Chub

Description: streched, prolonged body. Nearly circular lateral-cut. Bulky head with terminal mouth. Big, black bordered scales. Colour of the rear greybrown to yellow olive, seldom nearly black. The side silvery yellow to bright brown. The venter is white. The ventral and anal fins show a red tone. The anal fin is convex. In average the chub is about  30 – 40 cm of length. Maximum length is up to 70 cm. The maximum weight is 8 kg.
The main part of its food are soft waterplants. However the feeding scale is quite large. As young ones they eat larvae and nymphes while growing up the bigger ones get more and more predatory, than feeding on small fishes and amphibes. Also fruits that fell into to water are eaten.

Appearance: Nearly all over europe . Missing in Ireland, Scotland, north Scandinavia and south Italy. The chub prefers the grayling and barbel region. It likes to stay near barrages. Its also capable to swim up into the trout region. In lakes connected to this regions it is sometimes seen with remarkable size.

Lifecycle: Its spawning season reaches weather-dependend from april to june. The spawners than deposit up to 200.000 eggs on plants and stones. The milters wear a corny white deflection at the head during this time.
 

Features : According to a survey in the lower rhine this fishspecies undertakes migrations up to 100 km - migrations of about 10 km were observed quite often.

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