcast Interview 190: Dr. Mike Ladle, Science & Bass: Recorded in 2014. Besides being a 

zoologist and fishery scientist, Dr. Mike Ladle is an acknowledged expert in the art of lure and fly 

fishing for bass and mullet, though other techniques are also discussed. 

Podcast Interview 191: Chris Boagey, FRV Scotia: Recorded in 2014. Chris Boagey is deck boss 

aboard the Scottish fisheries research vessel Scotia. Here we discuss a range of research topics which 

will be of interest to sea anglers across the UK. 

Podcast Interview 192: Dave Steuart, Coarse Fishing Legend Part 1: Recorded in 2014. Brian 

Harris, the renowned editor of the still highly regarded but now sadly no longer with us Angling 

Magazine, has described Hampshire angler Dave Steuart as the best all-rounder this country has ever 

produced. Here in part 1 of a 2 part interview looking at all aspects of his angling life, we explore Dave 

Steuart's coarse fishing credentials. 

Podcast Interview 193: Dave Steuart, Coarse Fishing Legend Part 2: Recorded in 2014. Brian 

Harris, the renowned editor of the still highly regarded but now sadly no longer with us Angling 

Magazine, has described Hampshire angler Dave Steuart as the best all-rounder this country has ever 

produced. Here in part 1 of a 2 part interview looking at all aspects of his angling life, we explore Dave 

Steuart's coarse fishing credentials. 

Podcast Interview 194: Dave Steuart, Discusses Kay Steuart: Recorded in 2014. Brian Harris, the 

renowned editor of the still highly regarded but now sadly no longer with us Angling Magazine, has 

described Hampshire angler Dave Steuart as the best all-rounder this country has ever produced. In 

addition to that, Dave's late wife Kay who he talks about here was widely regarded as the best female 

all-rounder the UK has ever produced. 

Podcast Interview 195: Tim Harrison, Welsh Bass guide: Recorded in 2014. Full time New Quay 

bass guide Tim Harrison takes a look at bass population numbers, bass tactics, and his own pathway 

from leaving school without qualifications to heading up the Environment Agency's fishery department 

in Wales, which he then walked away from to concentrate on fishing for bass. 

Podcast Interview 196: Chris Clark, Top England Shore Angler: Recorded in 2014. Chris Clark is 

in numerical terms the biggest international medal winner ever representing England on the shore 

angling scene, but rates his best win as one particular bronze after a farming accident threatened to leave 

him wheelchair bound. 

Podcast Interview 197: Keith Linsell, Angling Encounters: Recorded in 2014. Back in the 1960's 

and 70's, angling journalists rarely carried cameras, and magazine illustrations were mainly line 

drawings or artwork. Heavily involved at that time was artist and angler Keith Linsell who as part of 

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his job had to fish with many of the names we now regard as legends today. Here Keith reflects on a 

few of the those big names. 

Podcast Interview 198: Keith Linsell, Angling Artist: Recorded in 2014. Back in the 1960's and 

70's, angling journalists rarely carried cameras, and magazine illustrations were mainly line drawings 

or artwork. Heavily involved at that time was artist and angler Keith Linsell who as part of his job had 

to fish with many of the names we now regard as legends today. Here Keith reflects on his artwork, his 

fishing, and the future. 

Podcast Interview 199: Brian Crawford: Power Generation. Recorded in 2014. As a race of people 

we need energy. That can come in many forms including fossil fuel burning, nuclear, and natural green 

energy. Unfortunately, each is not without its potential problems to aquatic environments. Physics 

teacher and IFCA member Brian Crawford has studied the implications of each and gives his verdict 

here. 

Podcast Interview 200: John Quinlan: Irish Bass. Recorded in 2015. For years the Irish have lead 

the way in bass conservation with bag limits, size limits, and recreational only fishing. Bass guide John 

Quinlan discusses the politics and its implications on the Irish bass fishing scene. 

Podcast Interview 201: Mike Thrussell Jr.: WSF. Recorded in 2015. The availability of top notch 

up to the minute angling information has come a long way since the introduction of the Internet. 

Arguably the biggest player in all of this has been the website World Sea Fishing, or WSF. Here its 

creator and MD Mike Thrussell Jr. talks about the concept, history and future of WSF. 

Podcast Interview 202: Steve Yeomans: Winter Trout. Recorded in 2016. Contrary to widely held 

opinion, Rainbow Trout are actually a cold water species, seasonally better suited to the spring autumn 

and winter months. Fly fishing school instructor Steve Yeomans explains. 

Podcast Interview 203: Mark Bowler: Sea Trout. Recorded in 2014. Sea Trout numbers in systems 

draining to Scotland's west coast have slumped dramatically over recent years. Here Fly Fishing and 

Fly Tying editor Mark Bowler discusses the implications, and arguably the main reason behind the 

problem. 

Podcast Interview 204: Andy Copeland: LRF Matches. Recorded in 2016. Light Rock Fishing or 

LRF combines species hunting with light tackle fishing. Here LRF match angler Andy Copeland 

explains the tactics and rewards around his native north east coast. 

Podcast Interview 205: Alastair Wilson: Big Fish Small Boat. Recorded in 2016. For most people, 

big fish in small trailed boats means at best Tope and Conger, and more likely Huss or Rays. Not over 

on the Irish small boat scene. Here Alastair Wilson discusses encounters with Blue Sharks, Porbeagles, 

Common Skate and Blue Fin Tuna aboard his Warrior 165. 

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PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS & COPY RIGHT 

Amazonian freshwater Stingray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Thornback eye and spiracles: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pores – ampullae of lorenzini: Photo Phill Williams. 

Nictitating membrane: Photo Phill Williams. 

Viable Ray or Dogfish egg capsules: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ray about to deposit egg capsule: Photo Phill Williams. 

Aborted Spurdog pup: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tope supported in weighing sling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Female Ray no claspers: Photo Phill Williams 

Male Ray no claspers: Photo Phill Williams 

Andy Griffith Mako Shark: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Mako Shark dentistry: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Andy Griffith Porbeagle Shark: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Graeme Pullen small Porbeagle: Photo Phill Williams. 

Porbeagle at the boat: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jack Shine shore caught Porbeagle: Archive sources 

Porbeagle teeth: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rob Rennie & Andy Turrell Welsh Thresher: Photo Rob Rennie. 

Mike Pullen Irish Blue Shark: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Mincing rubby dubby: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blue Shark teeth: Photo Phill Williams. 

Wayne Comben dinghy Blue Shark: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Six Gilled Shark: Photo Phill Williams. 

El Hierro Six Gill at boat: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Mark Ward 71 pound Norfolk Tope: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tagged Tope SSACN: Photo Phill Williams. 

Assorted Tope bait cuts: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Hawkeswood 'Onyermarks' Tope: Photo Phill Williams. 

Lifting Tope on-board: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rubby dubby: Photo Phill Williams. 

Smoothhoounds with and without spots: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dr. Ed Farrell Smoothhound: Photo Ed Farrell. 

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Smoothhound at surface: Photo Phill Williams. 

Starry Smoothhound: Photo Phill Williams. 

Smoothhound on crab: Photo Phill Williams. 

Stuart Cresswell 17 pound Spurdog Loch Sunart: Photo SSACN. 

Spurdog spur: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ralph Stevenson Spurdog Holyhead: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bull huss and LSD nasal flaps: Photo Phill Williams. 

Squid – mackerel cocktail: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Blackpool: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bull huss and LSD fin layout and markings: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams LSD: Photo Phill Williams. 

Unusual spot markings: Photo Phill Williams. 

Andy Griffith Black Mouthed Dogfish: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Dawn Williams 55 pound Monkfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Fenit 1986: Photo Phill Williams. 

Large skate Lochaline: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dr. Dietrich Burkel and Ian Burrett Crinan: Photo Phill Williams. 

Keith Armishaw Crinan PB Skate: Photo Keith Armishaw. 

Using skate weight estimation chart: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ross Johnson Skate from the shore: Photo Ross Johnson. 

Skate kebab: Photo Phill Williams. 

Double gaffing large skate: Photo Phill Williams. 

Brian Douglas White Skate Fenit 1986: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jonathan Gannon & Mary Gavin Hughes at Westport: Photo Mary Gavin Hughes 

Thornback with Cuckoo Ray patterning: Photo Phill Williams. 

Typical Thornback Ray patterning: Photo Phill Williams. 

Kept component of Fleetwood record catch: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Morecambe: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine River Mersey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Safe hand gripping points: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Williams Small Eyed Ray Fenit: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Fenit: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blonde Ray markings: Photo Phill Williams. 

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Andy Griffith Blonde Ray: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Spotted Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Keith Philbin Spotted Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Undulate Ray, Weymouth: Photo Colin Penny. 

Small Undulate Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Cuckoo Ray: Photo Michael McVeigh. 

Sandy Ray: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Sandy Ray 1970's: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Stingray sting: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Williams Solent Stingray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Steve Perry shore Stingray: Photo Steve Perry. 

Small Eagle Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Electric Ray record 96.1.0: Photo Mike Millman. 

Marbled Electric Ray: Photo Carl Larkin. 

The sight all anglers love to see: Photo Phill Williams. 

Les Moncreiff: Illustration by Eddie Weitzel 

News paper clip of ‘The Trio’: Archive sources. 

Garth Haslam Rossall Cod to 38 pounds: Photo Phill Williams. 

New years day Rossall 1982: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ken Robinson Scottish shore record Cod: Photo Ken Robinson. 

Launching New Brighton beach River Mersey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bob Jones Mersey Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

Super grip lead with 8 wires: Photo Phill Williams. 

Paul Kilpatrick Whitby: Photo Phill Williams. 

Whitby Cod: Photo Paul Kilpatrick. 

Cod ripper Hartlepool: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Burrett Pollack: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pollack safely in the landing net: Photo Phill Williams. 

Allan Everington Pollack on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams typical reef Pollack: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Lewis Coalfish: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Coalfish top, Pollack below: Photo Mike Millman. 

Haddock markings: Photo Phill Williams. 

574

Dave Devine Haddock trio: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Haddock brace Kylesku: Photo Phill Williams. 

Whiting: Photo Phill Williams. 

Charlie Pitchers Mersey Whiting: Photo Phill Williams. 

Whiting fishing Blackpool north pier jetty: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tony Parry paternoster full house: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blue Whiting Scillies: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pouting and Poor Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

Poor Cod with scales on hand: Photo Phill Williams. 

Hake 10 lbs 8 oz: Photo Mike Millman. 

Hake: Photo Sean Palmer. 

Dave Lumley ‘Famous’ Hartlepool Ling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Open ground Ling fish Hartlepool: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mac McAllister Whitby Ling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Don Mathews Norway Torsk: Photo Phill Williams. 

Greater Forkbeard: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tadpole Fish: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Andy Copeland Three Bearded Rockling: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Four Beared Rockling: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Five Bearded Rockling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Shore Rockling: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Ambi-coloured Flatfish. Note hook above eye: Photo Phill Williams. 

Left and right handed Flounders: Photo Phill Williams. 

Plaice: Photo Phill Williams. 

Plaice with bling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Andy Bradbury and Bob Fitchie Fleetwood: Photo Phill Williams. 

Charlie Pitchers and Dave Devine Cleveleys Plaice: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jon Patten 7½ pound Plaice: Photo Jon Patten. 

Charlie Pitchers Fleetwood Plaice: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Dabs: Photo Phill Williams. 

Steve Quinn Mersey Dab brace: Photo Phill Williams. 

Flounder: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Arnside Flounders: Photo Phill Williams. 

575

Charlie Pitchers two double hits: Photo Phill Williams. 

John Greenfield & Mick Duff Mersey Flounders: Photo Phill Williams. 

Lemon sole: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Witch: Photo Phill Williams. 

Large eyes and tiny mouth: Photo Phill Williams. 

John Wilson Norway Halibut: Photo Phill Williams. 

Barry Kemper Whitby Halibut 53 pounds: Photo Paul Kilpatrick. 

Small but a Halibut none the less: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dab top, Long Rough Dab below: Photo Phill Williams. 

Turbot: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jon Patten Shambles Turbot: Photo Jon Patten. 

Watch leads: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine Caernarfon Turbot: Photo Phill Williams. 

Magilligan Strand Northern Ireland: Photo Phill Williams. 

Brill: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dougal Lane Guernsey: Photo Dougal Lane. 

Phill Williams PB Jersey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Megrim: Photo Phill Williams. 

Megrim Downings, Ireland: Photo Michael McVeigh. 

Common Topknot: Photo Kev McKie. 

Sole: Photo Jon Patten. 

Dan Burrows Fleetwood: Photo Andy Bradbury. 

Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mike Turner tagged Bass Walney Island: Photo Phill Williams. 

Four double figure Bass Guernsey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Charlie Pitchers Rossall Bass 8 lbs 2 oz: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mick Duff Mersey Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Comber: Photo Phill Williams. 

Wreckfish or Stone Bass: Photo World Sea Fishing. 

Dusky Perch Fuerteventura: Photo Aram Toholakian. 

Thick Lipped Grey Mullet: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Dave Lewis Thick Lipped Grey Mullet: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Guernsey surf Mullet: Photo Phill Williams. 

576

Gibraltar harbour: Photo Phill Williams. 

Greg Whitehead 7 pound plus Thin Lip Grey Mullet: Photo Greg Whitehead. 

Ollie Stenning 8.7.4 Thin Lip record: Photo Greg Whitehead. 

Thin Lip on baited spinner: Photo Phill Williams 

Dawn Williams with one of the record claims: Photo Phill Williams. 

Golden Grey Mullet: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Red Mullet: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blue Fin Tuna, Downings, Ireland. Photo Michael McVeigh. 

John Hedley Lewis 852 pound tunny: Photo Bill Pashby. 

Bill Pashby Tunny club HQ 2010: Photo Phill Williams. 

Andy Giffith release Milford Haven: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Mike Steer Millford Haven Blue Fin: Photo Graham Bevan. 

Alan Pascoe Big Eyed Tuna 66.12.0. Photo Mike Millman. 

Andy Griffith Albacore: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Aram Taholakian, Pelamid: Photo Aram Taholakian. 

Mackerel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Brace of jumbo Mackerel: Photo Andy Bradbury. 

Traditional style feathers: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mark Kearnarek Chub Mackerel: Photo Mike Millman. 

Scad: Photo Andy Bradbury. 

Scad coming aboard: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Dave Devine Greater Amberjack: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen Almaco Jack, Ascension: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jon Patten Blue Runner, Florida: Photo Jon Patten. 

Pilot Fish: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Black Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams Pwllheli Black Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Aberystwyth Black Bream haul 1970's: Photo Phill Williams. 

Geoff Thomas Black Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sabiki lures: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen Sussex Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Red bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Irish Red Bream: Photo Michael McVeigh. 

577

Phill Williams Looe 1970's: Photo Phill Williams. 

Gilthead Bream: Photo World Sea Fishing. 

Mike Thrussell Gilthead Bream: Photo World Sea Fishing. 

Phill Williams Couches Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bogue: Photo Adam Kirkby. 

Pandora Bream: Photo Dave Lewis. 

White Bream Gibraltar: Photo Phill Williams. 

Axillary bream: Photo Colin Penny. 

Saddled Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rays Bream: Photo Aram Toholakian. 

Ballan Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave lewis Ballan Wrasse, Oxwich Bay: Photo Phill Williams. 

Jonathan Law Holyhead Ballan Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Scottish record Ballan Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Joe Gomez Guernsey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Male & female Cuckoo Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Male and Female Cuckoo Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Corkwing Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Goldsinny Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rock Cook Wrasse: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Tonny Kenna record Scale Rayed Wrasse. Photo Mike Millman. 

Baillons Wrasse: Photo Colin Penny. 

Tub Gurnard: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tub Gurnard with ocellus markings: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Phill Williams Tubs Loch Ryan 1972: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tub Gurnard above, Red Gurnard below: Photo Phill Williams. 

Grey gurnard: Photo Phill Williams. 

Streaked Gurnard: Photo Sean McSeveney. 

Garfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Garfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Skipper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Herring: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pilchard: Photo Colin Penny. 

578

Anchovy: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Shad on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Fly fishing for shad, River Monnow: Photo Phill Williams. 

Allis Shad below, Twaite Shad above: Photo Phill Williams. 

Black Goby: Photo Adam Kirkby. 

Common Goby: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rock Goby: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sand Goby: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Giant Goby: Photo Steve Perry. 

Leopard Spotted Goby: Photo Adam Kirkby. 

Tompot Blenny: Photo Colin Penny. 

Shanny: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Butterfly Blenny: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Black Faced Blenny: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Yarrells Blenny: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Viviparous Blenny: Photo Andy Copeland. 

Catfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams, Hartlepool 1972: Photo Phill Williams. 

Conger Eel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Andrew Alsop ton up Conger: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Phill Williams Firth of Lorne: Photo Phill Williams. 

Paul Maris 91 pounds 14 ounces: Photo Paul Maris. 

Jon Patten shore Conger: Photo Jon Patten. 

Angler fish feeding at the surface Lerwick: Photo Phill Williams. 

Legendary JJ McVicar Plymouth: Photo Mike Millman. 

Angler Fish: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Opah 82 pounds taken on shark bait out from Mevagissey, Cornwall. Photo Mike Millman. 

Sunfish Weymouth: Photo Colin Penny. 

Trigger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Paul Bennett Heysham Trigger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Lewis Oxwich Bay Trigger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Puffer Fish: Photo Aram Toholakian. 

Lumpsucker: Photo Phill Williams. 

579

Phill Williams Lumpsucker, Iceland: Photo Phill Williams. 

John Dory: Photo World Sea Fishing. 

Mike Thrussell John Dory: Photo World Sea Fishing. 

Boar Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams, Norway: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sean Palmer Bluemouth Dingle: Photo Sean Palmer. 

Greater Weever: Photo Phill Williams. 

Lesser Weever: Photo Phill Williams. 

Short Spined Sea Scorpion: Photo Phill Williams. 

Long Spined Sea Scorpion: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blackfish: Photo Aram Toholakian. 

Cornish Blackfish: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Barracudina: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Butterfish: Photo Jonathan Law. 

Connemara Sucker: Photo Jonathan Law. 

Male Dragonet: Photo Tony Parry. 

Female Dragonet: Photo Phill Williams. 

Great Pipefish: Photo Dean Lodge. 

Snake Pipefish: Illustration Phill Williams. 

Pogge: Photo Phill Williams. 

Red Band Fish: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Greater Sandeel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Fifteen Spined Stickleback: Photo Jonathan Law. 

Argentine: Photo Phill Williams. 

Smelt: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sand Smelt: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Coho salmon: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Carp: Photo Mike Winrow. 

Phill Williams Hampshire Carp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mike Winrow 25.14.0 Carp: Photo Mike Winrow. 

Warren Harrison 87 pound Carp: Photo Warren Harrison. 

Lundy Island cliff top pond: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen Lundy Carp: Photo Phill Williams. 

580

Grass Carp: Photo Bill Rushmer. 

Virginia Rushmer Grass Carp: Photo Bill Rushmer, 

Bill Rushmer Crucian Carp: Photo Bill Rushmer. 

Lundy Island Prussian Carp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Typical wild Goldfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Roach: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mark Everard Roach and Rudd: Photo Mark Everard. 

Shawn Kittridge Rudd: Photo Shawn Kittridge. 

Bronze Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Duncan Charman brace of 3 pound plus Silver Bream: Photo Duncan Charman. 

Tench: Photo Mike Winrow. 

Mike Winrow 11½ pound Tench: Photo Mike Winrow. 

Bill Rushmer, Golden Orfe: Photo Bill Rushmer. 

Ide: Photo Phill Williams. 

Barbel: Photo Mark Everard. 

Jack Bingham Ribble Barbel: Photo John Wilkinson. 

Mike Winrow 12.1.0 Ribble Barbel: Photo Mike Winrow. 

Graeme Pullen 6.4.0 Chub River Kennet: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Dace: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bitterling: Photo Richard Torrens. 

Shawn Kittridge Gudgeon: Photo Shawn Kittridge. 

Lee Armishaw Bleak: Photo Keith Armishaw. 

Perch: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bob Fitchie Bassenthwaite: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Bassenthwaite: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ruffe: Photo Mark Everard. 

Zander: Photo Phill Williams. 

Steve Loades Middle Level: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams small zander: Photo Phill Williams. 

Alex Wilkie Pike on fly: Photo Alex Wilkie. 

Jack Pike on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Coniston Pike PB at 20.2 0: Photo Phill Williams. 

Releasing Coniston Pike: Photo Phill Williams. 

581

Mark Everard 4lb 6 oz Silver Eel: Photo Mark Everard. 

Charlie Pitchers Arnside: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mick Duff Silver upper Mersey: Photo Phill Williams. 

Wels Catfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Terry Pilling Anglers Paradise: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen 122 pounder River Ebro: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

American Bullhead Catfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Stone Loach: Photo Mark Everard. 

Bullhead: Photo Phill Williams. 

Minnow: Photo Phill Williams. 

Three Spined Stickleback: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pumpkinseed: Photo Mark Everard. 

Christian Bruckmer 22 pound Salmon taken deep trolling: Photo Seven Hille. 

Baltic Salmon and Sea Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Alex Wilkie Humpback Salmon: Photo Alex Wilkie. 

Brown Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Stuart Barrett Dever Springs: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Anthony James wild Brownie, Red Tarn: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Gaskell Brown Trout Draycote: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sven Hille Baltic Sea Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tails - Salmon above and Sea Trout below: Photo Phill Williams. 

James Dawber Sutton Springs Rainbow: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Dark early season diploid Rainbow Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Diploid female Rainbow Trout venting eggs: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams nocturnal Rainbows: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Power Bait haul: Photo Phill Williams. 

Alex Wilkie Rainbow Trout: Photo Alex Wilkie. 

American Brook Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bob Williams Brook Trout brace: Photo Phill Williams. 

Grayling: Photo Alex Wilkie. 

Robin Howard Grayling: Photo fishyrob.co.uk. 

Arctic Char: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Coniston Char: Photo Phill Williams. 

582

Char in breeding livery: Photo Phill Williams. 

Traditional Char trolling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Char catch on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Schelly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bob Fitchie Schelly brace Red Tarn: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Williams first ever Schelly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Wally Wainwright Ullswater record: Photo Phill Williams. 

America: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Gaskell 22 pound Striped Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Gaskell Albacore on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams 17 pound Striper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Gaskell Bluefish Hardings Beach: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Red Drum at the net: Photo Phill Williams. 

Blue crab for bait: Photo Phill Williams. 

Frank Carbone Peacock Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Peacock Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Midas Cichlid: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams Peacock Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Cape Coral canal: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine playing a Nurse Shark: Photo Phill Williams. 

John Devine Speckled Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Spanish Mackerel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Right, that’s the bait ready: Photo Phill Williams. 

Charlie Holden Amberjack: Photo Phill Williams. 

Paul Bennett Barracuda Alligator Light: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Moray Eel from reef: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dorado: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Williams playing Bonito: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tarpon coming to the boat: Photo Phill Williams. 

Surface water pond: Photo Phill Williams. 

Paul Bennett Crevalle Jack: Photo Phill Williams. 

Offshore Red Snapper fishing: Photo Phill Williams. 

Stick Marsh: Photo Phill Williams. 

583

Typical Stick Marsh Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Alligator Garfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Virginia Beach: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine Trigger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams brace of Croakers: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Rudee Inlet Flounder: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen Black Jack on popper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine 310 pound Yellow FinTuna: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams 90 pound Wahoo: Photo Phill Williams. 

Yellow Fin Tuna at the surface: Photo Phill Williams. 

Birds working the bait fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Kev McKie shore caught Tuna: Photo Phill Williams. 

Graeme Pullen Rainbow Runner from the beach: Photo Phill Williams. 

Inshore and creek fishing boat Cairns: Photo Phill Williams. 

Trevally, Barrier Reef: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams into yet another big a fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Snapper and Coral Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

Grouper and Coral Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

The Danube at Ruse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pavel Pavnov with our first and biggest Asp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Andrey Pavanov releasing small Asp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Glacial flour discolouration: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine bending in to a Sturgeon: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine small Sturgeon: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams 107 pounder – not bad for a fitst fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Squaw Fish – soon to become bait: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams small Sturgeon: Photo Phill Williams. 

Eh Hierro - constantly windy and choppy: Photo Phill Williams. 

Small Six Gill at the boat: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine Escolar: Photo Phill Williams. 

Small inshore Barracuda: Photo Phill Williams. 

Aram Taholakian Seven Gilled Shark: Photo Aram Toholakian. 

Moray Eels Gran Canaria: Photo Phill Williams. 

584

Danny Cove 200 pound Stingray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine Sierra Mackerel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Embalse de Chira: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Canaries Carp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Fishing the bridge: Photo Phill Williams. 

John Adams Red Snapper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams reef Barracuda: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams brace of Dorado: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dress to blend in: PW small Tiger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Chris Barnard Tiger Fish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine 71 pound Nile Perch: Photo Phill Williams. 

Denton Creek fishing centre: Photo Phill Williams. 

Gordon Thornes Red Snapper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Gordon with ‘Sea Snake’: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mr. & Mrs Williamd actual wedding photograph: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sven Hille Baltic Salmon brace: Photo Phill Williams. 

Inshore Baltic Pike: Photo Seven Hille. 

Inshore Baltic Cod: Photo Seven Hille. 

Ulrich Schneider Salmon to 42 pounds: Photo Phill Williams. 

Tony Triay Couches Bream: Photo Phill Williams. 

Brace of Mullet: Photo Phill Williams. 

Moray damage: Photo Phill Williams. 

Haddock, Akranes: Photo Phill Williams. 

The actual Cod war warp cutting gear: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Keflavik Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine Keflavik Cod brace: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams bringing a Grouper aboard: Photo Phill Williams. 

Emperor Snapper: Photo Phill Williams. 

Assorted Reef fishes: Photo Phill Williams. 

Our primary target - Sailfish: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Marlin are also very popular: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Dave Lewis huge GT: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Phill Williams Butterfly Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

585

Disgorging Butterfly Ray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Giant Snakehead: Photo Phill Williams. 

Male Turkish Wrasse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Securing large Hammerhead: Photo Phill Williams. 

Fishing theinner reef: Photo Phill Williams. 

Panga with Striped Marlin: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Baby Roosterfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Gordon Thornes big Needlefish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Puerto Vallarta Jacks: Photo Phill Williams. 

Bronze Whaler Shark Namibia: Photo Phill Williams. 

Catching bait – yes, honestly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Setting up the rubby dubby slick: Photo Phill Williams. 

Piling on the pressure – from both ends: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Bronze Whaler on UK surf gear: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams Barrachouta: Photo Phill Williams. 

Cod haul Pendlar: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Lewis decent Norway Cod: Photo Phill Williams. 

Cod at 44 and 45 pounds: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams battling a Pacu: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams and Marcel Gondonneau Frank with a nice double figure Pacu: Photo Phill Williams. 

Electric Eel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Pacu: Photo Phill Williams. 

Marcel with a Payara: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn and Phill Williams Kingfish Sodwana: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dawn Williams small Tigerfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

River Ebro Tortosa: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Mekong Catfish, Bungsamran: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Barramundi on fly Boon Mar: Photo Phill Williams. 

Two rods, two Amazonian Red Tailed Cats first throw: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Giant Featherback: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Siamese Carp Jurassic Lake: Photo Phill Williams. 

Assorted small Breams: Photo Phill Williams. 

Shrimp boat Morecambe: Photo Phill Williams. 

586

My angling hero & mentor, Davy Agnew: Photo Phill Williams. 

Another of my Scottish influences, Dr. Dietrich Burkel: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ian Burrett - In boat weight estimation: Photo Phill Williams. 

Separate list for sporting species??: Photo Phill Williams. 

UK Smoothhound – one species or two??: Photo Phill Williams. 

Why separate mini species records: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ferox – a separate species or not: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Spotted Ray record 1974: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ally Gowans fly fishing for Pollack Luce Bay: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pollack taken on fly: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pollack and Coalfish patterns: Photo Phill Williams. 

Coalfish action Cushendall, Northern Ireland: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams IGFA tippet recordF: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dever Springs Rainbows: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Avington: Photo Phill Williams. 

Malcolm Greenhalge Ferox Trout: Photo Phill Williams. 

Char dead-bait rigged to troll: Photo Phill Williams. 

Ferox Trout: Photo Ron Greer & Alastair Thorne. 

Phill Williams and Ron Greer Ferox Trout Loch Rannoch: Photo Phill Williams. 

Magic – double figure Bass: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Bass 13 pounds 2 ounces: Photo Phill Williams. 

Wels Catfish – now excluded from the British Record List: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Freshwater Stingray: Photo Phill Williams. 

Arapaima: Photo Phill Williams. 

Mekong Catfish: Photo Phill Williams. 

Siamese Carp: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams 155 pound White Sturgeon: Photo Phill Williams. 

Warren Harrison 90 pound Common Carp: Photo Warren Harrison. 

Dave Lewis Bronze Whaler Shark Namibia: Photo Phill Williams. 

Gully Shark liver and gills for bait: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams and Johan Burger 212 pound Bronze Whaler on UK surf outfit: Photo Phill Williams. 

QuoteL ‘I think we need a bigger boat’. Chief Brody, Jaws: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Alastair Wilson Blue Fin Tuna Warrior dinghy: Photo Alastair Wilson. 

587

Blue Shark 167 pounds aboard 'White Water' out from Milford Haven: Photo Andy Griffith. 

Phill Williams Boscastle, Porbeagle: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Devine self drive skate: Photo Phill Williams. 

Disgorging large skate: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dave Lewis 1120 pound Blue Marlin: Photo Dave Lewis. 

Whole Bonito for bait: Photo Phill Williams. 

Grander Six Gill at the boat: Photo Graeme Pullen. 

Phill Williams into a big Six Gill: Photo Phill Williams. 

Miguel with huge Six Gill at boat: Photo Phill Williams. 

Back in the 1970's the keep everything mentality was rife: Photo Phill Williams. 

‘Spot the ball’ echo sounder: Photo Phill Williams. 

Early digital sounder: Photo Phill Williams. 

The good old bad old days: Photo Phill Williams. 

Rusting rotting painted trailers: Photo Phill Williams. 

Big Cod, tiny Seagull outboard: Photo Phill Williams. 

Assorted fishing magazines: Photo Keith Armishaw. 

Picture from first ever digital article: Photo Phill Williams. 

Dinghy Fishing at Sea: Photo Phill Williams. 

Assorted digital recorders: Photo Phill Williams. 

Liverpool University awards ceremony: Photo Phill Williams. 

Fish farming: Photo Phill Williams. 

Deformed surviving Tope: Photo Phill Williams. 

Sewage fungus, stressed environment: Photo Phill Williams. 

Biologist kick sampling: Photo Phill Williams. 

Pollution related fish kill: Photo Phill Williams. 

Milk – one of the most potent organic pollutants there is: Photo Phill Williams. 

Electro-fishing for Sticklebacks: Photo Phill Williams. 

Three Spined Sticklebacks: Photo Phill Williams 

Farm run-off stressing the environment: Photo Phill Williams 

Over the millennia there will always be winners and losers: Photo Phill Williams. 

An Asteroid impact 66 million years ago saw the Dinosaurs and just about everything else off: Photo 

Phill Williams. 

About to sort the catch: Photo Phill Williams. 

588

The Lesser Spotted curse: Photo Phill Williams. 

Phill Williams Tuna and Wahoo: Photo Phill Williams. 

589

THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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