THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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
Bucket List status – no result yet
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.
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