Painted comber fishing: the predator with writing on its face
Some fish are named after the place where they were found, some after a person. This one is named after handwriting. Carl Linnaeus described it in 1758 as *Perca scriba* — scriba is Latin for scribe. What he meant are the fine, wavy blue lines on its head, which look as if someone had written something on it. This article is about the painted comber, *Serranus scriba* — a small predator from the sea bass family (Serranidae), which also includes the groupers, to whom this series has already devoted an article of their own.
Writing on the head — and a saw on the gill cover
The origin of scientific names is recorded by the ETYFish Project; its page on the Serranidae is dated v. 15.0 – 17 August 2026. For the species *scriba* it says: “scribe, referring to bluish script-like marking on head” — scribe, because of the bluish, script-like marking on the head — and, in brackets, Linnaeus’s own words: “capite scripto”, *with a written-on head*. The genus name *Serranus* comes from Cuvier (1816) and derives from Latin serra, the saw — according to ETYFish because of the serrated preopercle of *S. cabrilla* and *S. scriba* in particular. FishBase says the same more briefly: “Latin, serran, serranus, saw”. A fish with a saw on its gill cover and writing on its forehead.
A scribe on every coast
What stands out is how many languages took over Linnaeus’s image. The name list at GBIF (key 2388714, 89 entries, read on 28.09.2026) shows it right across Europe: German “Schriftbarsch”, Danish “Skriftbars”, Dutch “Schriftbaars” — the *script* perch —, French “Serran écriture”, the *writing* serran, Spanish “Serrano escribano”, the *scribe* serran, Polish “Strzępiel pisarz”, the *scribe*, Czech “kanic písmenkový” and Hungarian “Betűs sügér” — both from the word for letter —, in English itself “lettered perch”, Turkish “Yazılı hani”, the *inscribed* hani. In Greek it is “Γραμματικός”, the learned one, the man of letters, and in a scholarly form even “Σερρανέλος ο γραφεύς” — the little Serranus, *the scribe*. And Chinese lists “紋首鮨”, roughly the pattern-head perch.
Next to the writing stands the colour. In English it is above all the “painted comber”, in Spanish also “Serrano pintado”, both the *painted* one. Besides the man of letters, Greece also has the “Μπογιατζής”, the house painter. In Slovenian it is “Pisanica” — inside it is pisan, *colourful*, from the same word family as pisati, *to write*. And Finnish sums up what science says about it: “raitasaha-ahven”, the stripe-saw-perch. ⚠️ Some names none of the sources explain: the Catalan “Vaca Serrana” and the French “Vachette”, both a cow, the Maltese “Sirena”, the mermaid, or the Greek “Πέρδικα”, the partridge.
How to recognise the painted comber
English Wikipedia describes it like this: a laterally compressed, elongated body with a pointed snout and, for its size, a very large, protrusible mouth full of sharp teeth. Base colour grey, violet or reddish, with five to seven dark brown vertical bars on the flanks. The head is marked with many narrow, wavy blue lines and red spots — that is the writing. Dorsal, anal and tail fins carry red dots, the tail fin is squarely cut off, and in the middle of the body sits a blurred, violet-blue patch. Pectoral and pelvic fins are mostly plain pale yellow.
- The head script: blue, wavy lines on cheeks and gill cover — no other feature is as unambiguous.
- The belly patch: a fuzzy, violet-blue patch in the middle of the body, between the dark vertical bars.
- The mouth: large, protrusible, sharp teeth — a predator’s mouth on a fish that usually measures around 25 cm.
- ⚠️ The mix-up: The same waters are home to the comber *Serranus cabrilla*, same genus name, same saw on the gill cover. According to the descriptions, the blue head script and the violet belly patch belong to the painted comber — when in doubt, look at the head.
Where it holds and what it eats
- Distribution: according to FishBase, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Wikipedia adds the eastern Atlantic from the Strait of Gibraltar to Senegal, including the Canary Islands, and north into the Bay of Biscay (more on that below).
- Depth and bottom: FishBase gives 5 to 150 metres, demersal, mostly down to about 30 metres. It lives on rocky ground and in Posidonia meadows, the Neptune grass of the Mediterranean, and also on muddy bottoms overgrown with algae or seagrass.
- Time of day: According to Wikipedia it spends the day mostly in rock caves, alone or in small groups, and comes out to hunt at dusk. It is territorial and an ambush hunter.
- Prey: “fishes and crustaceans” — fish and crustaceans (FishBase). Wikipedia also names cephalopods, bivalves and worms.
- Size and age: FishBase gives 36 cm maximum length, commonly 25 cm, sexual maturity at 17.3 cm and a maximum age of 16 years.
- The octopus’s neighbour: According to Wikipedia, the painted comber often marks where an octopus lives — it waits at the mouth of the den and eats the leftovers of the shellfish and crabs the octopus throws out.
Male and female at once
The most unusual thing about the painted comber is something you can’t see. FishBase calls it a “simultaneous hermaphrodite”, a hermaphrodite at the same time: according to Wikipedia, every individual carries male and female gonads at once and may even be capable of self-fertilisation. Many groupers, by contrast, change sex one after the other over the course of their lives — the painted comber is both at once. According to Wikipedia, the eggs are laid under stones near the shore. ⚠️ Exactly when, the sources disagree (more on that below).
How to fish for it — thinking from the biology
FishBase explicitly lists the painted comber as a gamefish (“gamefish: yes”) and, for commercial fishing, as “minor commercial”, of little importance; the price category is “Medium”. According to Wikipedia it is caught in small-scale fisheries with hook and line and with trawls, and is considered tasty. None of the sources gives instructions for the rod. ⚠️ What follows is a conclusion drawn from its biology, not a sourced statement: a territorial ambush hunter that holds in rock caves by day and hunts at dusk is to be looked for where rock and Posidonia meet, in shallow water down to about 30 metres, and most likely at dusk. A bait worked close to the bottom and close to cover matches its prey pattern of fish and crustaceans best.
⚠️ And a second conclusion: a fish that is territorial and stays at its spot for years is quickly fished out on a small reef. The IUCN does list it as “Least Concern”, not threatened, but FishBase rates its vulnerability to fishing as “Moderate” (44 out of 100) and the doubling time of a population at 1.4 to 4.4 years. Minimum sizes and closed seasons are set by each country itself — check them locally. And whatever you don’t want to eat is best released quickly.
Three contradictions, left standing
- Where does it live? In the distribution field FishBase only writes “Mediterranean and the Black Sea” — but puts “Eastern Atlantic” in front of it and gives 32° West as the boundary, far out in the Atlantic. Wikipedia names the Atlantic explicitly: Gibraltar to Senegal, the Canary Islands, north into the Bay of Biscay.
- How big? FishBase gives 36 cm SL — standard length, measured without the tail fin. Wikipedia turns this into 36 cm total length, with the tail fin. The same number, two different measures.
- When does it spawn? FishBase: “from early spring to early summer”, from early spring to early summer. Wikipedia: “from late spring to early summer”, from late spring onwards. A good two months lie between the two.
Six names that lead to the wrong fish
- “Perch”, “Perca”, “Pirka”. German Schriftbarsch, English “lettered perch”, Italian “perchia di mare”, Greek “Πέρκα”, Albanian “perka”, Croatian “Pirka” — all of them say perch. But it is not related to the European perch: it is a sea bass (Serranidae), the European perch a true perch (Percidae).
- “Perca marina”. One of its old names, a synonym. According to Wikipedia, the same name — as *Sebastes marinus* — was wrongly used for a completely different fish, the redfish (rose fish) of the North Atlantic.
- “Cabrilla” and “cabra serrada”. The GBIF list gives “cabra serrada”, the *sawn goat*, without a language. Cabrilla, the little goat, however, is according to ETYFish the name of the comber *Serranus cabrilla* — the neighbour it is most often confused with.
- “Serrano”. For Spanish, GBIF also lists it simply as “Serrano”. But that is already the name of the whole genus *Serranus*. A serrano is not automatically a painted comber.
- “鮨”. In the Chinese name 紋首鮨, the character 鮨 stands for the sea basses. In Japanese, the very same character means sushi. One character, one fish and one dish.
- Contaminated lists. The English GBIF list contains “Pointed Comber” — probably a typo for *painted*. The Greek one mixes writing (Γραμματικός), colour (Μπογιατζής), perch (Πέρκα, Περκιά, Θαλάσσια Πέρκα) and partridge (Πέρδικα) — seven names for one fish. 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 an ambush hunter that waits in rock caves by day and only comes out at dusk, the time window is half the work: the rock 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.