Description
A river fish of flowing water; feeds on algae on the bottom.
How to identify it
Projecting snout, small straight mouth with a horny lower lip, pelvic and anal fins orange-red.
Appearance
Slender, almost spindle-shaped body covered in blue-grey scales with a metallic sheen; the belly is pale and the tail tends towards orange. The most distinctive feature is the head: a rounded snout that overhangs a horizontal, low-set mouth with a hard, sharp lower lip, ideal for scraping stones. Seen from below, the mouth slit is almost straight, unlike the horseshoe-shaped mouth of the barbel, which also has four barbels. Usually 25-40 cm long.
Habitat and habits
A river fish that lives in large shoals, often of fish of the same size. It looks for deep water with a strong current and a bed of stones or gravel: bridge piers, rock revetments, boulders and undercut banks. It stays close to the bottom, where it scrapes the algal film off the stones and takes aquatic plants and small invertebrates. It is active by day and makes seasonal movements along the river. It needs good water quality and clean beds to spawn.
There's more in the app
This species' bite index, recommended baits and methods, and the rules of the day for every water. Offline too.
Soon on Android and iPhone
