THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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
Bucket List status – result outside of home waters
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
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