Albino Pike, Hybrids & Lost Marine Fish All in UK

Indiziert: 2026-05-17

[00:00:05]How we all doing? So, today I'm going to be looking at some of the weirdest and funkiest fish caught in the British Isles. In fact, one or two of them even I don't know what they are. So, if you have an idea, comment down below. Right, let's get straight into this. I'm going to start with some marine species. So, one of these was the report of a striped bass from Dover's Breakwater. I've only got this little uh screen grab from Sea Angler. I couldn't find any other pictures. If you don't know the significance of this, a stripe bass is a species that is normally on the east coast of North America, not in European waters. So, this is a very, very lost fish. There are not many records of them in Europe, so it's an unusual one. The clue is in the name, but we can tell it's a stripe bass as opposed to a European bass because of the stripes along it. So, just a very, very lost fish that was caught a few years ago.

[00:01:02]This was a species that I'd actually never heard of before. And it's called an Almaco Jack. I think I'm saying that right. And they're in the Jack family.

[00:01:10]So, they're kind of travali, that sort of kind of fish. And this was caught from Ilfrakum in North Devon. There are one or two records of these. There was a record of one from Cornwall, and there was also this one that was caught in the Channel Islands. But yeah, they're a funky looking fish. by no means common, but with warming waters, who knows? We might start seeing more stuff like this turning up. Sticking with North Devon and actually this is a relatively recent picture. And this is a bonito. I believe it got the British record. I think it was something like 9 something. So, you know, decent size fish. And bonito are in the tuna family. They're not as anywhere near as common as blue fin tuna have become in the UK, but again, we're starting to see records of albaore, big eyed tuna, lots and lots of different species turning up. So, they do occasionally turn up on charter boats, but yeah, I bet the guy was absolutely chuffed when he got this one. Sticking with tuna, we've got this big eyed tunny. And this was caught in New Harbor in 1985, weighing 66 lb 12 oz. and it was caught by a 15year-old which is mad. So it's crazy that these things although we tend to think of these weird fish being a recent thing there are obviously historical records of all kinds of strange fish turning up. So the fact that this unusual kind of tuna was caught in a harbor in the 80s by a teenager just adds to the mystery of it.

[00:02:36]What a fantastic strange looking fish.

[00:02:39]So if we head north now then there's the wolfish. So wolfish are an interesting one because they've got a kind of wide distribution. So you get them as far south as Whitby. They get caught all the way up into Scotland on the east coast of Scotland. I know a lot of the divers see them. And then as soon as you get to the very north of Scotland and particularly Ortney and Shetland, they become semi-regular. Still not common, but semi-regular. This one was caught on the Mo Fur. Not a huge one. If you're an angler that maybe travels to Norway, you'll know these things are common as muk up there. So, they are a real northern species. If I'm honest, I don't know anywhere in the UK where you can reliably catch wolfish. There's definitely places where you have a chance of it, but there's nowhere where they're common. So, I would say this is one of the more achievable unicorn species in the UK, but they're still a tricky fish to target and to find. And likewise, another northern species that sometimes turns up in British waters is the halibet. So again, I don't know what it is about Whitby, but you also get the occasional halibet off the whippity coast as well. One of there's some deep holes or or cold currents or something around there that draw these northern species to it. But typically halibet that get caught in the UK are normally again on the very northern coast of Scotland or like where this one was caught in Shetland. So, if you want to catch halibet in the UK, really Shetland is your place to go. But even there, again, they're not a common catch. It's normally when people are perking for coden things and they occasionally pick halibet up. This one's an absolute monster. So, yeah, they do get some big ones sort of drifting down from from colder waters. But yeah, if you want a halibet, head to Shetland. That's the place to go. This is possibly the best marine record that I've ever come across. And I got sent this. I think it was the actual skipper who sent it me a few years ago. And this is a European sturgeon. So these are the native sturgeon. And there's a lot of confusion. I've done videos about it on the channel before, so I'm not going to go super in-depth. But the short and curies of it are most sturgeon, in fact, 99.9% of all sturgeon caught in UK rivers currently will be non-native. There'll be Siberian, Russian sturgeon, diamond sturgeon, sterott sturgeon that have just been washed out of a garden pond and they end up in the Trent or the temps or whatever. You're basically if you catch one, it's just a glorified goldfish. The native sturgeon, the ones that we used to have in the British Isles are the Atlantic sturgeon and the European sturgeon. And this is the European sturgeon. They can get absolutely enormous, over 800 pounds.

[00:05:14]They are monsters. They don't feed in fresh water, so freshwater anglers are highly unlikely to catch them, but they do in the sea. So, this one was caught 15 miles southeast of Dartmouth. It was caught in a a troller, I believe, in a net. Wasn't caught on rotten line, but it just goes to show they are still out there. So, they occasionally will kind of wander into British seas to feed. I don't think they're breeding in British rivers yet, but who knows in the future we might get this very rare fish returning on its own steam. So, it's good to know that they are at least swimming off the British coastline.

[00:05:48]Okay, so let's have a look at freshwater. So, one of the things I mentioned in the previous video that I did on rare fish was albinos. So, has anyone got any albino fish? And I got this picture which was a six pound 4 ounce pike caught out of Devisor'stown Pounds uh in Dorset. I think Devisers endors it. So, yeah, you do occasionally get albino pike. I've seen a few pictures of these over the years. Uh you get albino perch. In theory, any fish can be albino. It's just that obviously normally albino fish get picked up by predators pretty easily. What I think's happened here, because this is quite a mucky canal, it means that that fish has just had a bit more of a chance to hide away and that's why it's got as as big.

[00:06:28]Although six pounds isn't enormous for a pike, considering it's got albinoism, it's quite a good size for it to get to.

[00:06:34]So, hell of a fish, fish fish of a lifetime. Amazing to to see that. So, I mentioned about uh catfish in the last episode, and I did manage to dig out the photo from the Grand Union Canal. So again, this is another channel catfish.

[00:06:50]There are still a few floating around. I don't think there are many. You'd be very, very lucky to get one. They're a North American species. They used to be on the pet trade, uh, but they're banned now, so you shouldn't really be finding them, but obviously the last relics of that pet trade. There was another North American catfish called the black bullhead catfish, which looks similar, but they're much smaller. As far as I'm aware, they're completely eradicated in the UK now. Um, I don't know if anyone's got any kind of in in aquariums. They shouldn't do, but there might be the odd one floating around, but certainly I don't think there are any in any public fishing lakes. They would have turned up by now. Another catfish that turned up, which was certainly very lost, was a redtailed catfish in a small stream. So, this one's obviously been dumped. Uh, it's got too big for its tank. I presume they've dumped it into a river and it's very clearly died. It might even just be that it died in the tank and then they just wanted to get rid of the body kind of mob style and and chuck it in a ditch. But yeah, these sort of very tropical fish, there's no way they're going to survive in the UK. Our temperatures are way too cold. Uh both water temperatures and our winter temperatures. So any tropical fish, they might hang on a little bit in the summer, but they're going to die in the in the winter. So if you have got tropical fish, then you are committing it to a death sentence if you release it into the wild in the UK. So definitely don't do that. So, one thing I didn't touch on last time was hybrids. So, a hybrid is when two separate species spawn and create a new, not a new species, but a mixture of the parents.

[00:08:18]And there are many fish in the UK that can hybridize. And I've been sent a few in here uh that are a little bit interesting. So, these ones are all fairly common, but there are a couple that can really get your head scratching. So, I'll start with this one. This is a chub roach hybrid. A cho, a rub. I don't know what you would call it. They are very very rare. Sometimes they get misidentified as eyed and I can see where people are coming from. A chub roach hybrid and an eye do look fairly similar but they've got different scale counts and different proportions. This one was caught from a southern chalkstream, so unlikely to have eyed in it. There are eyed in some of the Midlands rivers in low numbers, but this one shouldn't have any eyed in it anyway. Not to say it's impossible, but given that there is a large population of roach and a large population of chub, I would be fairly happy in calling that uh a chub roach hybrid. Look at the head. That's almost got like a chub's head. Deeper body like a roach, much redder fins like a roach and and lots of red on the tail, which chub typically have a purely black tail. So, it's got characteristics of both parents. This one was £2.15.

[00:09:28]The reason I've blocked out the angller's face here is because the person who sent in said the angller uh thought it was a roach and quite likes to continue thinking that it's a roach.

[00:09:37]So, I don't want to be that guy that, you know, there's always someone in the comments that go, "That's not a roach.

[00:09:41]That's not a cruisian." Uh, in this case, I'm I'm I'm sorry. It is definitely a hybrid, but it's an amazing fish anyway. It is an incredible fish and arguably rarer than a two-lb roach, although I'm sure most people would rather catch the roach. Okay, so I've saved the best tool last because these are three mystery fish. So I don't even know what these are. I cannot work it out. I have sent these pictures to the Natural History Museum. I have sent them to the IFM, to the FSBI, all these authorities on fish identification. No one has come back with a definitive answer. So I'm going to throw it out to the internet. You can work out what the hell these things are. So, I'm going to start with this one. This was caught in Boston in Lincolnshire and it was down in the tidal reaches of the river Witherm. So, to me it does look like a roach, but it's very, very silvery. Um, the proportions look a little bit bleak like, which leads me to think, could this be a roach bleak hybrid? I'm not aware of those fish being able to hybridize, but who knows? Cyprinids can be weird like that. So, it's a bit of an odd one. Maybe it's just a roach without any coloration in the fins, but I don't know. Something seems off with this one.

[00:11:00]So, um if I had to lean, I would say maybe a roach bleak hybrid, but that would be incredibly unusual. I've never heard of one of those uh before.

[00:11:09]We've then got this fish. So, this was caught on the tidal temps. So, this is such a peculiar fish because it almost looks like a tench cross with a chub.

[00:11:20]definitely isn't that tension chub can't hybridize, but chub is kind of where we're going with it. So, the consensus was that this is some kind of creek chub, which is an American species, a North American species. So, this is definitely not a European species. It's probably some kind of North American chub species. I don't know what kind it is. God knows how it got into the temps.

[00:11:44]My my guess would be that it's been released maybe from a fish market or an aquarium or something like that. It was a one-off. No others have ever been caught. Uh but what a peculiar fish. If anyone is watching this from North America and you might know what that is, do let me know. But the best we could come up with was a creek chub. So this last fish uh got everyone stumped.

[00:12:06]Absolutely no clue. Partly because of where it was caught. So, some people were suggesting it could just be quite a bronzy looking dace, but it was caught in a remote farm pond in Norolk that only had crusions in it. So, a dace would be very, very, very out of place to be in a small remote farm pond.

[00:12:28]Crusians only really hybridize with carp and goldfish. So, I don't think it's a crusian hybrid. So, this is just a really, really weird looking fish. For the life of me, I can't work out what it is. It's not an eyid. It doesn't scale out as an eyid. If you count the lateral line on that, it's not that. It's not a chub. It's not a roach. It's not a rudd.

[00:12:48]Uh maybe it's some kind of European species like a nace or or something like that, but honestly, I'm completely stumped. There is the possibility that it could be an eyed or a chub or or a dace, but maybe it's just deformed or malformed, and that's why people are struggling to pin it. But this has got me stumped. You know, without sounding arrogant, there aren't many fish that I can't work out in the UK, but this one I'm I'm left at a blank. So, if you know down in the comments, let me know. So, if you'd like me to do a video on a fish that you have caught, send your pictures in. The best way to do it is via Instagram, which is fish twitcher. So, I'm looking for fish that you couldn't possibly target. the rarest of the rare, unusual colors, unusual hybrids, maybe a very rare fish. As long as it's UK or Irish, I'll talk about it. Send them in and they'll feature in the next video.

[00:13:39]Hope you enjoyed this. I'll catch you next time. Cheers.

[00:13:43]Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed this vid, why not check out this other video right here.

[00:13:50]If you can, please subscribe to the channel. Only takes a couple of seconds and it really helps me out. I'll catch you in the next one. Cheers.