The species hunting bug.

I’ve been species hunting for over a decade, setting myself targets, both short and long term, and having lots of fun working towards trying to achieve them. It seems to be a branch of angling that is gaining popularity, whether that be individual anglers doing their own thing like me, or people taking part in species hunting competitions, either with friends or taking part in sponsored events where there are prizes to be won. 

My mate Ryan has caught the species hunting bug this year. For a bit of fun, he’s doing a saltwater species hunt with a few of his mates, and they're now exploring new ways to fish in places they've never fished before, targeting as many different species as they can. 

Earlier this month, after spending a day with him locally during which he added lesser weever, short spined sea scorpion and three spined stickleback to his tally, we drove across the country to Stranraer, to see if we could add a few more species to his tally. I wanted to see if I could catch a new species too while we were there. Inspired by another species hunting friend of mine Mike, I planned to spend some time fishing with tiny sabiki to target juvenile herring, hoping that, like he did last year, I’d perhaps get lucky and catch my first ever sprat in amongst them. To begin with though, we targeted sand goby straight down the harbour wall using small hooks baited with tiny pieces of ragworm. We quickly caught a few of them, another addition to Ryan's 2025 species hunting tally.

This is a sand goby. There are two other closely related species that can be found in the UK, out in deeper water usually. They are the Lozano’s goby and the Norway goby. I’ve been reading up on them recently, trying to get a handle on identification methods for both, but I'm very confident I’ve ever caught either of them. I really enjoy learning about new fish species and building up my knowledge.

After initially catching dozens of them from the cleaner areas on the bottom, we started moving around, dropping our rigs closer to some structure. This produced some small wrasse and two additional goby species, but Ryan had already caught all the species we caught earlier in the year.

Fishing close to rocky patches produced a few fairly large black goby,…

…and the odd rock goby too. 

At this point in the session, we got a slight surprise when we turned around to discover we had been joined by a third fisherman, who had decided to get rather close to us. A rather friendly juvenile European shag had landed nearby and had slowly made its way over to where we were fishing. I've been doing a spot of birdwatching this year, so I took a break from fishing to take a few pictures of the bird.

Even efficient predators appreciate a free meal!

Shifting my attention back to fishing, I then switched over to a slightly heavier setup and a set of sabiki. Casting them around in different directions and working them back towards me to try to locate any herring shoals, I didn't get that many bites initially, but eventually I did manage to catch a couple of juvenile herring. They're not a species I particularly enjoy catching if I'm honest, as they don't react well to being handled, their scales being very delicate and coming off very easily. I quickly did the necessary checks to confirm that they were indeed herring and put them back. Ryan hadn't caught a herring this year, so I let him use my sabiki rod for a while, but he didn't manage to catch one, so we decided to move to a second spot. 

We were unsure if the area we wanted to get to would be accessible, but after a quick drive and a short walk, we discovered the long man-made structure was and started fishing from it. Ryan dropped tiny pieces of ragworm down the side to begin with, whilst I focused on catching a sprat again. I managed to catch another couple of juvenile herring, and as Ryan wasn't having much luck down the side, he had a go at slowly jigging the sabiki again. After a bit of patience, he eventually got a couple of juvenile herring, his first of the year.

Then as we were chatting, Ryan spotted a strange fish and pointed it out to me. I realised almost straight away that it was a pipefish! It was quite small and was swimming around slowly in an upright position just underneath the surface of the water. Sadly, it didn't hang around for long before disappearing out of sight. That's the first time I've seen a pipefish in the UK. There are six species of them found here, and I'd love to catch any of them. Next month I plan to go hunting for them!

Before we left, we moved along to the end of the pier and tried our luck there. My sabiki didn't produce anything, so I switched back to fishing down the side again. In amongst lots of black goby, rock goby and goldsinny wrasse both of us pulled out a few small pouting.    

Yet another addition to both our species tallies for this year.

It had been quite an enjoyable day trip to Stranraer and worth the long drive to get there. We'd caught some interesting species, made a feathered friend and seen a pipefish! Next month Ryan and I are hoping to head down south to fish Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. If we go, I'm confident we can both catch some new additions to this year's tally, and I might hopefully catch a new species too!

A week or so later, I met up with another convert to species hunting, welsh angler Ben Price. For years Ben was a specimen angler, targeting large fish around the Pembrokeshire coast, where he lives. A few years ago, he decided to give species hunting a go, and it's safe to say he's now addicted! A reader of this blog, he was so inspired by some of my posts about the fishing around Scotland that last year he decided to visit and had a very successful trip. Some of the fish he caught up here helped him to win the Angling Trust's 24/25 Elite Species Hunt with an incredible total of seventy six species! 

Spending a week up in Scotland again, after spending several days on his own up in the highlands, where he added butterfish, coalfish, cod, flapper skate, sea trout, tadpole fish, and two spotted goby to his tally for the 25/26 competition, he headed down to Edinburgh. It was good to meet up with Ben again, and the two of us spent a couple of days fishing around Edinburgh and East Lothian, trying to catch reticulated dragonet, short spined sea scorpion, topknot, viviparous blenny and Yarrell's blenny.

One of the venues we fished was St Abbs Harbour. Ben was blown away with the place and we caught quite a few fish. Whilst fishing with tiny hooks trying to catch a reticulated dragonet, we caught quite a lot of small flatfish.  

St Abbs Harbour has a health population of tiny plaice in it.

In amongst all the juvenile plaice and flounder, I also caught this tiny dab.

After catching several long spined sea scorpion, Ben caught a short spined sea scorpion, which was one of his target species. He then spotted a small group of dragonet in close, and we both managed to catch quite a few of them. Carefully inspecting each one, they all sadly turned out to be common dragonet. Still, this was a first time capture for me on the east coast of Scotland. Whilst targeting them, I also caught a painted goby, also a first time capture for me on the east coast of Scotland.

My painted goby with its distinctive dorsal fin markings and pale saddles.

Casting out into the middle of the harbour again, we caught a few more tiny flatfish, and then I caught another dragonet. This one turned out to be the one Ben was after, a reticulated dragonet. Sadly, like a lot of fish in the area, it was riddled with black spot disease. Its eyes in particular were badly scarred because of this.

My second Scottish reticulated dragonet. Not the most photogenic example of the species.

I was hopeful that Ben would catch one too, but after a while we threw in the towel and turned our attention to the area where I caught a topknot earlier this year. We both knew that it was a long shot and predictably, even if there was one down there, the resident wrasse had other ideas, our ragworm didn't stay down there very long before being munched by one.

A nice male corkwing wrasse. One of several wrasse we caught.

Soon it was time to head back up the road to Edinburgh, Ben had one last late evening session targeting viviparous blenny before making the drive back down to Wales the following morning. Next week I'm heading down to Pembrokeshire to meet up with him again. He's going to hopefully help me catch my first grey triggerfish in the UK, something I'm really looking forward to!

On Saturday morning, I received a message from Ryan, telling me that his mate had caught a striped red mullet. A few hours later, I received a message from Ben, telling me that someone in Scotland had caught a juvenile lumpsucker. Inspired by these captures, on Monday, I headed down to where the striped red mullet had been caught. Having caught the species a few times in the past in both the Mediterranean and also from Swanage Pier in Dorset, I'd love to add one to my Scottish species tally. Collecting some live prawns on my way to the venue, I found a tiny fish in my net with the prawns after scooping them out of a rockpool.

The tiniest corkwing wrasse I've ever seen!

Armed with my bucket of live bait, I had a pretty slow session fishing two rods and only caught a few dab and whiting. Unsurprisingly, no striped red mullet were around or if they were, they weren't tempted by the prawns. I think perhaps they'll be more partial to a nice worm bait, which is what Ryan's mate caught his on, so I'll be baiting up with them during future attempts.

I might be a dab hand at this species hunting lark, but sometimes persistence and luck are what's required!

So, I'm well aware that catching a striped red mullet in Scotland is a real long shot, but as I know about two that have been caught this year fairly locally and also that two were caught last year as well, they're clearly around, so I'm going to keep trying to catch one throughout September. Anyway, I just can't help myself. It's obvious that I too still have the species hunting bug, and I don't think there's a cure!

Tight lines, Scott.

So you're telling me there's a chance!

After hearing reports of a striped red mullet being caught on Granton Breakwater, I decided to get out and try my luck. The angler who caught the striped red mullet has fished on Granton Breakwater for many years and this was his first one. One other friend also caught one there many years ago, so clearly they are a potential catch, albeit an extremely rare one. So, I was under no illusions about my chances when I visited the venue last week. I had two sessions, neither producing a striped red mullet. Fishing small baits on the bottom, I did catch a lot of pin whiting, a few juvenile grey gurnard and a couple of mackerel. The breakwater was very busy and there were lots of people fishing of various ability levels. I witnessed a few leads being cracked off and flying away towards the horizon, and several cans of lager being cracked open too. When “the mackerel are in”, I’ve got to be honest and say it’s not my favourite place to fish!

My mate Ryan came down and joined me for a couple of hours during the first session and as we chatted away, he told me that a friend of his had caught a couple of dragonet in St Abbs Harbour. Quite unusual I thought. Having fished St Abbs Harbour quite a lot over the last decade, or perhaps even a little longer, I’ve never caught or heard of anyone else catching a dragonet there. I just assumed that they were common dragonet, but when I thought I better check and Ryan sent me photos of the fish in question a couple of days later, I was shocked to see that one of them was actually a reticulated dragonet! I jumped straight in the car and headed down there!

St Abbs Harbour has been very good to me over the years, most recently producing my first Scottish topknot. 

My first session was pretty productive in terms of the number of fish and species I caught, but no dragonet were in amongst them. The following morning I headed back down armed with some fresh ragworm. When I arrived, the tide was out and there wasn't much water in the harbour, so I decided to kill some time targeting three spined stickleback. It didn't take long to find a few fairly large specimens in a small rockpool. Tying on a tanago hook, baiting it up with a tiny piece of ragworm and twitching in front of them produced a couple pretty quickly.

First up was this large female.

It was followed by a very colourful male.

Heading back around to the harbour, I rigged up a running ledger and began casting it out onto the cleaner areas out in the middle of the outer harbour. I wouldn't really describe these areas of the harbour floor as sandy, it’s more like fine gravel with a few patches of rougher ground and weed. Slowly twitching the tiny bait back towards me along the bottom, the fish weren't biting as much as the previous day. Eventually I caught a long spined sea scorpion, a common blenny and a nice flounder.

St Abbs Harbour is a great venue to target flounder on ultra light tackle.

As the tide continued to fill the harbour, the fishing slowed down even further, and I went an hour or so without catching any more fish. Eventually, I cast out and just after my rig hit the bottom, my rod tip registered some interest. Leaving the bait for a few seconds to allow this to develop, I wound down and felt the weight of a small fish thrashing away. As it came to the surface, I recognised the shape almost immediately. It was my first ever dragonet from St Abbs Harbour.

A small dragonet, but which species? At first glance it looked like a common dragonet.

In my photo tank, the fish just sat on the bottom and didn’t want to flare its fins, so I had to lift it out to gently extend the second dorsal myself. 

The second dorsal fin had ten rays and a distinctive diagonal pattern to the markings on it. I'd caught my first Scottish reticulated dragonet!

I was over the moon, but couldn’t quite believe I’d caught one after spending such a short an amount of time trying. It felt a bit surreal if I’m honest. Quite a contrast to the umpteen sessions I’d put in to catch the topknot! I continued fishing for a bit longer, but it remained pretty slow, so after catching another two long spined sea scorpion and a second flounder, I called it a day, heading back up to Edinburgh happy enough! I really didn’t expect to catch another new Scottish species so soon after my first Scottish topknot. Chasing fish, particularly rarer species, when you hear about them being caught often leads to disappointment in my experience, but on this occasion, racing to the scene of an unusual capture had really paid off! The reticulated dragonet that Ryan’s friend had caught was a male, much more colourful than my fish, with much taller dorsal fins too, so there are at least two of them in there! I’ll leave them for other anglers to target for the time being, I’m going to get some sabiki out and try to catch a sprat next! Who knows how long that will take!

Tight ines, Scott.

A case of mistaken identity?

On Wednesday I got up early and drove west to fish Upper Loch Creran. I was hoping to get out of the wind on is northern shore, but couldn't find an access point where I could park my car. I drove around to the southern side, parked my car in a lay-by, made the short climb down through the trees and got set up on a small rocky peninsula. Fishing tiny pieces of ragworm on #18 hooks, I was hoping to pick up something unusual that I've never caught before in Scotland. Things were pretty slow, and after a few hours, all I'd caught were a few black goby.

Not very exciting. They seem to be the prominent mini species in Upper Loch Creran.

After a short period, where even the black goby stopped biting, I wound in to put fresh bait on and felt a heavy weight. Please be a lumpsucker. Please be a lumpsucker. Please be a lumpsucker! It wasn't a lumpsucker sadly! It was a rather large, bright orange starfish.

Heaviest catch of the session.

After a while I caught a small dab, and then a double shot of a dab and a small dragonet. The dragonet looked a little bit peculiar though, and this got me a little bit excited. I quickly unhooked the dab, returned it, and began inspected the dragonet. It looked different to every other common dragonet I'd ever caught and had vivid ruby red saddles on its back. Had I caught my first Scottish reticulated dragonet? I've only ever caught one reticulated dragonet before, and that was many years ago at Mevagissey Breakwater in Cornwall.

Here's one I caught earlier! An actual reticulated dragonet. It did have saddles, but they were much less obvious as you can see in this photo.

The fish I had just caught was certainly small enough to be a reticulated dragonet. They don't reach the sizes that common dragonets do.

It had these ruby red saddles on its back. I'd never seen those on a common dragonet before.

I popped it into my tank for further inspection.

Colouration is sometimes not the best way to identify a fish to species level, so I began carefully checking some of its anatomical features. I began by lifting the little fish out of the tank again and checking for a fourth, forward facing spine on the back edge of the operculum. This is not visible to the naked eye, but is instead located by gentle running a fingernail back towards the three backwards facing spines. It was present, and this is a key distinguishing feature of the common dragonet. The reticulated dragonet lacks this fourth spine. I then placed the fish back into the tank and took a photo showing its second dorsal fin. Being a juvenile/female it lacked the obvious colourful patterns on it, so the next thing I checked was the number of rays it had.

I counted nine in total. *The final ray is branched from the same root and is counted as one.

Again, this is the number that a common dragonet is supposed to have. I then compared this to a photo I took of the reticulated dragonet I caught at Mivagissey.

The reticulated dragonet has ten rays in its second dorsal fin. *Again, the final ray is branched from the same root and is counted as one.

So in conclusion, I'd simply caught an oddly coloured common dragonet. Perhaps their colouration varies depending on the sea floor they live on? Usually, common dragonet are found over sandy areas and juvenile/female specimens have a "sandy" livery to match that. The area I was fishing was mixed ground, sloping down from the shore into much deeper water. Perhaps any common dragonet living in such a habitat had this different colouration?

Is this photograph of a "reticulated dragonet" actually a common dragonet that has decided to lead a slightly different lifestyle to most of its species? The internet is full of similar photos that are labelled as reticulated dragonet. Perhaps this is a case of mistaken identity that is now being perpetuated?

Anyway, potential dragonet identification issues aside, I hadn't caught a new Scottish species, which was pretty disappointing after my initial excitement! I carried on fishing for a few more hours, but things remained very slow and all I caught was a few more black goby. I'll be visiting Loch Creran again in the not too distant future. Hopefully I'll get lucky and catch something that's rarely caught, that will push me a little closer to my goal of one hundred species from Scottish venues!

Tight lines, Scott.

Double dragonet.

On day three of my trip I headed to Mevagissey in Cornwall to try and escape the rampaging children that had taken over Ilfracombe. When I arrived just late in the morning it was a nice day and more importantly it was very quiet. Settling down to fish on the outside of the harbour's southern breakwater I was curious to see if the multitude of species that can be caught in the summer were still around. In short the answer was a resounding no! However, it was nice to enjoy some peace and quiet as I sat fishing a scaled down three hook flapper with #14 hooks baited up with small pieces of Dynabait ragworm on ultra light tackle waiting for bites. The fishing was incredibly slow and I was starting to think that in fishing terms the drive had been a complete waste of time when I finally had a bit of interest and caught something. It was a small dragonet that for some reason looked a little funny. Upon further inspection I got a pleasant surprise.

Looking at it casually it would have been easy just to assume it was a common dragonet but something about told me it was different. I think it was the slight red tinge to its head that made me take a closer look at the little chap.

Extending the first dorsal fin revealed a nice pattern and also that the fish was a male.

Extending the tall second dorsal fin revealed another set of striking markings and confirmed my suspicions. I had caught my first ever reticulated dragonet.

I was delighted and probably wouldn't have been bothered if I hadn't caught anything else but over the next few hours I caught a few common dragonets. Another angler then turned up and we had a chat about species hunting. I showed him the photographs of my reticulated dragonet so he could identify one should he catch one and he told me that he'd caught some pilchards whilst out on a charter boat a few days previously. He didn't stay long and didn't catch a reticulated dragonet but managed to catch a few common dragonets too. After he left I caught a second reticulated dragonet and then a few more common dragonets.

Here is one of the common dragonets. Note the completely different fin shape and colouration. They group of spines on the rear edge of the gill plate common dragonet is also slightly larger and stands out more prominently.

Towards the end of the session I tried fishing straight down the wall through gaps in the kelp along at the end of the pier. Using this tactic I had clingfish in mind but instead caught a few of goldsinny wrasse and a long spined sea scorpion. Before heading back to Ilfracombe I decided to get something to eat and ended up trying something new. I can now heartily recommend huss which was very tasty indeed served with some chunky chips. So my trip was going well, whilst the fishing certainly hadn't been frantic at the two venues I'd fished, it had been most productive in terms of catching new species and with three days left I was keen to try and catch some more.

Tight lines, Scott.

Most Wanted : Reticulated Dragonet.

Following on from my last "Most Wanted" post, another example of where misidentification can easily occur is between common and reticulated dragonets. Indeed, following discussions with fellow species hunter Ross Johnston about some of the dragonets we caught last year at the Cornish Lure Festival, I had some doubts about the ones I caught being commons as I assumed at the time. Oops! Subsequently I've been doing a bit of research so that I can decide if my initial identification was correct and so that future dragonet captures can be properly identified.

A small dragonet I caught last year at Megavissey Harbour in Cornwall. At the time I thought it was a common dragonet but there was a small element of doubt in my mind follow a discussion I had with my mate Ross.

To start with adult males of both species are distinct from the females. Like the male cuckoo wrasse, adult male common and reticulated dragonets are quite unmistakable as they have bright, striking markings.

The male common dragonets above display their sail like dorsal fins. Vivid orange and electric blue markings make it quite distinctive. The first ray of the first dorsal fin is unusually elongated. The electric blue markings on the second dorsal fin run almost parallel to the body.

Male reticulated dragonet photos seem to be quite rare. The first ray on the first dorsal fin is not as long as that of the male common dragonet but the second fin is much taller by comparison. The markings on the second dorsal fin are quite different too comprising of bands of light blue spots with thin darker blue borders and yellow halos divided by dark bands and the bands run diagonally back down towards its base.

Two superb images depicting the typical male dorsal fin patterns of both species. Common dragonet on the left and reticulated dragonet on the right

Obviously from the above identifying adult males is not an issue. Females of both species and juvenile males too however can easily be mistaken due to their much less colourful appearance and indeed many of the different descriptions of the colouration of them I've found are somewhat contradictory. In fact I believe that some of the photos that can be found online are mislabelled in a similar way to some photos of gobies. Also in relation to colouration, various sources state that the saddle markings found on their backs can be used to distinguish them because the common dragonet only has three of these whilst the reticulated dragonet has four, the borders of those on the reticulated dragonet also being much more clearly defined. Again in many of the photos I've found online these saddles aren't clear or the labelling of the photos contradicts the number of saddles or how pronounced the borders are. Here are a couple of images that do match the general descriptions of their colouration.

A common dragonet. Pretty bland and the three saddles aren't really obvious due to the fairly mottled colouration.

The saddles are more apparent on this picture of a common dragonet. Note that there are four present but the second one back is quite faint. Perhaps this is actually a misidentified reticulated dragonet?

A reticulated dragonet. Slightly more exciting with some nice turquoise markings and the four saddles are easy to see and reddish brown in colour.

Whilst these example photos above seem to best match the common aspects of most descriptions given other photographs show that not every dragonet is so easy to identify using colouration alone. With this becoming apparent whilst researching I have tried to find some anatomical differences and thankfully there does seem to be a few ways to reliably distinguish between the two that do not rely on colouration or markings.

Size can be used to identify which species is which in larger specimens as reticulated dragonets only grow to about 11cm so any exceeding this length must be common dragonets as they can grow up to about 25cm.

Applying this simple rule means that this must be a female common dragonet and indeed it is one of specimen proportions.

Snout length can also be used. The common dragonet has a much longer snout being two to three times the diameter of their eyes where as the snout of a reticulated dragonet is usually only slightly longer than the diameter of their eyes.

Dragonets have a group of small sharp prickly spines at the edge of their preoperculum. They use this as a defensive mechanism. When threatened they flair their gill plates and these spines stand out giving anything that touches them a rather unpleasant surprise. Common dragonets have four spines in total, one faces forward whilst the remaining three face upwards and backwards. Reticulated dragonets only have three spines and all face upwards and backwards.*

Finally a count of the rays in the second dorsal fin can be used. When doing this bear in mind that the final ray in both species is branched into two so you have to count both of these as one! Common dragonets normally have nine rays whilst reticulated dragonets have ten. Occasionally however common dragonets may have eight or ten so this identifying feature should be used in conjunction with others above if the count is ten.

There is a third species of dragonet found in U.K waters, the spotted dragonet. It's another small member of the dragonet family, only growing to 14cm, and is normally found offshore in very deep water so the chances of ever catching one are extremely remote.

Easily identifiable due to their electric blue spots.

I'm fairly confident now that the dragonets I caught last year were all common dragonets and that armed with the above knowledge I'll be able to positively identify any dragonets I catch in the future. A bit like my problem of differentiating between common gobies and sand gobies last year this is an area of species identification I'm determined to fully master that will of course require catching more dragonets to examine and also photograph. Like I need another excuse to species hunt!

Tight lines, Scott.

*Update: Further research has revealed that this forth spine is not visible to the naked eye. It can however be detected my running a fingernail back along the gill plate towards the other three spines. If it is present your fingernail will catch on it. I have applied this simple test to all dragonets I have caught since writing this post and all of them possessed the forth spine confirming them as the common variety.