Wide-eyed flounder
Fish · Last reviewed 2026-08-25
A small left-eyed flatfish of warm Atlantic and Mediterranean sand, with eyes set unusually far apart on the males, and the left-eyed flatfish of Canarian and Mediterranean sand.
Catching Wide-eyed flounder
Everything here on fishing for it. Each entry opens the page behind it.
- Ground
- When
- May — months recorded at the places that document it, not a season for the whole range.
- Where
- 1 place FishingHQ documents — strongest claim anywhere: recorded here · From the shore
The flatfish a British or northern European angler knows — plaice, dab, sole, flounder, turbot — are right-eyed or belong to families a Mediterranean angler rarely meets. *Bothus podas* is a bothid, a left-eyed flounder, and it is what turns up on the clean sand beside Canarian and Mediterranean rock.
It is small and beautifully camouflaged: a rounded, sandy-brown flatfish blotched and ringed with pale spots and dark speckles, changing pattern to match whatever it is lying on. The English name comes from the eyes, which in mature males are set startlingly far apart on a raised interorbital space — the gap is much narrower in females and young fish, so a wide-eyed wide-eyed flounder is a male.
FishBase records a maximum of 45 cm and 0.7 kg over a depth range of 15 to 400 m, though the fish taken from shore marks are far smaller and far shallower. Three came to a light-tackle angler in a week on Lanzarote, from the outer breakwater and from the small pier, on soft plastics worked over the clean patches between rock.
Its range runs the Mediterranean and Adriatic and the African coast from Mauritania to Angola, including Madeira, Cape Verde and the Canaries. It is edible and small, and its interest to an angler is mostly that it is the reason a lure dragged over sand in the islands occasionally comes back with a flatfish on it.
Where Wide-eyed flounder is documented
Places where public sources describe this species as fished, with how it is fished and how strongly the evidence supports it. This is not a range map and it is not a recommendation — it is what has been written down about a fishery rather than a record of any individual catch, and being listed is never permission to fish.
Lanzarote
1 documented place
Puerto del Carmen harbour, Lanzarote
Harbour wall
Recorded here
From the shore
Reported May
What these strengths mean
- Recorded here
- At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Identification
No photograph of Wide-eyed flounder has passed identity review yet, so none is shown. FishingHQ publishes a species photograph only once somebody has confirmed the animal in it against the species record’s own diagnostic features.
- Scientific name
- Bothus podas
- Family
- Bothidae
- Water
- Saltwater
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Regions
- Mediterranean, Western Europe, West Africa, North Africa
- A LEFT-eyed flatfish: laid with the eyes uppermost, the head points to the left. The northern European flatfish an angler is used to are mostly right-eyed.
- Rounded, almost disc-like outline rather than the oval of a plaice or the diamond of a turbot.
- Sandy brown, blotched and speckled with pale rings and dark spots, and able to change pattern to match the ground.
- In mature males the eyes are set very widely apart on a raised, hollowed space between them; in females and young fish the gap is narrow.
- Small: FishBase records a maximum of 45 cm, and shore-caught fish are a fraction of that.
Size
- Typical
- 10–18 cm
- Large
- 25 cm and over
Exceptional: FishBase records a maximum of 45 cm and 0.7 kg
Lifecycle and reproduction
Demersal on sand and fine ground over a depth range of 15 to 400 m, with the fish available to a shore rod at the very shallowest edge of that. Medium resilience.
Not documented on the FishBase record for this species and not supplied from the family. The pronounced difference in eye separation between the sexes is a sexual dimorphism rather than a reproductive fact, and it is the only sex-linked character established here.
Feeding and senses
Takes small crustaceans, worms and juvenile fish from the sand surface, lying buried or part-buried and taking prey that passes close. It is an ambush feeder with a very short strike, which is why it is caught on lures worked slowly and close to the bottom and rarely on anything moving fast.
Upward vision from a buried position, over a very short range, in clear water. Camouflage is doing the work: what it needs is for something small to come within a few inches of a fish that cannot be seen.
Through the year
Resident on the same ground year-round rather than moving inshore and offshore with the season as the northern flatfish do. The shore captures come from the shallowest edge of its range at any time of year, and depth rather than month is what governs where it can be reached.
Distribution
Eastern Atlantic: Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea ; Mauritania to Angola, including Madeira, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands
This is a biological range — where the species occurs, not a prediction that you will catch one. To browse the fishing geography FishingHQ holds, start at fishing places.
Why anglers care
A regular incidental capture in Canary and Mediterranean light lure fishing over the sand between rock, and a species hunter's target. Taken on small soft plastics worked slowly on the bottom and on tiny baits fished static on clean ground. It is the flatfish of warm eastern Atlantic sand, and the one a northern angler is least prepared to recognise because it lies the other way up.
Handling and returning
A small, soft, delicate fish with nothing on it that will injure a hand. Wet hands, support it flat rather than by the jaw, and return it quickly — a small flatfish left on hot sand or rock does not recover.
Where to go next
Where it lives
More fish
Not related to this page — just the rest of the section. There is little else joined to this subject yet, and a short page should still lead somewhere.
Sources and evidence
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Family, maximum size, depth range, environment, distribution and the IUCN assessment for Bothus podas.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature (Conservation authority)Relied on for: The Least Concern assessment for Bothus podas, assessed 13 May 2013.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Species hunting adventures on Lanzarote — a four-part shore diary with a full tally — Something Fishy Going On (angling blog), parts also posted to World Sea Fishing, 2014 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: That this species is taken from named public shore marks on Lanzarote, how many were caught across one week in May, and the light-tackle methods and baits that took them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Why the 2 connections on this page are here, and the sources
How it is caught
Reported, not established — 1 connection
Reported, but without independent support. Recorded because it is in circulation, not because it has been shown to hold.
Light rock fishing
Recorded three times from the outer breakwater and the small pier on soft plastics worked slowly on the bottom over sand.
- Species hunting adventures on Lanzarote — a four-part shore diary with a full tally — Something Fishy Going On (angling blog), parts also posted to World Sea Fishing, 2014 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: The light-tackle methods, rigs, lures, baits and hook sizes a species-hunting angler used on Lanzarote, and the species each took.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Where it lives
Backed by research — 1 connection
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Inshore ground
Recorded as demersal from 15 to 400 m across the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic islands, on the soft bottom a left-eyed flounder lies in.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Bothus podas.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.