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
