THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

At that time there was actually a bigger record weight listed, which in a much needed purge of doubtful
inclusions was ditched shortly afterwards, by which stage I had no way of making a successful claim,
as there had previously been no need for me to gather in what would then be required as supportive
evidence.
The first mako shark in around forty years was taken off Milford Haven in 2013, and blue fin tuna have
not been recorded by anglers in the North Sea since the 1950's. What then are the odds I wonder of
catching one or other at any weight from the shore, let alone a specimen in excess of the stipulated forty
pounds qualifying threshold for consideration as a British shore record.
Any shore caught specimen of either species would be worthy of a place in the list. The tuna though,
which is edible, would present far less of a dilemma than the mako. Why would anyone want to kill a
mako then dispose of it. But if they didn't, even if it made the qualifying weight, it still wouldn't count.
That said, and I'm not sure to what extent the BRFC are aware of this fact, but not all the records they
have listed have complied with the letter of their laws anyway.
I know of one, a stingray, which was definitely weighed in the boat, and suspect that the current common
skate record may well have been also, as the boat which took it had a purpose built weighing gantry
fitted so that they could all go back, as indeed they all should.
Let's move on now to other potential wrongful inclusions such as the sunfish, anglerfish, and
smoothhound. Irish fishery scientists insist that sunfish don't intentionally feed on anglers baits, and as
such have both removed and barred the species from their list. Yet here in the UK we still record it. So
who is right and who is wrong?.
The same sort of scientific opinion question can again be asked with regard to the two smoothhound
species Mustellus mustellus and Mustellus asterias, the common and starry smoothhounds respectively.
Irish research scientist Dr. Ed Farrell
has shown through DNA analysis, that
in European waters, despite some
smoothhounds having spots while
others don't, both are the same species.
In short, so called common
smoothhound simply doesn't occur at
our latitude. Yet BRFC thinks
otherwise.
UK Smoothhounds – one species or two??
question as to which one holds the current record.
Scotland and Wales are currently
considering their position on this
dilemma, while the Irish now list just
the one species. Then there is the
subject of a second angler fish
species being discovered in our
corner of the world, begging the
On the subject of fish identification, there will be times when somebody authorised by the committee
in question will need to see certain fish species to be sure that they are what is being claimed, and this
goes for freshwater as well as saltwater, though in freshwater it should be far less of an ordeal to keep
something alive until the cavalry gets there.
Using the anglerfish as a worst case scenario, everyone knows what a generic anglerfish looks like, but
distinguishing Lophius piscatorius from Lophius budegassa requires an almost forensic investigation.
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