Leerfish (Lichia amia) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A large, deep-bodied, laterally compressed silver fish with a small head, a large mouth without visible teeth, and a lateral line that runs in a strong wave along the flank, high at the front and dipping low behind the pectoral. The second dorsal and anal are long with a raised sickle-shaped front lobe, dark-edged. The tail is deeply forked.

At distance it reads as a tall, bright silver fish that flashes as it turns, usually alone or in a pair, cruising the edge of the surf or holding just outside a breaking wave. The wavy line is the mark.

Juveniles have dark vertical blotches and school in estuaries and along beaches.

02 Habitat

The surf zone and the water just outside it: beaches, river mouths, the white water off a point, the channel where a lagoon meets the sea. It hunts mullet and other schooling fish in shallow, moving, often turbid water, and it comes into water a diver can stand in.

It also holds over rock at 5 to 15 m near a beach, waiting for bait to move.

Warm months bring it inshore; it is scarce in winter.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

Mostly the Atlantic, from Tangier to the Sahara, with the Atlantic beaches and river mouths from Larache to Agadir the classic ground. Present in the Mediterranean in summer, in smaller numbers.

No Moroccan or Mediterranean study has established its maturity with confidence; the figure here is South African, on a stock of the same species at the other end of its range.

04 Spawning

Late spring and summer, inshore, from roughly May to August in the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic. The young appear in estuaries in late summer.

It grows fast in its first years, then slowly, and the large fish are old.

05 Behaviour

Wary to the point of paranoia. It sees a diver at the edge of visibility and turns away; it rarely comes in to inspect, and a fish that has seen a diver head-on does not return. Movement and flash interest it briefly and then spook it.

It hunts alone or in pairs, patrolling the same stretch of surf on a circuit and passing the same point at intervals. That circuit is the diver’s only advantage.

A hit leerfish runs very hard and very fast, straight, and then fights on the surface.

How you approach it

Ambush in the surf, low, still and hidden, on the line it patrols. It passes the same point on a circuit; a diver who has seen it once waits where it went, not where it was.
Do not swim towards it, do not follow it with your eyes, do not move the gun until it is broadside. It is the wariest fish on this coast.
Turbid, moving water is your cover. In flat clear water it sees you from thirty metres.
A long gun, 110 to 130 cm, and a float with a strong line. A big leerfish runs a hundred metres on the first surge.
Aim high and forward, at the shoulder. A hit behind the middle tears out on the run.

What people get wrong

01 That it is a bluefish. It has no visible teeth, a wavy lateral line and a taller body; it is a jack, not a pack hunter.
02 That it is a deep-water fish. It hunts in water a diver can stand in, in the surf, and it is missed by divers who swim past the white water to the rock.
03 That flash brings it in like an amberjack. It interests it for a second and then sends it away.

Do not confuse it with

The species this one is taken for, and what tells them apart.

Bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix — a mouthful of visible teeth, a straight lateral line and a shorter, flatter second dorsal.
Greater amberjack, Seriola dumerili — a dark band through the eye, a straight lateral line and a rounder body.
Pompano, Trachinotus ovatus — much smaller and rounder, silver with dark spots on the lateral line, in schools in the surf.