Details
Tinca tinca
A stocky cyprinid of weedy lakes and ponds, with a slimy olive-brown body and slow bottom-foraging habits.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
Native across Europe and western Asia in lakes, ponds, canals, and slow rivers, favoring warm vegetated waters with soft mud.
The body is thick and olive to dark brown. Small red eyes and short barbels at the mouth corners are distinctive.
It is most active at dusk, dawn, or night, resting among plants or near the bottom by day. Fish may be solitary or in small groups.
It eats aquatic insects, mollusks, crustaceans, algae, and detritus while probing mud and vegetation.
In early summer, adults attach sticky eggs to aquatic plants. Young fish grow in shallow vegetated cover.
Tench has been introduced for angling and aquaculture and tolerates low oxygen and turbid water better than many fishes.
