Pollack: life, behaviour and the long reads

Pollack are a mid-water ambush predator tied to vertical structure, and the single most useful thing to understand about them is that the fish an angler meets from the shore and the fish met over a wreck are the same species at different life stages in different water.

THEY HOLD ABOVE AND BESIDE STRUCTURE RATHER THAN ON IT. Reef, pinnacle, wreck, kelp edge and steep rock all work the same way: the structure interrupts current, prey is carried past it, and pollack sit off the structure facing into the flow and rise to intercept. They are not a bottom-feeding fish in the way cod are, and a bait or lure fished hard on the bottom is frequently below them.

THE UPWARD STRIKE IS THE DEFINING BEHAVIOUR. A pollack takes from below and turns down hard immediately afterwards, driving for the structure it came from. That is why the fight is characteristic, why the first run is the one that costs tackle, and why fishing too close to a reef loses fish that fishing a rod length off it would land.

DEPTH SEPARATES THE FISHERIES. The species occupies roughly forty to two hundred metres, typically forty to one hundred, so shore-caught pollack are the shallow fringe of a much deeper distribution. Juveniles use shallow inshore ground, weed and rock, and move to deeper reef and wreck as they grow. That is the whole explanation for why small pollack are a shore fish and large ones are a boat fish, and it is not a statement about angler skill.

LIGHT MATTERS. Pollack feed most confidently in low light and coloured water and are noticeably harder to deceive in bright clear conditions, which is consistent with an ambush predator relying on prey not seeing it coming.

AND ONE MANAGEMENT NOTE. Measures for pollack in some areas have tightened considerably in recent years, and the older conservation assessment for the species does not reflect that. Check the current position for the area you are fishing.

Pollack do not disappear in winter; they move down, and the seasonality of the fishery is mostly a statement about how deep the angler can reach.

THE PATTERN. Inshore reef holds pollack through spring, summer and autumn, with fish moving into deeper water in winter. The shore fishery therefore has a season and the deep-water boat fishery has much less of one, because the fish have moved into the depth the boats were already fishing.

SPAWNING PULLS THEM DEEPER STILL. Pollack spawn in late winter and spring in deeper water, so the coldest part of the year combines the seasonal depth movement with a spawning one. Fish are in poorer condition after spawning and improve through the feeding period that follows.

WHICH MAKES LATE SUMMER AND AUTUMN THE PEAK for shore and shallow-reef fishing: the fish are inshore, they are feeding hard, and they are in their best condition of the year.

WITHIN THE SEASON, LIGHT DOMINATES THE DAY. Dawn, dusk and overcast or coloured conditions consistently outfish bright still middays on the same ground. That is widely observed and it fits an ambush predator that hunts upward against the light.

WHAT NOT TO GENERALISE. The months. This pattern is driven by water temperature and by the timing of spawning, both of which shift with latitude across a range running from Iceland to Biscay. The transferable statement is: shallow when the water is warm, deep when it is cold, deeper still around spawning.

AND A NOTE ON PRESSURE. Pollack are strongly associated with specific pieces of structure and do not disperse readily from them, which means a small area can be fished down and does not repopulate quickly. Rotating marks matters more for this species than for a mobile one.

Pollack reproduction is straightforward in mechanism and consequential in one specific way: it separates the young fish from the adults completely.

THE STRATEGY. Spawning takes place in late winter and spring in deeper water, with pelagic eggs released into the water column. There is no nest and no parental care. Eggs and larvae drift, and the survivors settle into shallow inshore ground.

AND THE NURSERY IS THE SHALLOWS. Juvenile pollack use shallow rock, weed and kelp — the ground shore anglers fish — and move progressively to deeper reef and wreck as they grow. That ontogenetic movement is why the size of pollack an angler catches is largely a function of the depth being fished, and it means the shallow inshore ground is nursery habitat rather than merely small-fish habitat.

WHICH GIVES THE INSHORE FISHERY A DIFFERENT CHARACTER FROM THE OFFSHORE ONE. An angler catching numbers of small pollack from the rocks is fishing a nursery, and returning those fish has a value that returning an adult from a wreck does not exactly duplicate.

MATURITY COMES AT A SIZE, NOT AN AGE, and varies with growth conditions. A fish's contribution to the next generation begins only once it has moved out to the deeper ground, which is a reason to treat the inshore small fish carefully rather than as an inexhaustible nuisance.

WHAT THIS SECTION DOES NOT DO. It does not identify spawning concentrations. Deep-water spawning aggregations of any gadoid are the point at which a stock is most exposed, and describing how to find them is not intelligence this platform provides.

Pollack size figures are unusually misleading unless the depth is attached to them, because the size distribution of this species is a depth distribution.

THE ORDINARY FISH is forty to sixty-five centimetres and one to three kilograms. That covers most rod-caught pollack and nearly all shore-caught ones.

A GOOD FISH is over eighty centimetres and around six kilograms. From the shore that is exceptional; from a deep offshore wreck it is a good day rather than a remarkable one, and the difference is the ground rather than the angler.

THE RECORDED MAXIMUM is 130 centimetres and 18.1 kilograms in FishBase. Fish approaching that are associated with deep offshore wrecks and are genuinely rare. Quoting the maximum beside a shore fishery describes two different populations as though they were one.

SO THE USEFUL VERSION OF THE QUESTION IS "how big do pollack get where I am fishing", and the answer is set by depth and structure. A shallow inshore reef holds juveniles and sub-adults; a deep wreck holds the large fish, because that is where they have moved to.

GROWTH IS MODERATE AND THE LARGE FISH ARE OLD, which combined with strong site attachment means a wreck that has produced several big pollack can stop doing so, and will not replace them quickly.

AND THE MANAGEMENT POSITION HAS CHANGED for this species in some areas within the last few years, which is unusual for a fish long treated as unproblematic. Check the current rules rather than relying on a remembered position or an older assessment.

Pollack are not a dangerous fish to hold, and most of the harm done to them happens before anybody touches them.

THE BAROTRAUMA IS THE REAL PROBLEM. Pollack have a closed swim bladder and are frequently taken from forty metres or more. Brought up quickly, the gas expands, and a fish arriving from depth may be visibly distended and unable to submerge. A pollack released at the surface floating will not survive, and a large proportion of deep-caught fish returned casually die.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT. Where fish are being released from depth, recompression with a weighted descending device is the intervention with evidence behind it. Where that is not practical, the honest response is to stop fishing that depth for fish you intend to return, or to keep what you catch within the rules and stop when you have enough. A fish that will not go down is not exhausted; it is injured.

THE FISH ITSELF IS STRAIGHTFORWARD. No cutting teeth — small gripping teeth that will graze rather than cut — and no venomous spines. The gill covers are hard-edged. Support the fish horizontally and use pliers.

THE SHORE FISHERY HAS THE OPPOSITE PROBLEM. Shallow-caught fish do not suffer barotrauma, and they are mostly juveniles. Those are fragile in the ordinary way: wet hands, minimal air time, and back into water rather than dropped down a rock face.

AND RETURNING FISH FROM HEIGHT IS ITS OWN INJURY. Rock and pier marks frequently mean a drop of several metres, and a fish that hits the water flat is damaged. A drop net or a lowered return is worth the trouble, and where neither is possible that is a fact about the mark rather than about the fish.

Pollack lure fishing is organised around a single, distinctive behaviour, and once that behaviour is understood the lure choices explain themselves.

A POLLACK LIFTS OFF STRUCTURE TO INTERCEPT AND THEN DIVES BACK. The fish holds close to a reef, wreck or kelp edge, rises into the water column to take something passing above, and returns immediately and powerfully to the ground. That downward run on being hooked is the species' signature and it is the thing every tackle and lure decision has to accommodate.

SO THE LURE MUST BE PRESENTED ABOVE THE GROUND, NOT ON IT. Fishing a lure along the bottom for pollack loses tackle and misses fish; fishing it a few metres up puts it where the fish are looking. That is why the traditional approach is to drop to the bottom, count up, and retrieve slowly upward — a search of the water column above the structure rather than of the structure itself.

A SLOW, STEADY, RISING RETRIEVE IS THE CLASSIC PRESENTATION and it works because it mimics something swimming up and away. Pollack follow and take from below, which is also why takes so often come as the lure is well off the bottom and why a retrieve that stops kills the take.

SOFT PLASTIC SHADS AND JELLYWORMS ON WEIGHTED HEADS DOMINATE for good mechanical reasons: they can be fished at a controlled depth, they have a tail action at slow speed, they are cheap enough to lose on rough ground, and a long slim profile matches the sandeel and small fish pollack eat. Weight is chosen to reach depth in the tide rather than for the fish.

METALS AND JIGS COVER DEEPER WATER AND STRONGER TIDE, and shore fishing over kelp uses lighter versions of the same logic — a lure that swims just above the weed rather than in it.

BAROTRAUMA IS THE REASON DEPTH MATTERS BEYOND THE FISHING. Pollack from deep water suffer swim bladder expansion and frequently cannot return, so a lure choice that works shallower ground is also a choice about whether fish can be released. Where deep-water pollack are being caught and released, the outcome is often poor whatever is done, and that is worth knowing before deciding what to fish.

WHAT MAY BE RETAINED IS A MATTER FOR THE COMPETENT AUTHORITY; pollack retention has been restricted in some areas and the position changes.

Pollack are caught in three quite different situations and the method in each is dictated by what the ground will tolerate.

DRIFTING A WRECK IS THE CLASSIC BOAT METHOD. The boat drifts over the structure and a lure or bait is dropped, allowed to reach depth and retrieved slowly upward, exploiting the fish's habit of rising off the wreck to intercept. The whole technique is a search of the water column above the structure, and the drift is what covers the ground. Getting the drift right — its line, its speed, and how the tide sets it over the wreck — is more consequential than the lure.

REEF AND ROUGH GROUND FROM A BOAT is the same logic in shallower water, and it permits lighter tackle and more frequent contact with the bottom. Here the depth is manageable enough that fish can often be returned, which is not always true of deep wreck fishing.

SHORE FISHING OVER KELP IS THE THIRD AND IT IS A DIFFERENT PROBLEM. Pollack come into kelp-covered rock ground, particularly at dusk and after dark and particularly in the cooler months, and the method is a lure or a float-fished bait worked just above the weed. The constraint is snagging, so weedless soft plastics and float presentations dominate, and the fishing is done from rock marks that are themselves a safety consideration.

BAIT METHODS WORK AND ARE UNDERUSED. A live or fresh sandeel, a fish strip or a large worm bait fished on a flowing trace above the ground takes pollack well and takes larger ones in some conditions, and the flowing trace exists precisely to keep the bait off the ground and moving.

DEPTH IS THE WELFARE VARIABLE ACROSS ALL THREE. Pollack from deep water suffer barotrauma and frequently cannot be returned successfully, so the choice of ground is also a choice about whether released fish survive. Anybody intending to release should be thinking about depth before method.

AND RETENTION MEASURES FOR POLLACK HAVE CHANGED IN RECENT YEARS IN SOME AREAS. What may be kept, where and when is a matter for the competent authority, and FishingHQ does not state what any current rule is.

Pollack tackle answers one behaviour, and once that behaviour is understood every element of the outfit explains itself.

THE FISH DIVES FOR THE STRUCTURE IT CAME OFF. A pollack rises into the water column to take and then goes straight back down, hard, into reef, kelp or wreck. That first run is the whole fight and it is the only part that matters. If the fish reaches the structure the line is cut.

SO THE DRAG SETTING IS THE CENTRAL DECISION AND IT IS A GENUINE DILEMMA. Locked down, the hook pulls or the line parts against structure. Too loose, the fish reaches the wreck. The setting most experienced anglers use gives line grudgingly under a heavy load and is set before the drop rather than adjusted during the run, because there is no time.

BRAID CHANGED THIS FISHERY AND THE TRADE IS REAL. Low-stretch braid transmits the take at depth, allows a hook to be set through fifty metres of line, and cuts water resistance so less lead is needed. It also removes the shock absorption that a diving fish is applying directly to the hook hold, which is why a length of monofilament or fluorocarbon leader is standard rather than optional — it is doing a mechanical job, not a visibility one.

THE ROD IS A COMPROMISE BETWEEN LIFTING AND CUSHIONING, for the same reason. Enough backbone to turn a fish off the bottom, enough tip to absorb a headshake at depth.

WEIGHT IS SET BY TIDE AND LINE DIAMETER, exactly as it is for cod, and getting the lure to the right depth on the drift is most of the technique the record's lure section describes.

AND DEPTH IS THE WELFARE VARIABLE THAT OVERRIDES ALL OF IT. Pollack from deep water suffer barotrauma and frequently cannot be returned successfully. If fish are to be released, the tackle decision that matters most is the choice to fish shallower ground. Retention measures for pollack have changed in some areas in recent years and are a matter for the competent authority.

Pollack spawning behaviour is worth separating from pollack spawning, because what the fish DOES around the reproductive period changes where it is and what condition it is in for a substantial part of the year.

THE FISH LEAVES THE GROUND IT IS NORMALLY FISHED ON. Mature pollack move off the inshore reef and kelp they occupy for most of the year and gather in deeper water over the shelf to spawn in late winter and spring. That is a genuine relocation rather than a change of depth on the same mark, and it is why inshore rock and shallow-reef fishing for the larger fish falls away over that period while boat fishing in deeper water can improve.

AGGREGATION IS PART OF IT, and it has the consequence aggregation always has: fish that are normally dispersed over a large area of ground become concentrated and predictable, which makes them easier to locate and easier to deplete locally. Pollack are not a formally protected aggregating species in the way some reef fish are, and the mechanism is the same.

CONDITION FALLS SHARPLY AND STAYS DOWN FOR A WHILE. Spawning is expensive, and post-spawn pollack are thin, poor-conditioned fish that fight less hard and are markedly less good on the table. A pollack of a given length in early spring may weigh considerably less than the same fish in autumn, which is worth knowing before drawing conclusions about a mark from a spring session.

FEEDING BEHAVIOUR CHANGES AROUND IT TOO. Feeding activity reduces through the spawning period and then rises sharply afterwards as fish recover, which is a substantial part of why late spring and early summer produce such reliable inshore fishing as the fish return to the shallower ground.

THE SMALL FISH DO NONE OF THIS. Immature pollack remain inshore on kelp and rough ground throughout, which is why shore fishing for small pollack continues year-round while the larger fish are absent — the two size classes are on completely different schedules.

AND THE PRACTICAL CONCLUSION IS ABOUT RESTRAINT RATHER THAN TIMING. A concentrated, poor-conditioned, reproductively active population is the worst moment to fish hard, and retention measures for pollack have changed in some areas in recent years for reasons connected to stock condition. What applies anywhere is a matter for the competent authority.

Pollack grow quickly. FishBase records a maximum reported age of only 8 years against a maximum length of 130 cm, which is a fast-growing profile and means a large pollack is not necessarily an old one. They mature at three to four years.

Pollack spawn in late winter and spring in deeper offshore water over the shelf, releasing large numbers of buoyant pelagic eggs into the water column — a broadcast event with no nest, no guarding and no parental care of any kind. Eggs and larvae drift in the upper layers before the young fish settle onto shallow inshore ground, kelp and rough bottom, and work progressively deeper as they grow, which is why small pollack are a shore fish and large ones are a boat fish, and why inshore kelp condition matters to a stock that is fished over wrecks a long way out.

Active mid-water predators taking small fish, sandeels and crustaceans, hunting upwards from structure and typically ambushing prey silhouetted above them. FishBase places them at a trophic level of 4.3, higher than cod. The upward-hunting habit is why lures worked above the fish outfish baits fished on the bottom for this species.

Vision dominates, consistent with a fish that hunts upwards against the light. Pollack feed strongly at dawn and dusk and in the low light over deep reef. They are also responsive to vibration, which is why a soft plastic with a working tail outfishes a static one.

Inshore reef holds pollack through spring, summer and autumn, with fish moving deeper in winter. Depth range is 40 to 200 m with the fish usually between 40 and 100 m, so shore-caught pollack are the shallow end of a much deeper distribution.

A principal lure species from boat and rock mark alike, and the species that most rewards fishing a lure on the drop. Also a common first large fish for a shore lure angler, because inshore reef holds plenty of moderate-sized pollack within casting range.