THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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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