It was end of the September when couple of
friends of mine managed to find few juvenile Turbots from the south coast of
Finland. Turbot is not very common species in Finland. There’s few areas where
every 20th flatfish or so could be a Turbot. On the other hand
because of their rarity no one is really fishing for them. So it’s hard to tell
how much you really could catch them if you would target specifically Turbot.
With a small hint of hot spot from my friend I
finally headed for flatfish hunt at October. I started from the small beach
they had caught their specimens couple of weeks ago. With a help of my headlamp
I was scouring the beach and looking of any signs of the juvenile Turbot. After
three hours or so I had not seen any flatties. All I caught was a Three-spined
stickleback (only cause it was quicker than me) and I also scooped up couple of
Straightnose pipefishes with my bare hands.
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| Straightnose pipefish (Nerophis ophidion). |
I hopped to my car and drove to the next
potential beach. I had been there about fifteen minutes and I was just at the
end of the beach when I saw a flat and round little fish lying on the bottom.
There it was, a Turbot (small one but still a Turbot). When I dropped my little
piece of worm first time right in front of it, it took a short sprint away from
me. Well, I followed it and tried again. There were absolutely no reactions to
my bait. I had decided that I will catch that fish even thought I had to spend whole
night trying it. I changed my bait to a red pinkie and offered it to the fish.
It tried to taste it immediately but I could not hook it. So I kept trying and
finally after few minutes (which by the way felt like hours) it bit again and
finally it was mine! How it can feel so good to catch a fish that can fit
completely to your palm?
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| A juvenile Turbot (Scophthalmus maximus or Psetta maxima). |
I tried couple of more places in hope of the
Flounder but all I could catch was one Sand goby. So I headed back home and was
able to go sleeping at six o’clock at the morning.
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| Turbot on its own element. |
Few days later I headed to another small beach
in search of the Common goby. The first looks to the water showed that there
were plenty of gobies to fish. In this point I have to mention that I was
fishing at bright day light. Most of the people hunting for smallest goby
species are fishing in dark. I tried to concentrate to the smaller specimens
because the “bigger” ones would be most likely Sand gobies. I managed to catch
over twenty gobies and at home I found out that there were two Common gobies
among them.
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| Common goby (Pomatoschistus microps). |
After these two trips my year count is now on
44 hooked species from Finnish waters plus one “hand picked” species (Straightnose
pipefish). Also my all times species count raised to 121 thanks to my first ever Turbot.
