Cape gurnard

SOUTH AFRICA REGULATES SEA FISHING SPECIES BY SPECIES, WHICH IS NOT HOW MOST COUNTRIES DO IT.

A recreational permit is the entry ticket and not the whole of it. On top of it sits a minimum size and a daily bag limit SET PER FISH, a closed season on a small number of species, and a cumulative daily cap across everything caught — so being inside the limit for each species separately does not put you inside the limit overall.

THERE IS A CAP ON HOOKS on a rod-and-line permit. A spearfishing permit is separate, allows no breathing apparatus beyond a snorkel, and PROHIBITS SPEARFISHING IN AN ESTUARY — a flat ban rather than a limit, and the rule visitors most often do not know.

A LANDED FISH MUST KEEP ITS HEAD AND TAIL so its length can be checked. Nothing caught on a recreational permit may be sold by anyone. And a small list of species may not be caught, landed or possessed at all.

FISHINGHQ DOES NOT PRINT THE FIGURES, and the reason is on this page rather than in a policy document: the department's own guidance says adjustments may be forthcoming given the acknowledged crisis of linefish, the numbers differ by species and by area and by whether you were standing on a beach or sitting in a boat, and a stale figure on a fishing site is worse than no figure at all. Get the current position from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and get the protected-area position from whichever body manages the stretch of coast you are on.

A moderately long-lived demersal fish aged to sixteen years, occupying a very wide depth band from ten metres to nearly four hundred and moving between them with size and season. Juveniles are in shallower water; large fish are found deep.

Spawns in coastal and shelf water with pelagic eggs and larvae. The larvae are planktonic before settling to the bottom, at which point the pectoral fin rays that define the family develop and the young fish begins its bottom-walking life.

Feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fish located by probing the bottom with the free pectoral rays, which carry chemosensory tissue. The fish is literally tasting the sand as it walks. That is why it takes a bait on the bottom, why it comes to scent rather than to sight, and why it is caught on the same rigs meant for other bottom species.

Chemoreception through the free pectoral rays, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly: the fish tastes with its feet. Add normal vision and the sciaenid-like drumming and detection of sound, and it is a well-equipped bottom hunter in poor visibility.

Present through the year on sand and mixed ground, moving between depths rather than along the coast. It is caught incidentally by boats and by shore anglers fishing sand, and its availability is largely a function of where the boat is.

A common incidental capture on sand and mixed ground, from the shore and from boats, and an under-rated eating fish. It sits on the exploitable list at a daily bag limit. Its real interest to an angler is behavioural: it is one of the very few fish anybody will catch that walks on its fins and tastes with them.

THE HEAD AND SPINES ARE THE HAZARD. A heavily armoured bony head with sharp projections, stiff dorsal spines and sharp gill covers. A hand closed round a gurnard comes off marked, and marine puncture wounds infect readily.

HOLD IT BEHIND THE HEAD ACROSS THE BACK, or better, use a de-hooker and do not hold it at all.

IT WILL SPREAD ITS PECTORALS AND GRUNT. That is a display, not an attack.

WET HANDS, quick return, and treat any puncture properly.