Freshwater Fish

Even in England, with so much coastline, most people’s first memory of fish are freshwater fish. It seems people seem to remember the small sticklebacks of ponds or the bigger fish such as the Perch or the Pike which can be found in local canals or lakes. Unless we take up ‘angling’ as a sport, our knowledge of freshwater fish is very little.

Lack of insight into the world of fish is not a recent phenomen. In medieval times our ancestors knew so little about the life cycle of fish that they though fish ‘spontaneously generated’ as an act of God or act of nature.

England has plenty of rainfall and a varied landscape and resulting from this rainfall we have many streams, rivers, ponds and lakes as well as man-made canals and reservoirs. Therefore we have plenty of freshwater and plenty of freshwater fish.

Approximately 40 different native species of fish have been recorded in England and we have written about 6 native fish, but 17 will be covered in our website in an effort to illuminate the mysterious world of our freshwater fish.