Fish
Species records built as anchors for the rest of the catalogue: what a fish is, how it behaves, what it eats, and what that means for anyone trying to catch or return one. Ranges here are biological — FishingHQ does not publish fishing locations.
A
African sharptooth catfish
A large air-breathing African catfish able to move overland between waters, widely farmed, and a major invasive outside its native range.
African tigerfish
A fast, silver, heavily toothed river predator of tropical Africa whose interlocking fangs are visible with its mouth shut — and one of the hardest fish in fresh water to hook.
Albacore
The long-finned tuna of temperate open ocean — smaller and cooler-water than its relatives, with pectoral fins so long they are the identification.Allis shad
The larger of the two European shads: a herring that runs up rivers to spawn, separated from twaite shad by a character you have to count rather than look at.
Arapaima
One of the largest freshwater fish in the world, an air-breathing Amazonian giant that must surface regularly and is managed through community quota systems.
Arctic char
The most northerly freshwater fish in the world, a cold-demanding char with brilliant orange-red spawning bellies and highly distinct landlocked populations.
Arctic grayling
A northern river salmonid with an enormous sail-like dorsal fin, feeding on drifting insects in cold clear water across Arctic North America and Siberia.
Asp
Europe's largest predatory cyprinid, a fast open-water hunter that smashes into baitfish shoals at the surface and is fished like a saltwater predator.Atlantic blue marlin
The largest Atlantic billfish, a fast blue-water predator now released almost universally by recreational anglers because of stock concerns.Atlantic bluefin tuna
A warm-blooded ocean-crossing predator reaching three metres and 680 kilograms, whose collapse and partial recovery is the most consequential fisheries story of the last fifty years.
Atlantic bonito
A small, fast, striped tuna relative that arrives on temperate coasts in shoals each year and is the most accessible member of the family to a shore angler.
Atlantic cod
A large, heavily-built demersal predator of the North Atlantic, and the species whose commercial history is the standard example of stock collapse.
Atlantic goliath grouper
An enormous, slow-growing reef grouper that was fished to collapse, is now protected across much of its range, and must be released without being lifted.
Atlantic halibut
The largest flatfish in the world, reaching over four metres, and a species whose commercial collapse made it one of the clearest cautionary tales in North Atlantic fisheries.Atlantic horse mackerel
Not a mackerel at all but a jack, armoured with a line of bony scutes, and one of the most abundant and least appreciated fish on European coasts.
Atlantic mackerel
A fast, schooling, obligate-swimming pelagic fish that arrives inshore in summer in enormous numbers, and the species most sea anglers catch first.
Atlantic salmon
An anadromous salmonid that migrates from its natal river to the North Atlantic and returns to spawn — and a species in serious, well-documented decline.
Atlantic tarpon
A huge, ancient, air-breathing fish of tropical Atlantic coasts that jumps repeatedly when hooked and is almost never eaten — fished purely for the encounter.Australasian snapper
The most important inshore recreational species of Australia and New Zealand — a sea bream rather than a true snapper, and a lesson in why common names travel badly.
Australian bass
A hard-fighting catadromous native of eastern Australian coastal rivers that must reach estuarine salt water to breed — which makes dams its defining problem.Ayu
A territorial algae-grazing river fish of East Asia, fished by tomozuri — using a live decoy to provoke a territorial attack — and famous for a melon-like scent.
B
Ballan wrasse
A long-lived rocky-ground resident that begins life female and may change sex — and the species that turned rock marks into a lure fishery.
Barbel
A powerful, streamlined river cyprinid built for holding station in fast water — and the hardest-fighting freshwater fish most British anglers will meet.
Barramundi
An estuarine ambush predator that begins life as a male and changes sex to female, so the largest fish are all breeding hens.Beluga sturgeon
The largest fish that has ever entered European fresh water, a survivor of a lineage older than the dinosaurs, and now Critically Endangered — a fish this catalogue describes so it can be recognised and released, not caught.
Black crappie
A schooling, structure-loving panfish with a mouth so thin it is nicknamed papermouth — and one of North America's most popular table fish.
Black drum
The largest of the drums, reaching over fifty kilograms, with chin barbels, crushing throat teeth and a drumming call audible from a boat.Black rockfish
A schooling Pacific rockfish taken close inshore over reef, long-lived and slow-growing, with venomous fin spines and a serious barotrauma problem.Black sea bass
A structure-loving Atlantic reef fish that begins life female and commonly changes to male, with a distinctive high nape and elongated tail filament in large males.
Black seabream
A deep-bodied silver bream that builds and guards nests on gravel — a hard-fighting south-coast summer species whose spawning aggregations are unusually easy to damage.
Blackhead seabream
A wary East Asian sparid of harbours and rocky shores, sex-changing as it grows, and the subject of an entire specialised Japanese angling discipline.Blacktip reef shark
The small, shy, dipped-in-ink shark that patrols tropical reef flats in water barely deep enough to cover it — the shark most holidaymakers actually see, and the one they are most likely to be needlessly frightened of.Blonde ray
A large, pale, heavily spotted ray of clean offshore banks — told from the spotted ray by one thing: its dark spots run right to the very edge of the wing.
Blue catfish
North America's largest catfish, reaching over sixty kilograms, and a large-river specialist that has become a serious invasive where it was introduced.
Blue cod
A New Zealand endemic reef fish that changes sex from female to male and shifts colour with it, territorial, curious and heavily fished.
Blue mussel
The commonest gathered shellfish on Atlantic European shores, attached to rock by threads it spins itself, and an animal whose safety is decided entirely by the water it grew in.Blue shark
The oceanic shark that comes within reach of a British day boat every summer — slender, indigo, curious, and the reason shark fishing exists as a UK charter fishery at all.Blue threadfin
A tropical estuary fish that hunts with four free filaments extending from the pectoral fin, feeling for prawns in water too turbid to see through.
Bluefin trevally
A brilliantly marked reef trevally with electric blue fins that hunts cooperatively with other predators — including, remarkably, with octopus and moray eels.Bluefish
A circumglobal shoaling predator with a reputation for feeding frenzies and a mouth that goes through wire — called tailor in Australia and elf in South Africa.
Bluegill
Probably the most-caught freshwater fish in North America, the species most anglers there start on, and a nest-guarding sunfish with a genuine stunting problem.
Bonefish
A silver bottom-feeder of tropical shallows, hunted on sight in knee-deep water, that runs further than anything of its size.Bowfin
An ancient, air-breathing North American predator with a long undulating dorsal fin and a bony head, able to survive in water that would kill most fish.
Brill
A smooth-skinned left-eyed flatfish of sandy ground, separated from turbot by scales rather than tubercles and by fringed rays at the front of the dorsal fin.
Brook trout
A char rather than a true trout, native to cold clean eastern North American streams, and one of the most reliable indicators of water quality there is.Brown shrimp
The small, sand-coloured shrimp that buries itself by day on tidal flats, is pushed for with a net across the shallows, and is a different animal in a different family caught over different ground from the rock-pool prawn the catalogue already held.
Brown trout
A single, extraordinarily plastic species that appears as a tiny hill-stream fish, a deep-bodied loch trout and a silver sea-run migrant — all the same animal.Bull huss
The large rough-ground catshark that gets called a big dogfish — separated from its small cousin by two nasal flaps that do not reach the mouth, and worth far more attention than it usually gets.Bull shark
A heavy, blunt-nosed, genuinely dangerous requiem shark that swims hundreds of miles up rivers into fresh water — the only large shark a freshwater angler can realistically meet, and the one that most deserves to be taken seriously.
Bull trout
A large, cold-demanding North American char of high-quality mountain rivers, threatened across much of its range and protected in many waters.
Burbot
The only freshwater cod, a nocturnal cold-water bottom predator with a single chin barbel that spawns under ice in midwinter.Butterfly peacock bass
The smaller and most widely introduced peacock bass, marked with three dark vertical bars and a black eyespot on the tail, and established in Florida and Hawaii.
C
California halibut
A large ambush flatfish of Pacific sand and surf, unusual in that individuals may be either left-eyed or right-eyed, with a mouth full of sharp teeth.Caribbean spiny lobster
A clawless, long-antennaed, gregarious tropical lobster taken by hand and snare on breath-hold across the Caribbean — a different animal, a different fishery and a different rulebook from the clawed lobster of northern Europe.
Catla
The largest of the major Indian carps, a surface and midwater plankton feeder with an enormous upturned mouth and a very deep body.
Chain pickerel
The smallest widely-fished Esox of eastern North America, marked with a distinctive dark chain-link pattern and a vertical bar beneath the eye.
Channel catfish
North America's most widely fished catfish — a scent-driven omnivore covered in taste buds, catchable on almost anything, and the reason smelly baits exist.
Chinook salmon
The largest Pacific salmon, reaching over sixty kilograms, and the one whose runs carry the most cultural and ecological weight on that coast.
Chub
A bold, omnivorous river fish that eats almost anything and grows large enough to be a predator — and the species most likely to be caught on a bait nobody expected to work.
Chum salmon
A large Pacific salmon without body spotting, developing striking purple calico bars and enlarged canine teeth at spawning, and the widest-ranging of its genus.Cobia
A large, powerful, shark-like pelagic fish that shadows rays, buoys and structure, and is commonly hunted by sight from the bow of a boat.Coho salmon
The acrobatic Pacific salmon — smaller than a chinook, far more willing to take a lure or fly, and the one most river anglers actually catch.
Common bream
A deep-bodied, slow-moving shoal fish that feeds in large groups over soft bottoms and can transform a swim when it arrives.
Common carp
A large, long-lived, highly adaptable cyprinid whose capacity to learn has shaped more angling technique than any other freshwater fish.
Common cockle
A ribbed bivalve living just under the surface of intertidal sand and mud, gathered by rake and by foot, and the quarry behind one of the most dangerous gathering fisheries there is.
Common cuttlefish
A bottom-oriented cephalopod with an internal buoyancy shell, the best-studied invertebrate mind in the sea, and a fishery that works quite differently from squid.
Common dentex
The Mediterranean's fastest and warriest inshore predator — a sea bream that hunts like a jack, and the fish spearfishers there rate above all others.
Common limpet
The conical shell clamped to rock on every exposed Atlantic shore, gathered for food worldwide, and an animal whose grip and homing behaviour are more interesting than its reputation suggests.Common octopus
A solitary, short-lived, startlingly intelligent mollusc taken by hand, hook and spear across the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean — and the animal FishingHQ had written handling guidance for without holding a record of it.
Common pandora
A pink-silver Mediterranean sparid of sand and mixed ground, changing sex from female to male with age, and a staple of light bottom fishing.
Common periwinkle
The small dark sea snail of rocky shores across the north Atlantic, gathered by hand for centuries, and a grazer rather than a filter feeder — which changes its safety profile substantially.
Common prawn
The translucent rock-pool prawn taken by hand net and drop net around Atlantic Europe, and the animal behind a shore practice this catalogue modelled only as bait.
Common snook
A structure-hugging ambush predator of tropical American coasts, marked by a hard black lateral line, that moves freely between the sea and fresh water.
Common sole
A nocturnal, sand-dwelling flatfish with a rounded head and a small twisted mouth, and one of the most valuable food fish in European waters.Common stingray
A smooth, whip-tailed ray with a serrated venomous spine — an estuary and shallow-bay fish that turns up in British summers where nobody is expecting a stingray, and the one British ray that can put an angler in hospital.
Common whelk
A large predatory and scavenging sea snail of soft ground, taken in baited pots in one of the north Atlantic's more valuable inshore fisheries, and a scavenger rather than a filter feeder.
Common whitefish
The Alpine and northern lake fish that carries a different name in every country it lives in — powan, schelly, gwyniad, felchen, renke — and one of the few European species fished with a purpose-built rig of its own.
Conger eel
A very large scaleless eel of wrecks, rock and harbour walls, reaching three metres, and among the most powerful and most genuinely dangerous fish to handle in European seas.
Coral trout
A brilliant red-orange coral reef grouper marked with blue spots, known for cooperative hunting with moray eels, and a prime Great Barrier Reef target.Corkwing wrasse
The small wrasse a light-tackle angler actually catches, a nest-builder that carries weed in its mouth, and the subject of a live wild fishery most anglers have never heard of.
Crucian carp
A small, deep-bodied, barbel-less carp of small still waters, remarkable for surviving winters under ice in oxygen-free water, and widely compromised by hybridisation.Cuckoo wrasse
The most extravagantly two-coloured fish in British waters, and the reason is that every blue male on the reef began life as an orange female.Curled octopus
The octopus of northern European waters, and the one nearly every British capture actually is — told from the common octopus by a single row of suckers on each arm rather than two.
Cutthroat trout
The native trout of western North America, named for a red slash under the jaw, and a species fragmented into subspecies that hybridise readily with introduced rainbows.
D
Dab
A small right-eyed flatfish, rough to the touch and curved along the lateral line — the commonest flatfish on most British beaches and the one plaice get mistaken for.
Dace
A small, quick, silver river cyprinid separated from chub by the shape of one fin — the anal fin is concave in a dace and convex in a chub, and nothing else settles it as reliably.Deccan mahseer
A dark, powerful mahseer of peninsular Indian rivers, distinguished from the golden mahseer by colour and range, and dependent on temple-pool sanctuaries in parts of its range.
Dusky flathead
An Australian estuary ambush predator that lies buried in sand waiting for something to swim over it — and the fish most Australian shore anglers catch first.
Dusky grouper
The Mediterranean's iconic reef predator: territorial, slow to mature, sex-changing, and the species whose decline made the case for marine protected areas there.
Dusky kob
A large, long-lived estuarine and surf predator of southern African and Australian coasts, assessed as Endangered, and one of the clearest cases where a popular sport fish is genuinely in trouble.
E
Edible crab
The large pie-crust crab of Atlantic Europe: slow-growing, long-lived, heavily regulated, and the animal most people mean when they say they went crabbing and caught something worth keeping.
Estuary perch
A close relative of the Australian bass that spawns in brackish water, separated by a concave head profile and a preference for lower estuaries.
European eel
A Critically Endangered fish that breeds in the Sargasso Sea, drifts to Europe as a transparent larva, lives decades in fresh water and returns once to spawn and die.
European flounder
The flatfish that runs up rivers — a tolerant, estuarine right-eyed flounder with bony tubercles along its fin bases and a habit of turning up in fresh water.European lobster
A long-lived, territorial, blue-shelled crustacean taken in pots and by hand-diving, and the quarry behind the conservation measure most anglers have never heard of.
European perch
A small, shoaling, spiny-finned predator that is both the most accessible predator to catch and the one most anglers first learn on.
European plaice
A right-eyed flatfish with orange spots and a remarkable lifespan, and the representative flatfish for a body plan nothing else in this catalogue shares.
European sardine
The small silver fish that upwelling coasts produce in millions — the same species as a Cornish pilchard, the foundation of the Moroccan and Iberian fisheries, and the forage base almost every predator on those coasts depends on.
European sea bass
A fast, predatory inshore fish that hunts in broken water and surf, and one of the most closely managed recreational species in European seas.
European sea urchin
A spined grazer of shallow Mediterranean and Atlantic rock whose gonads are a delicacy, collected by hand and by free-diving, and depleted across much of its range by exactly that.European squid
A fast, short-lived, visually hunting mollusc that is taken on barbed jigs rather than hooks, and the quarry behind an entire discipline this catalogue had never named.
F
Flapper skate
One of the largest fish in British waters and among the most threatened — a two-metre skate that was fished out of most of its range, survives in strongholds off western Scotland, and is now almost entirely a catch-and-release fishery.
Flathead catfish
A large, solitary, strictly predatory catfish that eats live fish and almost nothing else — which makes it the one catfish that will not take a stink bait.
Flathead grey mullet
The most widely distributed mullet in the world, found on almost every warm and temperate coast, and a detritus feeder with a gizzard-like stomach.
Florida pompano
A small, deep-bodied, hard-fighting jack of sandy surf beaches, feeding on sand fleas in the wash and prized out of proportion to its size.Freshwater drum
The only member of the drum family that lives its whole life in fresh water, the fish that produces an audible grunt with muscles against its swim bladder, and the source of the 'lucky stones' found on lake shores.
G
Gag grouper
A protogynous grouper of the American south-east whose entire male population comes from sex-changed females — which makes size-selective fishing a demographic problem, not just a numerical one.
Garfish
A slender surface-hunting fish with a long beaked jaw and green bones — a harmless pigment that alarms people unnecessarily.Giant African threadfin
A large West African surf and lagoon predator that hunts with free pectoral filaments, and the premier shore gamefish of Gabon and neighbouring coasts.Giant freshwater stingray
One of the largest freshwater fish in the world, an Endangered Mekong and Southeast Asian river ray with a serrated venomous barb capable of severe injury.
Giant snakehead
An air-breathing Southeast Asian predator that guards its young in a shoal and defends them aggressively — the fish that made topwater lure fishing a South-East Asian sport.
Giant trevally
A hugely powerful Indo-Pacific reef predator that hunts over shallow structure, and the fish popping was built around.
Gilthead bream
The Mediterranean's most prized sea bream, marked by a golden band between the eyes, with a jaw powerful enough to crush shellfish and a range now expanding northward.
Golden dorado
A brilliant gold, heavily toothed river predator of the Paraná and Paraguay systems — a characin built like a salmon and fighting like a tarpon.
Golden mahseer
A huge Himalayan river carp reaching 275 cm, assessed as Endangered, and the fish around which the whole idea of Indian sport fishing was built.
Golden perch
The Murray-Darling's other great native target — a flood-cued spawner that can travel a thousand kilometres and barely breeds at all in a regulated river.Goliath tigerfish
The largest of the African tigerfish and one of the most formidable freshwater predators in the world — a Congo-basin characin with interlocking conical teeth that close outside the jaw.Goonch
A huge flattened catfish of fast Himalayan and Southeast Asian rivers, gripping rock in torrential current with a broad head and clinging body form.
Grass carp
A large herbivorous carp introduced worldwide to control aquatic weed, which is exactly why it has become one of the most consequential fish introductions there is.
Grayling
A salmonid with a sail for a dorsal fin that feeds hard through the winter — which makes it the game angler's season when the trout season has closed.Great barracuda
A fast reef predator built entirely around a single explosive strike, and a fish whose principal hazard to people is not its teeth but eating it.Great snakehead
A large South Asian snakehead with a distinctive orange-ringed eyespot at the tail base, guarding its young in shallow water and taken on topwater lures.
Greater amberjack
The largest amberjack — a circumglobal reef and wreck predator that fights downward with more raw power per kilogram than almost anything, and carries a genuine ciguatera caveat.
Grey gurnard
A small, abundant, bony-headed gurnard that walks the seabed on three free finger-rays per side, grunts when handled, and is caught far more often than it is recognised.Gudgeon
A small bottom-living river fish with a barbel at each corner of the mouth and a row of dark blotches along the flank — and, for a great many anglers, the first fish they ever caught.
H
Haddock
The cod's smaller relative, marked with a black lateral line and a dark thumbprint, and one of the most important food fish in the North Atlantic.
Hampala barb
A predatory Southeast Asian barb with a bold black vertical bar and red-edged tail, hunting small fish in clear rivers and taken on lures.Hapuku
A large, very slow-growing deepwater wreckfish of southern-hemisphere reefs and pinnacles, long-lived and easily depleted at known marks.
Huchen
A very large predatory salmonid of the Danube basin, entirely freshwater, endangered through damming and habitat loss, and fished almost exclusively on a release basis.
I
J
Japanese amberjack
A large, fast Seriola of Japanese and Korean waters, of major food and aquaculture importance, and known by different names at each stage of its growth.
Japanese sea bass
The principal lure-fishing target of Japan, an estuary and coastal predator whose Japanese name changes with its size as it grows.John Dory
A thin, slow, unmistakable ambush predator with a black thumbprint on each flank and a mouth that shoots forward — a fish that hunts by being almost invisible edge-on.Jungle perch
A silver, large-eyed predator of clear coastal streams from Africa to the Pacific, requiring an unobstructed connection to the sea to complete its life cycle.
K
Kahawai
A hard-fighting schooling predator of southern Australian and New Zealand coasts, called salmon in one country and kahawai in the other, and related to neither salmon nor trout.
King mackerel
A fast, toothy, migratory Atlantic mackerel taken by slow-trolling live bait and by pier fishing, known for a vertical strike that cuts baits in half.King scallop
A bivalve that swims, sees with dozens of eyes along the edge of its mantle, and is the reason most British freedivers who are not spearfishing are in the water — and it had no record while the catalogue explained how to dive for it.
Korean rockfish
The principal recreational and farmed rockfish of Korea, China and Japan, bearing live young and carrying venomous fin spines.
L
Lake sturgeon
An ancient armoured Great Lakes and Mississippi basin fish that may take twenty years to first spawn and then spawns only every few years.
Lake trout
A deep, cold, slow-growing char of northern lakes that can live decades and takes a very long time to replace anything removed.
Largemouth bass
The most heavily fished freshwater sport species in the world: an ambush predator of warm, weedy, structured water.Largemouth yellowfish
A predatory South African yellowfish of the Orange-Vaal system, Near Threatened, and one of Africa's premier freshwater fly targets.
Leerfish
A large, fast, laterally compressed jack of Mediterranean and African coasts, known as garrick in South Africa, and a prime surf and lure target.Lesser weever
A fish the length of a finger that buries itself in warm shallow sand with a venomous black dorsal fin showing, and puts more people into British emergency departments each summer than every other marine animal here combined.
Ling
A long, eel-shaped gadoid of deep northern wrecks and rough ground, reaching over two metres and forty kilograms, and the classic wreck-fishing prize.
Lingcod
A large ambush predator of Pacific rocky reefs with an enormous toothed mouth, no relation to true cod, and a serious barotrauma problem on release.Long-spined sea scorpion
A wide-mouthed, spiny, superbly camouflaged ambush predator that sits in British rock pools looking like a stone — the largest fish most light-tackle anglers catch on a bad day, and the one they should not grab.
Longnose gar
A slender ancient predator armoured in diamond-shaped ganoid scales, with an extremely long toothed beak that makes conventional hooking difficult.Longtail tuna
A slender coastal tuna of the Indo-Pacific that comes close enough inshore to be cast to from beaches and rocks, unusually among tunas.
M
Mahi-mahi
The fastest-growing large fish an angler is likely to meet — brilliantly coloured, mature within months, and gathered around anything floating in the open ocean.
Mangrove jack
A powerful red snapper of mangrove creeks and estuaries that moves to offshore reef as it matures, notorious for reaching structure the instant it is hooked.Meagre
A large predatory drum of the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, audible drumming with its swim bladder, and a prime estuary and surf target.Mediterranean moray
The eel in the hole. An entire family absent from a catalogue with 116 spearfishing records — and the animal behind the classic hole-hunting injury, which is a bite that will not let go.Milkfish
A fast, powerful, algae-eating flats fish with a tiny toothless mouth — one of the hardest fish in the world to hook on a fly, and one of the most important farmed food fish in Asia.Mud crab
A very large, immensely powerful swimming crab of Indo-Pacific mangroves — a serious food fishery, a genuine recreational quarry from Queensland to Kerala, and an animal that can break a finger.
Murray cod
Australia's largest wholly freshwater fish, reaching 113 kg and 48 years, and not a cod at all — a temperate perch that has been the Murray-Darling's apex predator for a very long time.
Muskellunge
North America's largest pike and the fish that gave rise to the phrase "the fish of ten thousand casts" — a solitary ambush predator with a well-earned reputation for refusal.
N
Narrow-barred Spanish mackerel
A fast Indo-Pacific mackerel with vertical bars and shearing teeth that is a headline sport and food fish from South Africa to Australia — and a well-known ciguatera risk in parts of its range.Native oyster
A flat, round, slow-growing oyster whose British beds collapsed within living memory, sitting on the same shores as a fast-growing introduced congener that is reefing over them — and the two are told apart by the shape of the shell.
Nile perch
A huge African predator that is a major food fishery, a sport fish, and the cause of one of the worst extinction events on record.Nile tilapia
An African cichlid that broods its young in the mouth, farmed on an enormous global scale, and both a valued food fish and a significant invasive.
Northern pike
The dominant freshwater ambush predator of the northern hemisphere: long, cryptic, and built for one violent acceleration rather than pursuit.
Northern red snapper
The Gulf of Mexico's emblematic reef fish — long-lived, structure-bound, subject to the most contested recreational quota in American fishing, and a barotrauma case study.
Northern snakehead
An air-breathing East Asian predator, native and farmed in its home range, and a regulated invasive species in North America where introduced populations are established.
P
Payara
An Amazonian predator with two enormous lower fangs that pass through sockets in its own skull, hunting in fast rapids and whitewater.
Permit
A large, deep-bodied jack of tropical flats and wrecks, famously difficult on fly and the third fish of the flats grand slam.
Pink salmon
The smallest and most abundant Pacific salmon, running on a strict two-year cycle, and the male developing a pronounced hump at spawning.
Pollack
A fast gadoid that hunts up off reefs and wrecks and takes a lure on the drop — and the sea fish most likely to convert a bait angler to lure fishing.
Pouting
A deep-bodied coppery gadoid of wrecks and rough ground, barred when fresh, with a prominent chin barbel and a very short shelf life.
Pumpkinseed
A vividly marked small sunfish, separated from bluegill by the orange-red spot on the rear edge of its gill flap and the wavy blue lines across its cheek.
R
Rainbow trout
The most widely introduced sport fish on Earth — a Pacific salmonid now stocked on every continent except Antarctica, and the same species as the steelhead.Razor clam
A long, straight-shelled bivalve that burrows faster than a person can dig, taken by the salt trick and by hand at the bottom of a spring tide — and one of the few gathering fisheries with real skill in it.
Red drum
A copper-coloured inshore predator of the American south-east, marked with a false eyespot at the tail, fished on shallow flats where its tail breaks the surface as it feeds.
Red emperor
A large deep-red Indo-Pacific snapper whose juveniles carry three bold dark bands that fade almost entirely with age.Red gurnard
The smallest and best-eating of the three British gurnards, and the one that proves colour cannot be used to tell gurnards apart — because all three of them can be red.Red lionfish
A spectacular venomous Indo-Pacific reef fish that has invaded the western Atlantic and Caribbean, eats juvenile reef fish faster than the reef can replace them, and is the one animal in this catalogue where spearing it is the conservation action rather than the cost of one.Red scorpionfish
A Mediterranean ambush predator that is simultaneously one of the region's most prized food fish and the commonest cause of serious envenomation among the people who catch it — and it does not move when you reach for it.
Redear sunfish
A large sunfish with heavy throat teeth that crush snails and small mussels, giving it the name shellcracker and a role in controlling invasive snails.
Redtail catfish
A very large Amazonian catfish with a brilliant orange-red tail and a white belly stripe, popular in the aquarium trade and unsuited to it.Reef stonefish
The most venomous fish known, sitting motionless and indistinguishable from a rock in shallow tropical water — and the specific animal behind the advice never to walk barefoot on a reef flat.
Roach
The most numerous and most frequently caught coarse fish across much of Europe, and the prey species that underpins the whole freshwater predator food web.Rock goby
The goby in the same rock pool as the shanny, and the fish that makes the blenny-versus-goby question answerable — because it carries the sucker disc on its belly that every goby has and no blenny does.
Rohu
One of the major Indian carps, a fast-growing river and pond cyprinid of enormous food importance and a principal bait-fishing target across South Asia.
Roosterfish
An eastern Pacific surf predator with a seven-rayed dorsal comb it raises when hunting — the only member of its family, and one of the great shore sport fish.
Rudd
A golden, blood-finned cyprinid of still water, separated from roach by an upturned mouth and a dorsal fin set behind the pelvic fins.
S
Sailfish
The billfish with a sail — a dorsal fin taller than the fish is deep, raised when hunting, and probably the fastest accelerator in the ocean.
Saithe
A fast, hard-fighting shoaling gadoid of northern rock and wreck — routinely confused with pollack, and a completely different fish once you know the lateral line.
Sand flathead
The abundant southern Australian flathead of sandy bays, smaller than the dusky flathead and marked with rows of brown spots and a dark-blotched tail.Sand whiting
A slender silver Australian surf and estuary fish that feeds on worms and nippers in the wash, and is fished with light tackle over clean sand.Saratoga
An ancient surface-feeding fish of Queensland rivers that carries its eggs and young in its mouth — and one of very few Australian native freshwater species genuinely suited to a fly rod.
Sauger
The walleye's smaller river-dwelling relative, separated by spotted dorsal membranes and the absence of a white tail tip — a fish of big turbid rivers where walleye are fish of lakes.Sea lamprey
A jawless, boneless, parasitic fish with a rasping sucker for a mouth — a delicacy in Iberia, an invasion that broke the Great Lakes, and a strictly protected species across much of its native range.Shanny
The commonest blenny on the British shore, the fish under most rocks in most rock pools, and — for a very large number of people — the first fish they ever caught.
Sheepshead
A boldly barred inshore sea bream with flattened human-like incisors and heavy molars, built to crush barnacles and shellfish off pilings and structure.Shore crab
The crab a child catches off a quayside on a line with a bit of bacon — abundant, harmless, inedible in any useful quantity, and one of the most damaging marine invaders in the world outside its native range.Signal crayfish
An introduced North American crayfish that carries a plague fatal to European natives, and the one quarry in this catalogue that must never be returned to the water alive.
Silver bream
A small deep-bodied cyprinid separated from common bream by large eyes, orange-based paired fins and a shorter anal fin.
Silver carp
A filter-feeding Asian carp that leaps clear of the water when startled by boat engines, and one of the most damaging freshwater invasives in North America.Silver trevally
A schooling southern-hemisphere jack of reefs and harbours, silver with a yellow tail and a small dark shoulder spot, and a mainstay of Australian and New Zealand fishing.Small-eyed ray
The surf-beach ray of the Bristol Channel and the south-west — patterned with pale streaks running parallel to the wing margins rather than with spots, and caught from the shore where other rays are not.Small-spotted catshark
The small, densely freckled shark that almost every British sea angler catches and almost nobody looks at properly — abundant, harmless, sandpaper-skinned, and the reason a great many anglers think they dislike dogfish.
Smallmouth bass
A hard-fighting river and rocky-lake predator of North America, reckoned pound for pound the strongest freshwater fish on the continent.
Smallmouth yellowfish
A golden grazing cyprinid of southern African rivers, fished on nymphs in fast shallow water and often called Africa's answer to the bonefish.
Sockeye salmon
The plankton-feeding Pacific salmon that turns brilliant scarlet to spawn, depends on lakes rather than just rivers, and barely takes a lure at all.
Speckled peacock bass
A large Amazonian cichlid — not a bass at all — that hunts small characins in blackwater rivers and strikes surface lures with more violence than almost anything in fresh water.Spiny spider crab
A large, long-legged, orange-red crab that walks into British shallows in summer in numbers, is excellent eating, and is put back by most people who find one because they assume it is not worth having.
Spotted bass
The third black bass — intermediate between largemouth and smallmouth in habitat and appearance, and identified by rows of spots below the lateral line and a tooth patch on the tongue.Spotted eagle ray
A large, white-spotted, genuinely graceful ray that flies rather than crawls — an open-water swimmer with a duck-like bill for excavating shellfish and a tail carrying venomous spines.Spotted grunter
A southern African estuary fish that grunts audibly by grinding its pharyngeal teeth, and feeds by blowing jets of water to excavate prawns from sand.Spotted ray
The small spotted ray of inshore clean ground — dark spots that stop short of the wing edge, usually an eye-like blotch on each wing, and rarely much over 70 centimetres.
Spotted seatrout
A drum-family inshore predator of American southern estuaries, marked with distinct round black spots and armed with two prominent canine teeth.Spotted sorubim
A large spotted South American catfish with a long flattened shovel snout, a principal target of the Paraná and São Francisco river fisheries.Spurdog
A small shoaling shark with a sharp venomous spine in front of each dorsal fin, a gestation approaching two years, and a habit of arriving in packs — the most awkward fish to unhook in British waters.Starry smooth-hound
A small crab-eating shark of European coasts with crushing plate-like teeth rather than cutting ones, and white spots along the flank.Sterlet
The small sturgeon that never goes to sea, the only one an ordinary angler is likely to meet, and the reason 'I caught a sturgeon' is a harder statement than it sounds.
Striped bass
A large anadromous predator of the North American Atlantic coast, fished from surf, rock, boat and river, and the subject of one of the better-known fishery recoveries.
Striped red mullet
A red and gold bottom-feeding fish that hunts with a pair of long chin barbels, unrelated to grey mullet and among the most prized European table fish.
Striped snakehead
The most widely distributed and most farmed Asian snakehead, air-breathing, able to survive in mud through dry seasons, and a staple food fish across the region.
Summer flounder
A large left-eyed ambush flatfish of the American Atlantic coast with a toothy mouth, fished by drifting rather than by static bottom fishing.Swordfish
A large oceanic predator with a flat sword-like bill and specialised tissue that warms its eyes and brain, allowing it to hunt in cold deep water.
T
Taimen
The largest salmonid in the world, a long-lived river predator of Siberia and Mongolia, Vulnerable to extinction and fished almost entirely on a release basis.
Tambaqui
A very large Amazonian characin with molar-like teeth for crushing fruit and seeds, feeding in flooded forest and dispersing seeds as it goes.Tautog
A blunt-headed structure-dwelling wrasse of the American Atlantic with crushing teeth, extreme site fidelity, and a habit of resting on its side in crevices at night.
Tench
A thick-set, olive-green stillwater fish with tiny scales, a heavy mucus coat, and a strong association with warm, weedy, silty water.
Thick-lipped grey mullet
A shoaling coastal fish that eats algae and detritus rather than prey — which makes it the hardest common sea fish to catch and the most interesting to think about.Thin-lipped grey mullet
The grey mullet that will chase a baited spinner up a tidal river — which makes it the only one of the three that can be fished for like a predator, and the reason a whole British technique existed with nothing to attach it to.
Thornback ray
The commonest European ray, covered in thorn-like bucklers, laying horny egg cases known as mermaid's purses, and requiring careful handling on release.Tope
A fast, slender, genuinely large houndshark that comes into British shallows in summer — the shark most likely to empty a shore reel, and one of the most threatened fish an angler can catch.
Traíra
South America's most widely caught freshwater ambush predator: a cylindrical, heavily-toothed fish of still and slow water that can breathe air and survive where almost nothing else will.
Tub gurnard
The big, brilliantly coloured gurnard — vivid blue-edged pectoral fins spread like wings, a red body, and the largest of the British gurnards by a clear margin.
Turbot
A large, almost circular left-eyed flatfish with bony tubercles instead of scales, the most valuable flatfish in European waters.Twaite shad
The shad a British angler actually meets: smaller than allis, usually marked with a row of dark spots, and running the Severn, Wye and Usk in a spring migration that has been fished for centuries.
V
Veined squid
The larger, more northerly of the two British squid, and the one most autumn and winter pier catches actually are — taken on the same jig, by the same people, who believe they are catching the other one.Velvet swimming crab
The crab under every British rock that stands up and fights you — brilliant red eyes, a coat of fine hair, paddle back legs, and a grip that does not release. Excellent eating, exported in quantity, and ignored by almost everybody who meets one.Vendace
A small silver plankton-feeding lake fish with an adipose fin and a projecting lower jaw — abundant enough in Finland to support a commercial fishery, and reduced in Britain to a single water.
W
Wahoo
An extremely fast blue-water mackerel with razor teeth and a long slender body, taken by high-speed trolling and almost always fished on wire.
Walleye
A low-light predator of large North American lakes and rivers whose reflective eye lets it hunt in conditions where its prey cannot see it coming.Weakfish
A purple-sheened Atlantic drum named for its fragile mouth rather than any lack of fight, and a species whose stock has declined sharply.
Wels catfish
Europe's largest freshwater fish, reaching well over two metres, and an expanding introduced range that has made it one of the continent's most contested species.
White bass
A schooling open-water Morone of large rivers and reservoirs, smaller and deeper-bodied than a striped bass and famous for surface feeding frenzies.White crappie
The paler, bar-marked crappie of turbid rivers and reservoirs, separated from the black crappie by six dorsal spines and vertical banding rather than scattered blotches.White seabream
A boldly barred Mediterranean sparid of rocky shores, marked with vertical black bands and a black saddle at the tail, and a mainstay of shore fishing.White sturgeon
North America's largest freshwater fish, an ancient armoured bottom-feeder of Pacific rivers that must be handled entirely in the water and is very largely catch-and-release.White-clawed crayfish
Britain's only native crayfish, Endangered, and being erased from its own rivers by a larger American relative that carries a disease it cannot survive — which is the single most important thing about crayfish here, and the catalogue could not say it.
Whiting
A small, abundant, silver gadoid of European coasts, a mainstay of winter shore fishing and distinguished by a dark spot at the pectoral fin base.
Y
Yellow perch
North America's most-caught panfish and the walleye's principal prey — the fish that anchors both the food chain and the family fishing trip across a whole continent.
Yelloweye rockfish
A brilliant orange-red deepwater rockfish that lives well over a century, matures very late, and is a rebuilding species under strict protection.
Yellowfin bream
The archetypal Australian estuary sparid, wary, structure-oriented, and the species around which a whole competitive lure discipline has been built.
Yellowfin tuna
A warm-blooded, high-speed oceanic predator that schools with dolphins and under floating debris, and one of the most commercially important fish in the world.
Yellowtail kingfish
A circumglobal subtropical jack of kelp edges and rocky reef that fights harder than almost anything of its size and heads straight for structure.
Yellowtail snapper
A slim reef snapper with a broad yellow stripe and deeply forked yellow tail, feeding well above the bottom and fished with drifting chum.
Z
Supporting ecological records
Species that are not fishing subjects but that the catalogue needs in order to be accurate about the ones that are — mostly prey. These are short reference records: identity, distribution and the biological relationship that justifies them. They are not fishing profiles, and their presence here does not mean the fish is pursued.
Alewife
An anadromous river herring of eastern North America that has also formed permanent landlocked populations, becoming a principal prey fish in the Great Lakes.Atlantic herring
The shoaling fish that shaped the economies of the North Atlantic, and one of the two or three most important prey species in it.Atlantic menhaden
A deep-bodied filter-feeding clupeid of the American Atlantic coast, and the forage species that most of the region's inshore sport fisheries are built on.Ballyhoo
A surface-schooling halfbeak of warm Atlantic waters with a greatly elongated lower jaw, and the standard prey and trolling bait of the tropical western Atlantic.Bay anchovy
A tiny, translucent, extraordinarily abundant anchovy of American Atlantic and Gulf estuaries, and probably the most numerous fish in them.Bleak
A small, silver, surface-shoaling cyprinid of European rivers and lakes, and the principal prey of asp, zander and pike where it occurs.Capelin
A small Arctic smelt that spawns on beaches in immense numbers, and the animal most of the North Atlantic's cold-water fisheries ultimately rest on.Cisco
A silvery, deep-bodied whitefish of cold northern lakes, and the native prey species that lake trout, muskellunge and northern pike evolved alongside.Dagaa
A small pelagic cyprinid endemic to the Lake Victoria basin, and the prey species that the lake's Nile perch fishery came to depend on.European anchovy
A small, large-mouthed shoaling fish of warm coastal seas, and the principal forage species of the Mediterranean and the Iberian Atlantic.European sprat
A small shoaling clupeid of coastal and shelf water, abundant enough to feed most of the predators in the northern European sea and to support a large fishery besides.Gizzard shad
A deep-bodied filter-feeding clupeid of American rivers and reservoirs, and the dominant forage fish in a very large number of them.Greater weever
The most venomous fish in British and Irish waters — a small sand-burying ambush predator with venomous dorsal and gill-cover spines, caught by accident and stood on by bathers.Japanese anchovy
The forage anchovy of the north-west Pacific, supporting one of the world's largest fisheries and most of the predatory fish of the Japanese and Korean coasts.Lesser sandeel
A slender, burrowing shoaling fish of sandy seabeds, and the single most important forage species in the northern North Sea food web.Northern anchovy
A shoaling anchovy of the eastern Pacific upwelling coast, and one of the two forage species that alternate in dominating that ecosystem.Pacific sand lance
The North Pacific counterpart of the sandeel: a slender burrowing shoaling fish that underpins the salmon, seabird and marine mammal food webs of that ocean.Pacific sardine
One shoaling sardine found around most of the Pacific and southern oceans under half a dozen different names, and a dominant forage species in every one of them.Rainbow smelt
A small, slender, cold-water smelt of northern lakes and coastal rivers, and the deep-water forage fish that lake trout and burbot depend on.Ruffe
A small, spiny, bottom-dwelling perch relative that feeds in darkness and turbid water, and a named prey item of zander and pike across northern Europe.Sábalo
A large, migratory, detritus-feeding characiform of the Paraná and Paraguay basins, and both the dominant biomass and the principal prey of the golden dorado.Scaled sardine
A small coastal clupeid of the warm western Atlantic, known to anglers as the pilchard or greenback and central to inshore live-bait fishing in the region.Yellowtail scad
A small shoaling jack of Australian and New Zealand coastal waters, known as yakka to anglers and a principal prey of kingfish and snapper.
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