THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

A strikingly beautiful fish which even in the least well marked specimens will immediately grab your
attention. The kind of fish which if you don't know what it is, then you will almost certainly want to
find out.
Only one other home waters ray species in any way even slightly resembles it, and then only
superficially, that being the small eyed ray which is a species with pointed wing tips, whereas those of
the undulate are rounded. But of far greater importance are its markings and colouration.
A small eyed ray will be some shade of pale sandy grey with white spots and white lines which tend to
run parallel to the edges of the wings. Undulates on the other hand are usually a darker shade of brown,
though with the patterning they have laid over it, base colour is a secondary consideration.
This comprises a series of obviously darker wavy bands edged by small creamy white spots, with other
larger spots of the same colour also woven into the pattern. The underside is white with a darker edging.
When I first saw a picture of an undulate ray I fell in love with its incredible colouration and markings
to the point that I just had to catch one. At that time, the Channel Islands and the south west of Ireland,
in particular Tralee Bay, were the two stand-out venues producing them. Elsewhere they were rare in
the extreme, and remained so until they were given protection back in 2009, after which their recovery
has been little short of miraculous.
I've no doubt they were also being caught along the mid-section of the English Channel, and
occasionally in Cornish waters too. But the angling press kept pushing Tralee and the Channel Islands
into my face. Particularly Fenit. So when Brian Douglas and myself got the invite to trail my fifteen
foot Seahog across to explore Tralee Bay for Bord Failte, the undulate ray was placed very firmly at the
top of the must catch species list so far as I was concerned.
We were given other objectives too, including
monkfish, plus more general exploration. We also
fished from the huge concrete commercial jetty after
dark where we saw both undulates and small eyed rays
caught from the seaward side.
That being the case, time was set aside one day to take
the boat in close to the jetty, and give it a few hours
fishing monofilament flowing traces baited with quite
small mackerel strips.
By this stage, even at Fenit, undulate ray catches had
declined numerically, so it was very much a race
against time to grab that particular tick before it was
too late. Thankfully, at the first attempt, both of us
succeeded.
Granted, they were only small fish, probably similar in
size to the ones the shore lads had hauled up the night
before. But try as we may, both there and elsewhere
throughout Tralee Bay with suitable baits properly presented on the bottom, despite catching shed loads
of other ray species, we never saw another undulate.
Then, as with so many ray species throughout the 1990's on into the new century, this species too went
into sharp decline. Whether it was a more severe decline than the others, taking account of its smaller
and more localised population numbers, is impossible to say. But certainly a decline severe enough to
see it placed on the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) red list of threatened
species.
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