Description
Crucian
carp
belongs to the genus
crucian carp
, belonging to the fish of the carp family. It has a tall body, laterally compressed. The back is thick and the dorsal fin is long. The scales of the fish are large and smooth to the touch. The color can be different: from silver to golden.
In the wild, crucian carp is represented by two species - silver (oblong)
and
golden (ordinary round)
crucian carp.
Silver crucian carp – Carassius gibelio – is the most common species. Golden (golden) crucian carp – Carassius carassius. There is also a third species: Goldfish
is an artificially bred aquarium species.
Goldfish
has external differences from golden fish. They consist not only in the color of the scales, which have a silver, gray, greenish-gray or slightly golden, orange-pinkish tint. Body proportions may vary. It depends on the location and living conditions of the fish. But unlike the common crucian carp, the silver one, when viewed from the side, has a pointed muzzle. A distinctive feature is that the dorsal and anal fins are not similar to the others. Their first ray looks like a jagged and hard spike. The remaining rays of the fins are soft. The caudal fin has clear outlines. Only this type of crucian carp is capable of reproducing by gynogenesis.
Golden or common crucian carp
prefer the same habitats as silver ones. However, they are much less common. The fish differ primarily in the color of their scales. In common crucian carp it has a golden shimmer. The shape of the head when viewed from the side is round. Individuals of this species are smaller in size. Their characteristic feature is the coloring of the ventral, caudal and dorsal fins in a dark brown color. Therefore, silver crucian carp with golden scales continue to be called silver. It’s just that its fins do not differ in color from its scales.
Description of the fish
You can distinguish crucian carp from other types of fish both by external characteristics and by body structure. Below are the main characteristics of adult specimens.
Find out also how to deliciously cook crucian carp in the oven.
What does it look like
Crucian carp differs significantly from other fish species in its wide body with large and dense scales. Some species, for example, golden, are not only large in size, but also almost round in shape. At the same time, they can differ in color from light gold to dark copper. Such freshwater representatives live in ponds with opaque and swampy water. In flowing rivers, ordinary subspecies with silvery scales are much more common.
The common crucian carp has a fairly massive and thick back with a dark red tint, on top of which there is a dense and durable fin with large ray needles. These thorns often cause wounds on the hands of fishermen. His sides are bronze and his belly is light. The fish has 5 red fins on its body: dorsal, caudal, subcaudal and paired on the sides.
Pay attention to how to cook crucian carp in a slow cooker.
The weight and length of this species also differ depending on the habitat and the amount of food in the reservoir. The average size of an adult crucian carp is 40–45 cm and weighs 3.5 kg. The golden subspecies usually appears slightly larger, growing to 60–70 cm and weighing over 5 kg.
Crucian fry, that is, hatched fish that have not reached one year of age, develop gradually. In the first weeks of their development, they differ from adult representatives of the species in the absence of pronounced scales and lateral line. In addition, the fry have a darker color on the back and sides. The length of such fish can vary from 1.5 to 3 cm, and its weight fluctuates within a few grams.
Did you know? A hybrid of gold and silver crucian carp has a very low survival rate in open waters. In this case, only females are viable, and males die almost immediately.
Structure of fish
Crucians do not have whiskers at the corners of their mouths, unlike other representatives of the Karpov family. This fish has single row pharyngeal teeth. Its number of vertebrae can vary from 29 in the silver subspecies, to 34 in the golden one. Another characteristic feature of the body structure of this fish is the presence of spines in the dorsal and caudal fins. The only difference is that in the gold type they are small and numerous, while in the silver type they are large, but less common.
Since arterial blood moving through the network of blood capillaries is saturated with oxygen, it has a bright scarlet color. This also affected the color of the dorsal aorta (it is also red in color).
Distribution and habitats
Habitats of crucian carp
Initially, crucian carp lived in the Amur River basin and the reservoirs that were adjacent to it. In the second half of the last century, they were distributed artificially in European and Siberian reservoirs. Currently, fish are spreading to India, North America and other regions. At the same time, the number of common crucian carp is rapidly decreasing, as they are being replaced by silver crucian carp.
Crucian carp lives in reservoirs with a soft bottom and stagnant water, which warms up well under the sun. The fish prefers to settle in areas well overgrown with aquatic vegetation. It can be caught in quiet creeks, river channels, ponds and flooded quarries. Crucian carp are undemanding about the oxygen content in water, so they get along well in wetlands, which freeze to the bottom in winter. You can rarely find them in flowing ponds and lakes, but they stay near the bottom of the reservoir.
White crucian carp
Most often found in the waters of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, its body is colored light gray.
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Age and size
Depending on the color and size of large individuals, they are divided into species. At the same time, common crucian carp is found weighing more than 3 kilograms, and its body length is more than half a meter, silver carp weighs up to 2 kilograms and is 40 centimeters in length. Individuals of this size are already old; young, but mature fish weigh about 700-800 grams.
In small pools, especially close to housing, crucian carp rarely reach more than 0.8-1.2 kg. weight, but under favorable conditions, especially in the north, they have incomparably larger sizes, and then they grow exclusively in thickness or height.
Crucian carp becomes capable of reproduction in the third year and in very rare cases reaches a weight of 400g. before four or five years. Most of the three-year-old caviar crucian carp, as is known, are usually significantly less than 200g. The normal size of a two-year-old crucian carp is 4 cm. , but with especially abundant food, for example, if you throw food to crucian carp, crucian carp reach 300g in two years. weight.
Undoubtedly, the growth of crucian carp, like any other fish, depends mainly on the amount of food, and since it feeds exclusively on plant matter, it is understandable why in pools with a sandy bottom, devoid of aquatic grasses, it grows very slowly.
If there is an excessive number of crucian carp, their growth also decreases, but sometimes a slowdown in growth occurs for completely different reasons.
Use in cooking
Crucian carp is a universal fish in cooking methods. It is fried, boiled, stewed, baked, salted, pickled, smoked, dried. It is delicious in any form. One “but!”: it is very bony, so its meat should be disassembled with special care.
To ensure that there are no bones in a dish made from crucian carp, you need to use one trick. It consists in the fact that along the entire body of each fish it is necessary to make transverse cuts with a knife every 0.5-1 cm (depending on the size of the fish).
Crucian carp stewed in sour cream
This is a classic diet dish that is easy to prepare. To prepare it you will need 1 kg of crucian carp, 0.5 liters of sour cream, onions, lemon, flour for breading, vegetable oil, salt and spices to taste. Clean the fish, gut it, make notches on the barrels. Add lemon juice to get rid of the smell of mud (if any). Salt and sprinkle with spices. Leave for 20-30 minutes. In a preheated frying pan with vegetable oil, fry the fish coated in flour. Fry over high heat for no longer than 3 minutes on each side to lightly brown. Place the crucian carp on a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil, cover with a layer of onion, cut into rings, and pour sour cream on top. Bake in the oven at 180°C for 20-30 minutes until golden brown.
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Lifestyle
Lifestyle of crucian carp
Since in this both types of crucian carp represent a slight difference, which lies mainly in the fact that silver crucian carp is more often found in running water than gold carp, it makes no sense to talk about each separately.
Of all our fish, crucian carp is undoubtedly one of the most unpretentious. Crucian carp lives in more or less significant numbers not only in all lakes and ponds, but is often found in semi-underground lakes, almost completely covered in quagmire, and in small pits, where the life of any other fish other than crucian carp and sleeper is completely unthinkable.
Tina is his element. Here crucian carp obtain food consisting exclusively of organic remains and particles, as well as small worms, and for the winter they completely bury themselves in this silt and survive even in severe snowless winters, when shallow standing waters freeze to the very bottom. There have been examples of crucian carp being dug out alive from the silt of a completely dry pond, from a depth of 70 cm. Golden crucian carp are generally much hardier than silver crucian carp. Therefore, nowadays you rarely find even the smallest pond or lake in which there would be no bred or accidentally caught crucian carp. The latter, as is known, after a flood are often seen in the smallest basins on water meadows. Sometimes crucian carp appear suddenly in completely isolated pools, but this circumstance can be easily explained by the fact that crucian caviar, sticking to the feathers of water birds, is easily carried even to a fairly significant height and not only develops here into young fish, but these latter, having found themselves abundant food, after a few years they multiply to such an extent that a lake or pond, which until now seemed fishless, after five years is swarming with crucian carp.
In general, crucian carp can be found in any water, and if sometimes it is rare in rivers and several lakes, then this, of course, depends on the fact that at the first opportunity it tries to go into calmer and muddy waters. His thick, clumsy body cannot cope even with a rather slow current, and with a sandy or rocky bottom he has nowhere to get food for himself and nowhere to hide from predatory fish, which take advantage of his clumsiness and soon completely exterminate both him and his eggs and eggs. juveniles
Proof that crucian carp is not at all afraid of cold water can be found in the fact that it is often found, especially in the Ural waters, in spring pits.
Crucian carp spawning
Crucian carp spawning
, depending on weather conditions, can begin either in the second half of May or in the first days of June. Often already in mid-May you can notice a school of frolicking crucian carp not so far from the shore, but such behavior does not bode well for the fisherman. This is how its games manifest themselves during the mating season, and, as a rule, already at this time the crucian carp stops feeding. It is worth noting that in the first days of mating games, the bite of crucian carp is often good, but for a very short time. The closer the end of spring is, the more eggs and milk the crucian carp have to bear, so it is useless to catch crucian carp during the spawning period.
Its eggs and newly hatched young are destroyed in large numbers by green frogs, even newts, which, like the former, very often live with crucian carp. The very destroyers of eggs and fry of crucian carp are undoubtedly swimming beetles - large water beetles; other aquatic insects, such as water bugs, etc., do not cause them such significant harm. Swimming beetles often eat or spoil already quite large crucian carp, they chase even fully grown ones, and it is not for nothing that fishermen consider them the worst enemies of this fish, which is not distinguished by its agility and often does not have time to escape from them by flight. Looking at the thick, clumsy body of crucian carp, whose stomach is chock-full of green mud at almost every time of the year, one will understand its lethargy and clumsiness, partly due to plant food: crucian carp does not need speed of movement, since its food, as they say, is under nose. Buried halfway, sometimes with one tail exposed, it digs into the viscous silt and in this position, more often than other fish, it is attacked by various aquatic insects, parasitic crustaceans, and also predatory fish. Only in the evenings and nights, on a clear hot day, sometimes at noon, crucian carp come out from here to the shores and feast on the young stems of aquatic plants, especially reed shoots.
In deep muddy holes, more or less buried in silt, crucian carp spend the entire winter and early spring, and only when the pond or lake is completely cleared of ice do they begin to appear on the reedy shores. Their main exit begins shortly before spawning, when the water has already become significantly warmer, becomes cloudy, when aquatic grasses rise from the bottom and rose hips bloom.
Fishing for crucian carp
The habitat of crucian carp is all standing water bodies without exception. Every year the number of golden crucian carp decreases noticeably, but the silvery relative has spread all around.
The best time to fish is in the morning or evening. In the summer, it is better to catch large crucian carp after sunset, since it is at this moment that the bite begins on its own, which is an important factor for every angler. The catch during this period of time can be much richer than during the whole day. The place for fishing for crucian carp should be chosen at your own discretion, depending on the time of year and weather.
For fishing with a float rod, a universal place would be near aquatic vegetation, for example, reeds, with a depth difference of 1-2 meters and nearby underwater thickets of “nettle” or “moss”. Compound feed, macadamia or boiled peas will be an excellent complementary food for the place so that the crucian carp fits exactly. They catch crucian carp with a rubber band, with donks and a fishing rod. Often a worm is used as bait, but I would like to note that today you can purchase special fertilizers for catching it.
It also bites on pearl barley, bread, semolina, bloodworms, and maggots. Large crucian carp feeds on small sprat and can take pieces of it. As a rule, the bite is bold; after several samples of the bait, he grabs it in his mouth and pulls it into the hole. You need to fish from the bottom, hook number 4 - 6, leash 0.15-0.2, line diameter 0.25-0.3. The float should not be heavy, “sensitive” with a small weight from the hook 3-4 cm, and most importantly 20-30 cm. You need to hook very quickly. Crucian carp is a very fastidious fish! Even in places where this fish is simply teeming, in unfavorable weather, you can be left without a catch.
Winter fishing for crucian carp
for crucian carp in winter
Winter fishing for crucian carp is quite unpredictable. In some reservoirs it is consistently caught throughout the winter, in others - exclusively at the beginning and end of freeze-up, and in some it does not take bait at all. This is largely due to the characteristics of the reservoir. Crucian carp is very unpretentious to living conditions and water quality.
Small fish burrow into the silt already at the beginning of December, while larger ones continue to move around the reservoir. That is why in the winter catch there are crucian carp weighing from 500 grams. and more. The most active biting time is December - January and in March with the arrival of the first warming and before the disappearance of the ice cover.
When severe cold sets in, it goes almost to the bottom, but goes out to feed where it is shallower. It is better to look for parking places at differences in depth near thickets of reeds or reeds. If there are other fish in the reservoir, especially predatory ones, then this is a sure indicator that there is also crucian carp.
Crucian carp is very sensitive to atmospheric pressure and responds well to its increase. The best weather for winter biting is sunny, windless days. During heavy snowfalls, blizzards or frosts, it goes to wait in the depths and it is useless to fish for it in such weather.
Fishing for crucian carp in spring
Fishing for crucian carp in spring
Spring is the only time when it is easy to catch crucian carp. When the water warms to 8 ºC its behavior becomes more active, and at 12-14 ºC an excellent bite begins. Moreover, its beginning depends solely on the weather, and not on the calendar, and crucian carp can bite as early as mid-March if good weather lasts at least a few days. The main reason for the capricious bite of crucian carp in the spring is the still unsettled water temperature.
A peculiarity of early spring fishing for crucian carp is the fact that before the appearance of young vegetation, large and small crucian carp share their habitats. If small crucian carp begin to bite in the chosen place, then it is better to look for another one where larger specimens are found.
In spring, you should not look for crucian carp in deep layers of water - it has not yet warmed up enough. To feed, it will swim to smaller areas with aquatic and underwater vegetation, preferring thickets of reeds, reeds, and pondweed. Fishing for crucian carp is best during the pre-spawning period and some time after its end, when there is a need to restore lost strength. During such periods, a real glutton can set in and the catch will be simply wonderful.
Fishing for crucian carp in summer
The summer season is considered the most stable for crucian carp fishing. Despite the fact that in summer there is a lot of natural food in the reservoir, it is on summer days that you can catch the largest trophy of the entire year. Weather conditions also have a big impact. Prolonged bad weather, heavy rains or thunderstorms significantly reduce the feeding activity of crucian carp.
The first half of June is not very productive in terms of good catch. At this time, spawning is still ongoing and the crucian carp practically does not feed. Only young fish that do not participate in the breeding process can be hooked. A peculiarity of crucian carp is that it spawns several times during the summer. Before the start of spawning, and then after it, the real hunger begins, when crucian carp can take any bait.
For successful fishing, it is important to choose the right place and time, because hiding from the heat, crucian carp constantly migrates across the reservoir. The best place will be the coastline, which is shaded by growing trees and dense coastal thickets. This is where the fish can bite until the daylight hours end. Fishermen should avoid those places where the surface of the water begins to “bloom” - crucian carp are not found in such areas due to insufficient oxygen.
Fishing for crucian carp in autumn
Equipment for catching crucian carp in autumn
In autumn, you have to catch crucian carp a little differently than in summer. The reason is that the water temperature drops and the summer food gradually disappears. The fish becomes lazy and moves further and further from the shore to places with greater depth (from 3 meters), where the temperature is still comfortable.
In early autumn, crucian carp can still be found in summer feeding areas and in good weather they can return to shallow water. As the water cools, the crucian carp moves throughout the reservoir, finding and settling in places with a hard, textured bottom and a small layer of silt. Looking for it in shallow lakes and ponds in the fall is a waste of time, because... with the onset of cold weather, it simply buries itself in the silt.
In large reservoirs, it concentrates in bottom holes at a fairly decent distance from the shore and practically does not react to bait. The success of fishing will depend on the ability to recognize places where fish congregate - here there can be an excellent bite until the freeze-up.
Crucian carp bites very well in cloudy weather with light warm rain and little wind. The bite can be especially strong before a change in weather, during a short cold rain or the first snowfall, when crucian carp creates reserves to survive bad weather.
