Rivers & Lakes, England & Wales

European Barbel

Barbus barbus

The iconic fast-river fish of the Rhine, Weser, Thames and Trent — a long, four-barbelled bottom feeder that lives in weir pools and gravel runs and fights harder than almost any European river fish. Best at dusk on warm summer evenings.

Chub

Squalius cephalus

A bold, greedy river fish found all over Europe, famous for eating almost anything from cheese paste and bread to crayfish, slugs and small fish. Chub haunt weir pools, bridge shadows and overhanging trees, spook easily in clear water, and give a hard, dogged fight on light coarse tackle.

Common Bream

Abramis brama

The common bream is the number one stillwater and slow-river fish of German lakes and canals. Its shoals graze silt beds at night for bloodworm, and a well-fed swim can produce for hours. Deep-bodied, slimy and dark bronze, it is the benchmark lowland coarse fish.

Roach

Rutilus rutilus

The roach is Europe's most-caught fish by numbers and the benchmark 'specimen' coarse fish — a 2 lb roach is a fish of a lifetime. Red-eyed and red-finned and always in shoals, it is everywhere from canals to reservoirs and feeds all year, including in mid-winter.

Dace

Leuciscus leuciscus

The dace is a fast-water silver fish of clean rivers, shoaling in the runs below weirs and taking insects with lightning-fast bites. Delicate on the float and fun on fine tackle, it is the classic summer river fish — rarely big, but always willing in good water.

Crucian Carp

Carassius carassius

This is the TRUE European crucian carp, Carassius carassius — not to be confused with the guide's older crucian-carp page, which covers Carassius auratus, the East Asian fish whose wild form is the goldfish; the two pages cross-reference each other. Once the classic village-pond fish, the European crucian is now declining across Europe, threatened further by hybridisation with goldfish and gibel carp.