Comber fishing: the predator Spain calls a little goat
The last article in this series was about a fish named after writing. This one is named after a goat. Carl Linnaeus described it in 1758 as *Perca cabrilla*, using a name that fishermen on the Spanish Mediterranean coast were already using: cabrilla. This article is about the comber, *Serranus cabrilla* — the closest relative of the painted comber and the fish it is most often confused with.
A little goat with a saw on its gill cover
The origin of scientific names is recorded by the ETYFish Project (page on the Serranidae, version v. 15.0 – 17 August 2026). For *cabrilla* it says: a local name for this species — or similar serranids — on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, “probably a diminutive of cabra, Spanish word for goat”: probably the diminutive of cabra, Spanish for goat. So roughly little goat or kid. The genus name *Serranus* comes from Cuvier (1816) and derives from Latin serra, a saw — according to ETYFish because of the serrated preopercle, and explicitly that of *S. cabrilla* and *S. scriba*. ⚠️ Why a goat, none of the sources explains.
The goat across half of Europe
The name list at GBIF (key 2388710, 113 entries, read on 29.09.2026) shows how far the image has travelled. Spanish lists “Cabrilla” and simply “Cabra”, the goat. German gives not only “Sägebarsch” but also “Ziegenbarsch”, the *goat perch*. French has it several times over: “Serran chèvre”, the *goat* serran, “Serran-chevrette”, the *little goat*, and “Serran cabrille”, borrowed from Spanish. In Polish it is “Kabryl”. The other languages go their own ways: Greek “Χάνος”, Turkish “Asil hani”, the *noble* hani, Serbian “Kanjac”, Slovenian “Kanjec”, Finnish “Pastelliahven”, Dutch “kammer” and “tandbaars”, the *tooth perch*, Portuguese “Serrano-alecrim” and simply “Alecrim” — which is the Portuguese word for rosemary. ⚠️ Why rosemary, the list doesn’t say.
Italy has a story of its own. Italian Wikipedia calls it “perchia” and cites the Ministerial Decree no. 175216 of 16 April 2025, which sets the Italian trade names of fish species. Alongside that it lists regional names: sperga in Veneto, bolaxo in Liguria, boccaccia in Tuscany, precchia in Campania, sirrania in Sicily. One fish, five coasts, five names.
How to recognise the comber — and tell it from the painted comber
English Wikipedia describes it as relatively stocky, with a large head and strong jaws. The colour ranges from light brown through dark brown to a strong reddish brown. Along the flanks run seven to nine darker vertical bars, and these bars are interrupted by a pale, white to yellowish horizontal stripe that runs from head to tail. On the side of the head there are a few yellow or orange horizontal lines. The tail fin is slightly truncate, and in the water the first dorsal fin is usually held folded flat.
- The horizontal stripe: a pale stripe from head to tail that crosses the dark vertical bars — that is the mark of the comber.
- The head lines: yellow or orange and running lengthwise. The painted comber, by contrast, has blue, wavy lines — its “writing” — and a violet-blue belly patch that the comber lacks.
- The bars: seven to nine in the comber, five to seven in the painted comber according to Wikipedia.
- The size: FishBase gives 40 cm standard length as the maximum, with 25 cm being common. That is a little more than the painted comber.
Where it lives and what it eats
- Distribution: according to FishBase the eastern Atlantic from the English Channel south around the Cape of Good Hope to Natal in South Africa, including the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries, plus the Mediterranean, the western Black Sea and “possibly” the Red Sea. The range spans 57° N to 35° S. For Britain, Wikipedia names the warmer waters of southern and south-western England and off west Wales.
- Depth and bottom: FishBase gives 5 to 500 metres, demersal, on the shelf and the upper continental slope, over rock, in Posidonia meadows, on sand and mud. So it goes considerably deeper than the painted comber, for which FishBase mostly gives down to about 30 metres.
- Behaviour: according to Wikipedia solitary and territorial.
- Prey: FishBase: “fishes, cephalopods and crustaceans” — fish, cephalopods and crustaceans. Off the Canaries, according to a study cited by Wikipedia, diet depended on size: smaller fish ate more crabs, larger ones more shrimps. Elsewhere small fish, bristle worms and squid have also been found, and it even eats dead marine animals.
- Maturity and water: sexually mature according to FishBase at 13.7 cm; the temperature range goes up to 26 °C.
Male and female at once
Like its relative with the writing, the comber is a hermaphrodite: according to Wikipedia, mature fish carry ovaries and testes at the same time and can spawn as a male or as a female. There are even known cases of self-fertilisation — in fish that found no partner to spawn with. According to Wikipedia, spawning takes place from May to July.
How to fish for it — reasoned from its biology
FishBase lists the comber as a game fish (gamefish), for commercial fishing as “minor commercial”, and also in the aquarium trade; the price category is “Medium”. According to Wikipedia, around 1,000 tonnes are landed from European waters, eaten and also processed into fishmeal. None of the sources gives instructions for the rod. ⚠️ What follows is a conclusion drawn from its biology, not a sourced statement: a territorial loner that holds over rock, seagrass, sand and mud and occurs down to 500 metres is not tied to the shallow rock edge the way the painted comber is — it can hold deeper and over more open ground. A lure worked close to the bottom that looks like a crab, shrimp or small fish matches its prey pattern; and because it also takes carrion, a natural bait works just as well.
⚠️ And a second conclusion: the IUCN lists it as “Least Concern”, not threatened. FishBase, however, rates its vulnerability to fishing as “Moderate to high” (55 out of 100) — higher than the painted comber — and the doubling time of a population at 1.4 to 4.4 years. Minimum sizes and closed seasons are set by each country — check them locally. And whatever you don’t want to eat is best released quickly.
Four contradictions, left open
- How deep? FishBase gives 5 to 500 metres. Wikipedia cites the IUCN and says down to 450 metres.
- What does it eat? FishBase: fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, on an equal footing. Wikipedia cites the same FishBase and turns it into: eats “mainly” crustaceans — so above all.
- Does the Red Sea belong? FishBase: “possibly”, maybe. Records there were long thought to be immigrants from the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. A genetic study (Bos and colleagues, *Marine Biology*, 2020), however, concluded according to Wikipedia that the Red Sea population existed before the canal was built.
- Mature from when? FishBase: 13.7 cm. Wikipedia, based on an identification portal: 152 mm, i.e. 15.2 cm. And in passing: FishBase counts 10 spines in the dorsal fin, Wikipedia 11.
Six names that lead to the wrong fish
- “Sägebarsch”. In German this is not only the name of this species but of the whole family Serranidae — which also includes the groupers and the painted comber. And as with the painted comber, many names say perch: Ziegenbarsch, tandbaars, perchia, Russian “Окунь каменный”, Swedish “medelhavsabborre”, Norwegian “Abborrkilling”, Finnish “ahven”. It is not related to the European perch (Percidae).
- “Schriftbarsch” and “Serran écriture”. Both appear in the GBIF list for the comber — but they are the names of its neighbour *Serranus scriba*, the painted comber. Search for these names and you end up at the wrong fish.
- “Sciarrano”. For the comber, GBIF gives “sciarrano” as the only Italian name — the same name it also gives for the painted comber. The official trade name according to the decree is “perchia”.
- “Bar” and “Bar d'Amérique”. These are in the list too. In French, however, bar is the common name of the European sea bass — a completely different fish from a different family.
- “Mero bord” and “Garrupa”. Mero is Spanish for grouper, and so is garoupa in Portuguese. Both names appear under the comber — and lead to its large relatives.
- Contaminated lists. The English GBIF list contains “Learned Rockfich” — twice, with the same typo —, the French one “Serren-écritue”. A name list is a collection, not a dictionary.
Which leaves the question every article in this series starts with: when. Bottom, depth and prey are set out above, and they are fixed. What changes every day is everything else — air pressure and its direction, wind, current, turbidity, the distance to dusk and dawn. For a territorial predator that stays in its spot, the time window is half the work: the spot stays, the hour doesn’t. That is exactly what StrikeAhead calculates — it takes the conditions on your water and tells you when the trip is worth it. And if you don’t know the area, StrikeAhead Pathfinder tells you who to go out with: curated guides and skippers, personally vetted before listing — licence and insurance —, with verified catches instead of promo photos, no paid ranking and, for you as an angler, no booking fee.