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.