Dace

The Dace is distributed throughout the whole of Europe, with the exception of Scotland, northern Scandinavia and southern peninsulas. It inhabits the swift reaches of brooks, torrents and rivers from the trout zone as far as the bream zone. It swims in small groups, mainly near the bottom, where it eats insects and their larvae, molluscs, fish eggs, fry and to a lesser extent also plant fragments. Towards evening and at night it swims up to the surface, where it hunts insects which have fallen on to the surface. In muddy water, it likes to collect earthworms which have been washed into the water after rains. It starts to spawn in the third and fourth year of its life, spawning from March to May in overgrown shallows with current. In cool waters it spawns later, sometimes not until June, depositing eggs on plants and their underwashed roots or directly on to the stony bottom. Unlike most fishes, which migrate to higher reaches to spawn, the Dace descends from the trout and grayling zones to lower reaches. In the breeding season the male can be distinguished by the spawning rash on its head, body and paired fins. The female lays 2,500-27,500 eggs 2 mm in diameter. After hatching and digesting the yolk-sac, the fry throng in large shoals. As the fish gradually grow older, however, the shoals decrease in size until they disintegrate into a large number of small groups. The Dace is not a particularly abundant species, its meat moreover being of low quality with many intermuscular bones. It is occasionally fished for by anglers, most offen using an artificial fly.