THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

the hoof anaesthetic, as that was the only way they could keep him still for long enough to cut the
catfishes jaws free.
My Hartlepool fish was caught on lugworm bouncing along
the sea bed on the bottom hook of a triple snood dropper rig
designed to keep the baits from actually touching the bottom
and getting stuck in the rocks or weed and becoming lost.
Catfish supposedly don't eat fish. Certainly not regularly. Yet
surprisingly, quite a few are, or should I say were, taken on
pirks both baited and un-baited from many ports including
Bridlington, Whitby, Hartlepool, Amble, Burnmouth,
Berwick, Eyemouth, Arbroath and Stonehaven to name but a
few. Anywhere in fact along that stretch of the coast where
there is mixed hard ground.
It doesn't have to be excessively deep either, though in
fairness, most are taken from the boats. That said, they are (or
again were) also caught reasonably regularly from some of
the deeper rock marks, and from the longer stone piers they
have over that way, particularly as you progress further up
into Scotland, with the biggest recorded so far from the shore
weighing in at over twelve pounds coming from Stonehaven.
But unfortunately, not recently, as both commercial as well
as angling reports of the species slip ever further into decline.
Not surprisingly, there are no records listed for Ireland or
Wales.
Phill Williams, Hartlepool 1970’s
THE REMAINING FISH SPECIES
All the other home waters species which either appear as stand alone individuals, or are not worth
grouping together in family units such as the sea scorpions and weevers because of the low species
numbers or distant relationships involved.
CONGER EEL Conger conger
Bucket List status – result
The clue here is in the name. The conger is an eel that lives in the sea. Everyone knows what an eel
looks like, so what more is there to be said in terms of identification. Well, actually, some so called
freshwater or silver eels also choose to spend their entire lives in saltwater, and all eels when sexually
mature must return to the sea if they are to complete their life cycle.
On the basis of that, both for situations in which small eels are caught at sea, and for completeness, it's
probably best then that the finer points of species differentiation at least get a superficial airing.
We're talking long fish here, which besides having pectoral fins on either side of the body butted up to
the gill cover, has just one long single wrap around fin which trebles up as dorsal fin, anal fin, and tail.
Both species share this fin layout. What both species don't have are identical mouths, eyes, and dorsal
fin starting positions.
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