THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

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.
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