CAPTURING
Dr Roger Munro reveals the secrets and essential knowledge needed to successfully target turbot and brill from the shore
Brill,” I muttered to myself. This was not a comment about the fish I has just landed; I thought I had succeeded in catching a small thornback ray. It was, in fact, a turbot – the only one I have ever caught and it was purely an accidental catch. I was fishing for rays during early summer on Cold Knap beach near Barry when I attempted to cast my double sandeel bait as near as I could to the distant coast of Devon. Instead, I only succeeded in getting it quite close to the coast of South Wales as it landed in a deep gulley just 30 yards out. Despite my best endeavours over the last 60 years, I have yet to catch a brill, nor have I ever seen one caught from the shore.
Although both turbot and brill are widely distributed in the north-east Atlantic they occur with low abundance. They are ecologically very similar and are very closely related since they belong to the same genus. The two species are often confused and can, in fact, produce hybrids. It is suspected that hybridisation may have been increased due to farmed turbot released in the 1990s for the purposes of stock enhancement. They are both sinistral species: they turn on to their right hand side and have their eyes and nostrils on the left.
Their low abundance and their similarities raise the question as to how the populations can sustain themselves and how they avoid strong competition for shared resources.
Turbot and brill share several ecological characteristics. In their early demersal stage, turbot and brill may potentially compete for food as they have comparable prey spectrums, mainly feeding on large and mobile prey such as fish and shrimps. The highest densities of turbot and brill in the North Sea occur early after the fish have settled on their highly restricted nursery grounds.
Brill are less common than turbot in UK and northern European waters. Both turbot and brill grow relatively fast: juvenile turbot reach around 30cm by the age of three years. Both species are carnivorous in the adult stage and are found in similar depth ranges along the European coastline; large specimens have been observed to a depth of about 100m. Both species inhabit shallow, soft bottom habitats but turbot is a rather sedentary, somewhat inactive, species.
There are indications that they migrate from the nursery grounds in the south-eastern North Sea to the more northern areas; adult turbot are more tolerant of the colder conditions in the northern North Sea where temperatures are too low for juveniles to survive. Genetic studies have revealed that Baltic turbot differ from turbot in the North Sea with the Kattegat (sea area between Denmark and Sweden) being a transition zone.
