THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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
Bucket List status – no result yet
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
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