Meagre (Argyrosomus regius) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A long, powerful, silver fish with a bronze sheen, a large head with a big oblique mouth, a long dorsal fin with a short spiny front lobe, and a tail that is almost straight-edged. The lateral line is prominent and the inside of the mouth is yellow-orange. There are no bars, spots or stripes.

At distance it reads as a large, pale, slim shape moving slowly over sand or holding in the murk of a surf zone, often in a small group of similar-sized fish. Big ones are unmistakable by size alone: nothing else silver on this coast is this long.

In the season it drums, a deep repeated croak from the swim bladder, audible underwater at tens of metres.

02 Habitat

Sand and mud bottoms near the coast, estuaries, surf beaches and the sandy fringes of rock. It is a fish of turbid water: river mouths, the white water off a beach, the murky edge of a bay. It also holds along deep sandy drop-offs and around wrecks on sand.

It follows bait: mullet, sardine and cephalopods, which it hunts with its ears as much as its eyes.

Young fish grow up in estuaries and lagoons. Adults move along the coast and into estuaries to spawn.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

The Atlantic, above all. From Tangier to Dakhla, with the largest fish in the south: the bay of Dakhla and the coast from Boujdour to the Sahara are known for very large meagre. It is present in the Mediterranean but far scarcer.

Morocco is one of the few places where its biology has actually been studied locally, in the 1970s. The maturity figure here is Atlantic, from Mauritania to Portugal.

04 Spawning

Spring and early summer, from April to July, in and around estuaries and river mouths, where the adults gather and drum. The sound is how spawning aggregations are found, by fishermen as well as by other meagre.

It grows fast when young and slow when old; a metre fish is a decade old and a 1.5 m fish several decades.

05 Behaviour

It moves in loose groups of similar size and hunts near the bottom in poor visibility, where it has the advantage. It is wary but not panicky: a group met in murk often holds and drifts rather than bolting, then moves off together.

It responds to sound. A diver who makes noise sends it away; one who makes none sometimes has a group drift past within a body length.

Big fish are more solitary and hold deeper, on sand at the base of rock or around a wreck.

How you approach it

Ambush on sand at the edge of rock, in turbid water, lying flat and silent. It comes with the murk, not against it.
Listen. In season the drumming carries; a diver who hears it and waits has found the group.
A long gun, 110 to 130 cm, and a float with a strong line. A metre fish on sand runs a long way.
Aim high and forward: the head is large and the vitals are behind it. A tail shot loses the fish and the shaft.
One fish from a group, and leave the group. It moves off together and does not return to a spot it has been shot on.

What people get wrong

01 That it is a fish of clear water. It lives and hunts in murk and surf; clear water is when it is deepest and hardest to find.
02 That the drumming is a boat or a diver’s gear. It is the fish, and in season it is how you find them.
03 That a big one is safe to take because there is no legal size. There is no size because the 1988 table did not list it, not because the species is abundant.

Do not confuse it with

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

Shi drum, Umbrina cirrosa — much smaller, with wavy oblique gold lines and a chin barbel, on shallow sand.
European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax — two separate dorsals, a black spot on the gill cover and a slimmer head; rarely over 80 cm.
Brown meagre, Sciaena umbra — dark bronze, deep-bodied, yellow lower fins, under overhangs in rock.