THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

When they were present, it was quite literally a fish a drop. Then we wouldn't see them for days, or
even all on some of our visits. Aberystwyth harbour in West Wales has also produced them in the past.
A long narrow little fish that will struggle to exceed six inches in length, with a blunt face and quite
large mouth in relation to its overall size. Both dorsal fins are short and well separated, the first of which
starts just after the pelvic fins below it, with the second more or less directly over the anal fin.
Colouration however is a much more reliable identifier, it being green on the back and upper flanks and
silvery white below, separated by a narrow bright silvery line running the whole length of the fish from
its gill cover to its tail. Tiny black dots may also be found edging the scales around the head and back.
Almost identical to it is the very much rarer big scaled sand smelt Atherina boyeri which has a slightly
bigger head and eye, facts only of value when a direct comparison can be made between the pair.
Otherwise, it's a case of counting the scales in the lateral line between the base of the pectoral fin and
the tail, which in A.presbyter number fifty three to fifty seven, and in A. boyeri should be between forty
four and forty eight.
BIG SCALED SAND SMELT Atherina boyeri
Bucket List status – no result yet
Everything that has been said about the sand smelt Atherina presbyter above applies here, right down
to the basic identification features. Only a scale count along the lateral line from the base of the pectoral
fin to the tail can reliably be used to separate the two, it being fifty three to fifty seven in A. presbyter,
and forty four to forty eight in A. boyeri.
Both share the same love of low salinity harbours and docks. But, we are talking here of a species which
under normal circumstances shouldn't be found at out latitude, primarily because of our lower
temperatures, though with global warming, that may now be starting to change.
It seems that at the few isolated locations where the species is known, man-made factors may well be
coming to its aid in the form of artificial warming of the water due to certain industrial processes. These
locations include Cavendish Docks at Barrow-in-Furness, Swansea Dock, Pembroke Dock, and the
Leys at Aberthaw.
Just how it got to these locations in the first place is another matter, one suggestion being its sticky eggs
becoming attached to the hulls of boats, though more likely, it has made its own way into our home
waters in favourable years and found it possible to stay on and breed at specific locations.
COHO SALMON Oncorhynchus kisutch
Bucket List status – no result yet
Bucket list status not achieved, and in home waters probably never will be. Like the walleye in the
freshwater list, a on-off incident resulting from introductions coming here from across the Atlantic. In
fact, across the entire continent of the America's, as this is a Pacific species normally ranging from
California to Alaska, and from Japan to the former Soviet Union.
That said, when the current record was caught from the rocks at Petit Port on Guernsey back in 1977 at
the comparatively small weight of one and a half pounds, there were others caught of similar size in the
same area at the same time, suggesting some sort of escapee incident from a fish farm perhaps rearing
them for the table, probably somewhere in France just across the way from the Channel Islands.
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