Roger's Angling Pages
The Nase Chondrostoma nasus		Carp family Cyprinidae

This fish is one of the group that lives on plants and is found in small numbers in the waters of central Europe. It lives on the algal growths on stones, which are scraped away by its sharp, low, slit-like mouth. It moves in large shoals against the current and when the shoal turns aside after food it attracts attention by the glint of the many bodies. One fish can eat 32,000,000 to 96,000,000 microscopic algae, called diatoms, in a day. This fish can be found in the rivers which flow into the North and Baltic Seas and in the watershed of the river Danube. It is one of the most numerous fish species in certain parts of some rivers and can constitute more than fifty per cent of the fish population in such places. The spawning season starts at the end of April, when large numbers of fishes concentrate in small areas. The females deposit about 20,000 light ochre eggs on to the stony or sandy bed. When adult, the fishes weigh about 2 lb, but rarely more.

Float fishing for them, although it makes demands on anglers and their equipment, is great sport. The bait is fished about 10 cm above the bottom of the river. Only an experienced angler can tell if the float has disappeared under the surface because a fish has bitten or because the hook has caught behind a stone or a root. Boiled barley, insect larvae or small maggots make appropriate bait and a feed of groundbait while fishing keeps the shoal within the angler's reach.