THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

You can also catch them on other rigs including baited feathers. But why would anybody who isn't fishmongering
want to be hauling up two or more fish at a time, each fighting against the other, thereby
cancelling out their individual sporting attributes.
One fish at a time using a landing net and quickly getting them back into the water is what's needed to
ensure their continued revival, and for my part, make some sort of recompense for what went on in the
past.
Associated audio interview numbers: 16 and 63.
BULL HUSS Scyliorhinus stellaris
Bucket List status – result
Picking out the dogfishes generally from
the rest of the sharks is easy enough.
Unfortunately, pinning exactly the right
name on the specimen in question is at
times something a number of anglers still
find problematic. Lesser spotted dogfish
are the other similar species responsible
here for this confusion.
Bull Huss & LSD nasal flaps
When you have a 'dog' in double figures,
you don't even need to think LSD. It's when
weights come is at under five pounds that
people seem to struggle. Time then for a
full LSD – bull huss comparison, starting
with colouration and markings, which are
sometimes helpful, but can also be very
variable, over-lapping, and therefore
confusing too.
Text book huss are generally sandy brown with large well spaced dark spots scattered over their back,
flanks, and upper fin surfaces. But in reality, not always. Over heavy kelpy ground for example the
spots can be smaller and denser giving an almost completely black upper body similar to that of an LSD
over the same terrain.
The archetypal LSD will also have a sandy brown base colouration, but with much smaller more tightly
packed spots which often form light and dark vertical bands along the length of the body.
The fool proof way of separating the two is to look at the positioning of the fins and at the nasal flaps
on the underside of the head close to the mouth. If the nasal flaps overlap the upper jaw and are joined,
one running on into the other, it's an LSD. If not and they are obviously individually separated and set
well up the snout away from the upper lip, then it's a bull huss.
As for the fins, in the LSD, the point at the back end of the anal fin lies directly under the base or start
of the first dorsal fin located above it, whereas with the bull huss, the rear point where the anal fin
actually joins to the body lines directly under the base or start of the first dorsal fin above it.
There was time when I looked upon bull huss as being almost as much of a nuisance as LSD's. It was
only the fact that there were fewer of them about that kept them from being treated with equal contempt.
Then one day while out fishing over Holyhead Deep for a magazine feature aboard Gethyn Owen's boat
'My Way', I had a 'road to Damascus moment'.
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