Brown trout

The brown trout is the characteristic leading fish of clean, cool and oxygen-rich flowing waters – the trout zone named after it. In the Franconian Saale it is mainly to be expected in the cooler, faster-flowing headwaters, tributaries and spring brooks with a gravelly, stony bed, while the warmer main course shifts more towards the grayling and barbel zone. A site-faithful resident fish, it holds head-on against the current at undercuts and current edges and defends its territory. It spawns in autumn and winter in gravel pits it digs itself.

How to identify it

The most reliable feature is the bright red spots with a pale halo that also sit below the lateral line, together with black spots on an olive-brown ground and the adipose fin before the tail fin. The gape of the mouth extends behind the eye.

Look-alikes

From the rainbow trout it is told apart by the absence of red spots, the rainbow's shimmering pink lateral band and its densely black-spotted tail fin; from the brook char by the latter's strikingly white-edged front margins on the pectoral, pelvic and anal fins. Confusion with salmon is of practically no relevance on the Franconian Saale.