They have a large mouth, as do all varieties of carp, with the mouth facing downwards. Carp feed by hovering over the lake or stream bottom and wafting the bottom into a cloud of mud. They then suck up the mud and filter any food out of it using their pharyngeal teeth. That is the teeth at the back of their throat, and blow out the unwanted cloudy mud through their gills.
This means that when carp are feeding in the margins you should nearly always see the water becoming cloudy.
A good sign that they are on the searching for food. So where should you put your bait or ground bait? Read here about Carp Fishing at Nine Oaks. Mirror Carp The Mirror carp has very large, silvery coloured scales which is why they are called "Mirror carp" as their scales look like broken pieces of a Mirror. These scales can be seen along the back of this carp. Often Mirror carp fight harder than common carp.
Again, as can be seen on this carp picture. Other Mirror carp have a straight line of scales along their lateral line, these carp are Mirror carp but referred to as "Linear Carp" because of their straight, or linear, line of scales. Feeding is exactly as for common carp. Leather Carp A Leather carp should have no scales at all anywhere on its body. However, contrary to popular belief, a leather carp is not a Mirror carp without scales; there is a distinct genetic difference.
Leather carp are permitted a few scales either along the dorsal line or the wrist of the tail. Leather carp also have reduced numbers of red blood cells, slower growth rates, which makes larger leather carp extremely sought after and rare. Signs of feeding and catching them are exactly as for common carp. Read here about Carp at Nine Oaks. Grass Carp Grass carp have elongated, chubby, torpedo-shaped body.
The mouth is slightly oblique with non-fleshy, firm lips like a Mullet , and no barbules. The dorsal fin has eight to 10 soft rays. The anal fin is set closer to the tail than most cyprinids Carp. They have a dark olive shading to brownish-yellow sides, with a white belly and large, slightly outlined scales. Averaging about 60— cm They eat up to three times their own body weight daily. They thrive in small lakes and backwaters with an abundant supply of freshwater vegetation.
Look here to read about Grass Carp at Nine Oaks. Crucian Carp Crucian carp are short and dumpy. Their colouration varies greatly, like all carp, but in generally crucians have a rich golden colour. The fins are very rounded and the dorsal fin is rounded with a convex shape rounded outwards , unlike all other carp which have concave rounded inwards dorsal fin.
Chub Found in Europe and Great Britain, mainly in rivers but often in specially stocked lakes. Then working down to a lighter golden flank and a light belly with a dark brown or black tail.
It has an unusually large Anal Fin with a slight rounded edge. It has a voracious appetite and will eat almost anything.
It is voracious and preys on insects, plants, and other fish too. A fantastic fighter providing the angler with good sport.
It grows to about 60cm 2ft long and maximum weight of 7—8 kg 15—18 pounds. Look here to read about Chub Fishing at Nine Oaks. Barbel Barbel are light brown to greenish brown in colour with yellowish sides. The body of the barbel is elongated with very small scales that makes them appear scale less. The head of the barbel is pointed with rather small set high on the sides of the head. Barbel are easily recognised by its under slung mouth indicating a bottom feeder with thick lips with two short barbules on the top lip and two longer barbules underneath at the corner of its mouth.
The barbules have taste and touch cells that help the fish to locate food. They feed extensively on the bottom searching for fresh water shrimp, snails, insect larvae, caddis larvae, nymphs, crustaceans and molluscs, grubbing around among the bottom debris for the many micro-organisms which live there.
Barbel grow fairly rapidly and mature when they are five or six years old. Unbelievably fast and powerful even when a juvenile fish. Click here to read about Barbel at Nine Oaks.
Bream Adults are deep bodied and bronze in colour with darker, occasionally with black fins. The bream has a deep slim body with a obvious covering of protective slime. It has a long anal fin compared with the dorsal fin, a forked tail and a relatively small head and mouth with a protruding upper jaw. Small bream up to about 8oz. A fish over 4lb is considered a good fish. Bream are a shoal fish and catch one there is a good chance of catching more. Found in lakes, ponds, rivers and canals but more often found in still waters.
When they are about to spawn from May to June, the male bream develops white tubercles covering the head and upper body. Bream often interbreed with other species, creating hybrids such as the roach-bream hybrid. Bream are predominantly bottom feeders top lip longer than the bottom lip , moving around in shoals feeding in the silt. They feed extensively on algae, plankton, insect larvae, pea mussels, crustaceans and molluscs, also grubbing around among the bottom debris for the many micro-organisms which live there.
See here to read about Bream at Nine Oaks. Dace also closely resemble the Roach, both in size and shape but the Roach has red eyes and the Dace has yellow eyes. The Dace has a slender body, a narrow pointed head with large yellow eyes and a small mouth. The body has a greyish blue back with silvery flanks, a white belly and a narrow deeply forked tail, white ventral and anal fins tinged with pale red and the dorsal, pectoral and caudal fins are tipped black.
Dace are small fish and one of 8 ounces is considered a good catch. The current British rod-caught record Dace is 1 lb 5 oz 2dr. Dace prefer clean, well oxygenated water, they are often found in shoals in mid water or near weirs and weir pools.
They prefer rivers and streams with a sand or gravel bottom, the Dace are also found in lakes and still waters. Natural foods for Dace is algae, worms, insects, larvae of aquatic insects, snails and small crustaceans. Dace are often seen feeding from the surface taking flies and non-aquatic insects. Eel A long elongated slender body, similar to a snake, except that it has long slim fins along its back and belly and small, rounded pectoral fins.
Like most fish it has round eyes, small in youngsters and large in older Eels. Cheers, Jeff. Hi Jeff, Have just stumbled over your article. I find it very interesting indeed. I also caught a 3. There seemed to me to be two different strains almost, the pictures show it probably better than i can describe, but to me there is definately a slight golden hugh rather than the steel silver of the bigger fish.
Also i have a brace shot with a mate that had a three at the same time as the fish in the picture you have used. This picture also shows the difference of the two strains? I have just read that back and i would like to say that was an exceptional trip even for Linch, and hope that doesnt sound blaze in anyway.
Regards Mike. Very interesting indeed. For fish of average sizes, it probably matters not one jot what the fish IDs as, but get up around the two pound mark and for many anglers it becomes quite important.
Record breakers are so rare that for most circumstances they can be ignored, but on those few very rare occasions the ID becomes paramount. I used to fish a large clear lake some 40 years ago, and it produced many true rudd for me to well over that two pound mark. All as identified by myself.
Not using the excellent triangulation method shown in the article, but my identifications were always on a "doesn't look quite right for a true roach basis". I do have photos, but they are all from the days of black and white photography, and most were not pictured ideally to be able to apply the triangular method of identification. The hybrids came to very near 3 pounds and I would have loved to have been able to convince myself that there were true roach amongst them.
Hybrids were supposed to be infertile, although it had crossed my mind back then that maybe, for very closely related species such as roach and rudd, that it might not be the case that such crosses were not always infertile. And having bred once, the progeny were even more likely to be fertile. It still leaves me with the problem: where were the true roach hiding in my lake? With both the rudd and hybrids reaching such sizes and their average size was over , maybe I should have spent a lot more time prospecting the lake to find those true roach, as it seems likely they would have reached similar sizes.
And I am now wondering whether they and the rudd just might still be there! Tuesday, 6 March Confounded Fish! This is the time of year when I begin to catch fish that slip between the meshes. I don't know why Spring should throw up so many oddities but it does seem to bring them out of the weeds. Hybrids, fish of two species parentage, seem to go on a feeding rampage right about now and over the past four spring seasons I've been collecting pictures of these fish and trying to sort out, by visual clues alone, because portable DNA testing probes are not yet available in Maplins but they will be one day!
I'll start off with roach and rudd, and discuss the inbetweenies they make, as this combination is very likely to cause problems and controversy where records claims for both species are concerned.
Hybrids display what is termed heterosis, or 'hybrid vigour,' a poorly understood effect of crossing one species of animal with another dog breeders use it to improve breeds and strengthen their desirable traits, but they are not dealing with cross-breeding of species, dogs are all one, and their so called 'hybrids' are all fertile, but fish naturally cross breeding between species should not produce fertile offpspring Consequently, Roach x Rudd hybrids, or any other fish hybrids come to that, can exceed the maximum potential growth rate and maximum peak weight of either parent, hence the hopeful claims for very large specimens of the pure species with spurious fish that turn out to be wrong uns' only after thorough examination.
A true roach from the river Sowe, but one slightly longer and more compressed than normal. The fish has a discontinuous lateral line, so it may have an extra vertebrae or two, which would explain things. The visual clues that mark out a true roach are, on the face of things, easy to understand. Everyone knows what a rudd looks like, surely?
Fish ID Presentation. It was amazing to learn about the fish in the classroom, and then come outside and see some in the flesh.
Each fish caught was measured, and scale samples from some were taken in order to age the fish. Once they had been recorded and had recovered, they were returned safely back to the Wandle. The river was often different colours depending on the waste from the factory. Is it true that Trout and Salmon have returned to the Wandle? I believe it used to be a spawning river for both species.
Thanking you in anticipation, J. Hit enter to search or ESC to close Search ». Charity No.
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