Flatfish

That metamorphosis is unique in the catalog. The young fish loses its symmetry, one eye travels across the skull to join the other, and the adult lives on one flank with its blind side against the sand. Everything else follows: their camouflage, their ambush hunting, and their preference for soft ground.

So you look for them where sand and mud dominate, often near the places where current drops food. Buried a few centimetres down, they give nothing away: the rig has to come to them, dragged slowly along the bottom rather than suspended above it.

The bite is subtle, sometimes barely there — a slight extra weight at the rod tip. Many are lost by striking too early, on a fish that had not yet taken the whole mouthful.