THE ROACH & RUDD 



LEUCISCUS RUTILUS. LEUCISCUS ERYTHROPTHALMUS 

 French, Gordon. Rotengle. German, Die Plotze. Das Rothauge 



By R. B. MARSTON 



IHE roach and rudd are so much alike that even experienced 

 anglers often confuse one with the other — ^there are no roach in 

 Ireland but great numbers of rudd, also of bream — ^but in Ireland 

 rudd are often called roach. The illustrations and notes under 

 them show the chief outward differences of the two species; 

 the throat teeth also differ — ^according to some ichthyologists 

 the roach has smooth teeth and one more than the rudd, the teeth of the 

 latter being notched like a saw. According to German ichthyologists, 

 natural hybrids are common between roach and rudd, roach and bream, 

 rudd and bream and between others of the carp family. Certainly I have 

 often had very fine fish sent to me for identification which were evidently 

 hybrids — especially crosses between roach or rudd and bream. In Mr C. 

 Tate Regan's admirable work, " British Freshwater Fishes," will be 

 found some interesting notes on hybrids of this fish. 



Roach and rudd spawn in April and May on water plants, depositing 

 on an average about 100,000 small adhesive eggs which hatch out in a 

 few days in warm weather. In some foreign trout hatcheries coarse fish 

 are bred in small ponds in order to feed the young trout on the minute 

 fry — ^there is no harm in this where trout are bred for the market, but I 

 am not so sure that it does not teach them to become cannibals, and little 

 inclined to feed on flies. 



In all rivers, canals and ponds near large towns in England, France 

 and Belgium where roach are found, there also will be found thousands 

 of the keenest of anglers, men who prefer roach fishing to any other kind 

 of fishing; they may now and then have a try for barbel, pike, perch, etc., 

 but once bitten with the real love of roach fishing, as felt by thousands of 

 anglers who live in big towns, and no other fishing is like it. One bitter, 

 raw, foggy and freezing day of this January of 1913, I was returning to 

 town after pike fishing, when I met a member of one of the angling clubs 

 I belong to — one nearly one hundred years old now — ^the club I mean. 

 He told me he had fished the club water on the Golne all day and only caught 



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