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The big river roach of the past


Anderoo

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I think you're right. I had a load of small chub today from under an ounce to about a pound (good sport on very light gear!) and I think it's a young chub as well now. I tried various positions for the anal fin and on the smaller fish it can appear (with some of them) to be concave on chub,. Therefore to be sure it is vital to get careful fin ray counts - less rays on a chub anal fin than roach - and scale counts etc.

 

I suspect what has happened on the Ribble is that a rare roach x chub has been caught then lots of people start jumping to conclusions and thinking they've had hybrids just because what they're really catching is the 'pretty' form of chub rather than the 'bronze' version. Bit like silver bream that are always being called 'hybrids'!

 

I guess I'm just going to have to take a trip back once I get the chance. However, as I was there when that fish was caught, and saw it from various different angles, I can tell you that the mouth was noticeably different to that of a chub, the caudal peduncle was shorter than you would expect on a chub, neither the dorsal nor the anal were convex and the whole appearance was not that of a chub (what a birder would call "the jizz"). The larger ones don't fight like chub (they scrap like roach). I'm fully aware of the way chub can differ in gross appearance, and I've had enough years looking at the morphology of fish species to know when I've got something different in the hand.

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I think you're right. I had a load of small chub today from under an ounce to about a pound (good sport on very light gear!) and I think it's a young chub as well now. I tried various positions for the anal fin and on the smaller fish it can appear (with some of them) to be concave on chub,. Therefore to be sure it is vital to get careful fin ray counts - less rays on a chub anal fin than roach - and scale counts etc.

 

I suspect what has happened on the Ribble is that a rare roach x chub has been caught then lots of people start jumping to conclusions and thinking they've had hybrids just because what they're really catching is the 'pretty' form of chub rather than the 'bronze' version. Bit like silver bream that are always being called 'hybrids'!

 

 

 

I have noticed a distinct difference in the colour of chub on different waters and they do seem to change as they get older. I am pretty sure I caught a chub x roach on a small local river several years ago. It resembled a roach that had been working out and packed on muscle ! It had more scales than a chub but less than a roach (in apperance), it was silver in colour, nearly as deep as a true roach but much thicker. I spoke to a m8 of mine who does the fish rescues across the country and he reckons that chub x roach are very few and far between. Some people don't think it actually occurs at all between the two species.

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I have noticed a distinct difference in the colour of chub on different waters and they do seem to change as they get older.

 

Ontological changes occur with individuals, and you get phenotypic plasticity within and between populations (I think a lot of the variation we might have seen between rivers has been damaged by stocking with "generic" fish), but a chub is still a chub. I'd have wasted a lot of years if I was unable to tell a Rutilus from a Squalius, and also to not know if I was holding something that was neither. Fortunately the UK has such a depauperate fish fauna there really aren't that many choices. Got a friend in Spain trying to make sense of the leuciscine Cyprinids there, now that's a real challenge!

 

I spoke to a m8 of mine who does the fish rescues across the country and he reckons that chub x roach are very few and far between. Some people don't think it actually occurs at all between the two species.

 

I suppose the best way to resolve this is for me to get back and take a series of pictures showing roach, chub and the anomalous form, preferably multiple individuals, maybe request that the EA sample a few to look at the pharyngeals, and see if there's any money left to do the DNA. However, I'm quite willing to bet my 15ft Hardy's on the fact that I haven't just "jumped to conclusions" on this.

Edited by Latimeria
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All,

 

Interesting discussion. I'll not get into it. However these guys did.

 

(1990). A search for introgressive hybridization in the rudd,

Scardinius erythrophthalmus (L.), and the roach, Rutilus rutilus. Journal of Fish

Biology 37, 367–374.

 

They say it hadn't happend as of 1990 . It takes one more generation. There are roach/bream hybrids. They in turn produced hybrids of F1roach/rudd hybrids.

 

What'dya think?

 

Phone

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First I remember seeing were down at the mouth of the Darwen, I've had them as far as Elston this year, I think Tony's had them even further up.

Never seen or heard of them up stream of Elston (just a very occasional roach x bream), but your 15ft Hardy is in safe hands on the mouth of the Darwen. It must be the countries hot spot for them.

 

Ive no idea where the roach spawn on the Ribble, but the mouth of the Darwen is very low down the Ribble Mark and not far from the docks where dredging does go on.

 

ps. Being a very powerfull spate river the rest of it gets ripped up (dredged) every time it rains hard.

Edited by lutra

 

A tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep

 

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I called in to see my brother the other day, and he had a visit from a guy that I used to match fish with about 30yrs ago. The conversation got round to roach angling over the years and I brought this subject up. He reminded me of catches of big roach made by mutual friends over the years, many more than I had remembered. I then brought up the possiblity of roachxchub hybrids. He told me that he (like me) was sceptical, but had caught 'strange' looking fish that would fit the description, especially on the Yorks Ouse, and Ure. This got me thinking about the number of times I'd seen big roach swimming with chub shoals, most of which I've seen on the Ouse and Ure, and a couple of times the Wharfe. I'm sure that some roach never lose the shoaling instinct, and as the numbers in a year class diminish to the last one or two individuals, they latch on to chub or maybe bream shoals. I wondered if it was possible that these fish adopted the role of suregate chub, bream, or rudd and actually spawned with them. It might go some way to explaining some of the roachx (?) hybrids we see.

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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I called in to see my brother the other day, and he had a visit from a guy that I used to match fish with about 30yrs ago. The conversation got round to roach angling over the years and I brought this subject up. He reminded me of catches of big roach made by mutual friends over the years, many more than I had remembered. I then brought up the possiblity of roachxchub hybrids. He told me that he (like me) was sceptical, but had caught 'strange' looking fish that would fit the description, especially on the Yorks Ouse, and Ure. This got me thinking about the number of times I'd seen big roach swimming with chub shoals, most of which I've seen on the Ouse and Ure, and a couple of times the Wharfe. I'm sure that some roach never lose the shoaling instinct, and as the numbers in a year class diminish to the last one or two individuals, they latch on to chub or maybe bream shoals. I wondered if it was possible that these fish adopted the role of suregate chub, bream, or rudd and actually spawned with them. It might go some way to explaining some of the roachx (?) hybrids we see.

 

John.

 

 

 

Those have been my thoughts for years John.

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Never seen or heard of them up stream of Elston (just a very occasional roach x bream), but your 15ft Hardy is in safe hands on the mouth of the Darwen. It must be the countries hot spot for them.

 

Ive no idea where the roach spawn on the Ribble, but the mouth of the Darwen is very low down the Ribble Mark and not far from the docks where dredging does go on.

 

ps. Being a very powerfull spate river the rest of it gets ripped up (dredged) every time it rains hard.

 

Roach x bream are common everywhere (Irelands thick with them) but on the other hand roach x chub hybrids arn't so common. As far as i'm aware roach prefer weeds to gravel and so would keep the two species apart during spawning.

If where talkin' roach x bream hybrids then the hardys rod is up for grab's...but not for me I don't like them. If it was a Normark then i'd be after it :D .

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Never seen or heard of them up stream of Elston (just a very occasional roach x bream), but your 15ft Hardy is in safe hands on the mouth of the Darwen. It must be the countries hot spot for them.

 

You can guarantee that they're now going to play hard to get to make a liar of me.

 

Ive no idea where the roach spawn on the Ribble, but the mouth of the Darwen is very low down the Ribble Mark and not far from the docks where dredging does go on.

 

I can think of a number of sites where the chub spawn even just on the lower river, so wherever the roach get it on it could easily (depending on substrate movement) end up close to a chub orgy. I haven't been able to find anything out about sperm longevity in either species, but hypothetically if there was a spawning event for chub immediately above where the roach were spawning then milt could easily get washed down without the two species even needing to be in contact (given that male chub produce an impressive drizzle of jizzle).

 

ps. Being a very powerfull spate river the rest of it gets ripped up (dredged) every time it rains hard.

 

Which does lead to a very mobile substrate, and could bring species in close proximity to one another.

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Roach x bream are common everywhere (Irelands thick with them) but on the other hand roach x chub hybrids arn't so common. As far as i'm aware roach prefer weeds to gravel and so would keep the two species apart during spawning.

I think that may depend on where the weed is that the roach spawn on. On the Ribble and most spate rivers often the only weed i see is the streemer weed that grows on the gravel.

 

If where talkin' roach x bream hybrids then the hardys rod is up for grab's...but not for me I don't like them. If it was a Normark then i'd be after it :D .

I think you should do the sporting thing Ian and put one of your Normarks up against his hardy's. :)

 

No rush Latimeria, I don't think you have a time scale. Play your cards right and you could end up with a Normark to grow your beans up. :lol:

 

A tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep

 

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