Among the variety of fish of the Far East, the Amur pike stands out both in size and color. The limited habitat adds excitement to the fishermen. To get an unusual specimen, you need to overcome a considerable distance. The adrenaline rush of catching a meter long fish is unmatched. Such feelings are impossible to forget.
Description
Amur pike, the photo of which you can see in the text, got its name from its habitat. According to the classification, this is a class of ray-finned, of the pike family. This is a predatory fish - its young go to animal food very early. The description of her looks like this:
- body – slightly laterally compressed, elongated;
- head is big;
- snout - elongated, and the lower jaw protrudes noticeably forward;
- mouth – big;
- dorsal fin with 6-7 spiny unbranched rays, anal fin with 12-14 soft and 4-5 spiny rays, and caudal notched;
teeth - tilted inside the pharynx, in case of loss of one of them, a new one grows in its place;
This pike has a lifespan of about 14 years, a live weight of up to 20 kg and a size of 115 cm.
The body of the fish is covered with small cylindrical scales. Its color is curious. The Amur pike, depending on the habitat and age, has different shades of scale color and pattern on the body. It can be golden, silvery, greenish. It is darker on the back, scattered all over the body - distinct dark spots, brown and black, they are also on the dorsal and caudal fins. They are regular oblique transverse rows, each with 25-35 spots.
Young animals (up to 35 cm) have narrow stripes instead of spots. This is a camouflage for shallow water, where there is a lot of vegetation. Until they reach five centimeters in length, they feed on zooplankton. Then they start hunting small fish. The diet of an adult individual includes almost all the fish population of the water area: chebak, gudgeon, cyprinids, smelt, podust and others. For lunch, both a frog and a small rodent will do.
Reproduction
The fish reaches puberty by 3-4 years, at this moment its length is about 40 cm. The spawning time depends on the time of flooding the ground vegetation. Floods on the Amur have three peaks - spring, summer and autumn. Spring refers to a more constant time, but in some years it can significantly shift in time.
Spawning begins immediately after the rivers are free of ice - from the beginning of April and sometimes until mid-June (depending on water temperature), as the temperature during spawning is highprovokes the death of eggs. Amur or leopard pike lays between 25,000 and 150,000 eggs. The average is 45,000 pieces. The eggs are quite large - up to 3.5 mm in diameter, yellowish in color. Gluten securely attaches eggs to dense vegetation in the coastal zone.
After 10-12 days, larvae appear, up to 8 mm long, with a yolk sac. Squint development is very fast:
- by June - 5 cm;
- in July - up to 14 cm;
- by the year - up to 25 cm;
- by three years - up to 45 cm.
This type of pike belongs to the main commercial fish of the Amur basin.
Features and habitat
The Amur pike has some distinctive features compared to the common one:
- she has a lighter scale tone;
- young growth resembles an ordinary pike in color, the pattern changes with age;
- more cylindrical and smooth body;
- head covered with scales to snout;
- scales smaller;
- The proximity of the dorsal, caudal and anal fins allows for lightning-fast ambush attacks and high jumps out of the water;
- young live in the coastal zone, and when they reach puberty they go to open areas of rivers and lakes;
- females in the first years of life are much larger than males;
- it does not grow to the same size as the common pike (it can reach 2m in length).
This fish prefers fresh water with a slow current. Main rangehabitats - the Amur basin, the rivers Uda, Sungari, Ussuri, Tungari and their tributaries, lakes Khanka, Kenon, Buir-Nur. Amur pike is found on Sakhalin in the Tym and Poronai rivers.
