Western Baltic, Germany

Atlantic Herring

Clupea harengus

The great schooling forage fish of the Northwest Atlantic, averaging larger than its Pacific herring counterpart. 'Sardine' is a trade name only — canned young Atlantic herring were the basis of Maine's old sardine industry. Immense schools feed cod, tuna, seabirds and whales as well as anglers' bait freezers.

Vimba

Vimba vimba

An anadromous brackish-water cyprinid of the Baltic lagoons and the Danube that runs into rivers to spawn in spring. Its status is mixed across borders: it is protected in Poland and controlled under Annex II of the EU Habitats Directive in Germany, but it remains a common catch around the Baltic and in Danube waters — check the local rules before fishing for it.

Garfish

Belone belone

A silvery, needle-beaked surface hunter whose spring shoals pack Baltic and North Sea beaches and piers. Famous — and nothing to worry about — are its green bones, coloured by the harmless mineral vivianite. Hornhecht in German, geep in Dutch, orphie in French.

Turbot

Scophthalmus maximus

The king of flatfish — a broad, left-eyed ambush predator whose eyed side carries bony tubercles instead of scales. It eats fish, not worms, and lives over sand and gravel banks off Europe's coasts. Steinbutt in German.

European Flounder

Platichthys flesus

The estuary flatfish of the Baltic and Wadden Sea — rough, warty and one of the few sea fish that tolerate fresh water and run far up rivers in summer. Its rough skin separates it from the smooth, orange-spotted plaice. Flunder in German, flet in French.

Dab

Limanda limanda

The rough-skinned little flatfish of sandy North Sea and Baltic ground — modest, numerous and a mainstay catch on light gear with simple worm rigs. Its calling card is the lateral line curving in a semicircle over the pectoral fin, and its skin feels like fine sandpaper, quite unlike the smooth plaice.