THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

eam covered in a mosaic of heavy scales. The large head has its small eyes set well back, and
terminates in a comparatively small mouth with large guillotine like teeth top and bottom.
The gills are another very noticeable feature in that trigger fish don't have a conventional lift up gill
cover. Here it has been reduced down to a small slit just in front of each pectoral fin. The pelvic fins
are absent, and the outer most rays of the tail fin form elongate filaments.
Colouration can be quite variable, though is usually some shade of greyish or greenish brown with blue
bands and spots on the dorsal and anal fins.
Very much a fish of the English Channel, west country, and south west of Ireland, though one which
may well be spreading northwards as sea temperatures rise, with at least one specimen recorded washed
up dead on the shore of Scotland's Isle of Mull.
A bit of an enigma in that according to the literature, trigger fish are feeble swimmers, yet they are rated
by anglers in some quarters, and California in particular, as one of the best pound for pound fighting
fish in the sea, comprising some forty or so different species spread throughout the tropics and sub
tropics all around the world.
I've caught them along Mexico's Pacific coast, Florida's Atlantic coast, Ascension Island, and from the
west coast of India. More importantly, from UK waters too, where although they are still caught, so far
as being a regularly reported species in the way they once were, things seem to have gone a bit quiet
over recent years.
Whether that's down to a lack of fish or simply lack of interest is difficult to say, though I don't see
falling numbers as necessarily being the problem.
The reason why I say this is because I believe they have been in our home waters both for longer, and
at a greater density than many people realise, something I'm basing on one particular experience of mine
way back in the early 1980's before they became a widely reported species.
Nobody had, or for that matter still has so far as I am
aware, ever taken a trigger fish on rod and line off the
Lancashire Coast. But they are most certainly there, and
have been in some numbers for at least the past thirty
years in the vicinity of Heysham harbour near
Morecambe, where two nuclear power stations have their
cooling water uptake points, and where bubble screens
supposedly keep fish from being drawn up into the
system.
We know this doesn't deter fish through my work for the
Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority who are
constantly trying to get access to the plant following
disturbing reports of literally tons of fish across a huge
range of species being sucked up, filtered out, and
disposed of by the skip load, and repeatedly IFCA have
been refused on security grounds.
This dumping is known to go on from a number of
sources. I myself have spoken with Heysham workers
while out fishing who, un-aware of my IFCA position,
have given me chapter and verse. So something needs to
be done, not only at Heysham, but at all power stations
Paul Bennett, Heysham Trigger Fish
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