shore rockling?????

can anyone tell me the difference between a shore rockling and the 3 and 5 beard rockling cause ive heard everyone talkin about the shore rockling and i have no idea what the difference is?????? :?

there a few different species of rockling

the ones in question:

3 bearded rockling :
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... hp?id=1876

5 bearded rockling :
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... hp?id=1290

and shore rockling :
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/Species ... hp?id=1740

hope this gives you what you need to know
for other species check here
http://www.fishbase.org/search.php
e.g. enter rockilng in common names section then change contains to end with

then sort by country, submit .. and there you go...

A shore rockling is generally dark bodied with light coloured spots ,three bearded are light coloured body with dark spots .

A shore rockling is generally dark bodied with light coloured spots ,three bearded are light coloured body with dark spots .

i dunno about that, the 3 B rockling is a deep orange, with dark spots, 5 B rockling are generally smaller and paler with hardly any spots. and shore rockling can be as big as the 3 B rockling but paler than the 5 B rockling...

thats going by the ones i've caught in the past, also see previous post...

Hi

Fishbase is definitely the best resource here. Pity the poor buggers in the ISFC trying to sort this one out. If I recall I have a piece in next month's Irish Angler which tries to explain identification... and there's a couple more species btw which have not been mentioned here yet!!! :roll:

Sure slugs are slugs...

only other ones i can think of is the artic, northern and four bearded rockling..

i dont think there are any more around our coast, and you'ld be very lucky to catch more than three of the species...

The only way to confuse the five bearded with the shore is if you cant count :lol: as for id of shore and three bearded ,I could be wrong I dont catch many of them :wink:

i dont see what all the fuss is about,rockling are very easy to identify.i was talking to Dr Richard Briggs of the Agricultural & Environmental Sciences Divsion recently when i was submitting a claim for a specimen three bearded rockling and even he was saying that he doesn`t know why the body of the fish needs to be taken to him for identification because there is no mistaking them for any other fish, not even a shore rockling.

here`s a good book for fish id COLLINS POCKET GUIDE,Fish of britain & europe, ISBN 0-00-219945-9.

its a very detailed book and has 753 species in it