Although
they can be found in-shore, skate are a deep water fish, preferring
water of over 100m deep. This limits most of the fishing grounds
to the West coast of Ireland and Scotland where very deep water
can be found within a few hundred metres of the shore.
Skate
are also commonly claimed to have been caught from the South East,
although many of these fish are actually the much smaller thornback
ray, which is often sold by fish-mongers as skate.