Burbot

The burbot is the only purely freshwater member of the cod-like fishes in Central Europe, in other words our native freshwater cod. It is a nocturnal cold-water bottom fish that lies largely dormant in summer warmth and becomes active and feeds intensively as temperatures fall. In the Franconian Saale it holds close to the bottom by structures such as stone packing, groynes, deep pools and the stretches below weirs and bridges with a hard bottom.

How to identify it

You identify the burbot reliably by three features at once: a single long chin barbel in the middle of the lower jaw, the dark-marbled, snake-like elongated body with very small scales and a heavy layer of slime, and the very long second dorsal and anal fins reaching close to the rounded tail fin.

Look-alikes

The eel has no barbel at all and a continuous, undivided fin, and it is plain-coloured rather than marbled; the catfish has six barbels, two of them very long ones on the upper jaw, and grows considerably larger.