Rotan fish. Where is the largest rotan found and a description of edible fish. Ratan fish: description

Looking at the photo, it becomes clear why rotan is called firebrand. This fish stands out for its large head, the body narrows towards the tail. Depending on the color of the bottom of the reservoir, the color of the individuals changes. The darkest part is the back. The sides and belly may have a yellowish tint. The seasonal change in color of rotan is associated with spawning. During this period, the fish becomes almost black.

The homeland of rotan is the Amur River basin. In addition to our Far East, it is found in China and Korea. With the spread of its range, this predator, unusual for our area, began to pose a threat to the local ichthyofauna, since its diet consists of caviar and fry. Under favorable conditions, the weight of rotan can reach 1 kg or more, but catching one is a great success. The standard size of the “firebrand” does not exceed the length of the palm.

Migration from one body of water to another occurs in two ways. The first is that fish can be deliberately relocated by humans. The second (natural) way is that its eggs are carried by birds. The gluttony of rotan leads to the fact that over time in the pond, where it fell through the water of fate or with human help, it changes species composition, and the other fish gradually disappear. IN in rare cases In parallel with it, perch and crucian carp coexist in the reservoir, but this phenomenon is temporary.

Rotan belongs to the order of perciformes, to the suborder of gobies. Its huge mouth allows it to swallow fairly large prey. The teeth are small, but sharp and there are many of them. This is clearly visible in the photo.

They are located in several rows. There are two dorsal fins. The one that is closer to the head is shorter, the back one is longer.

Features of behavior and nutrition

Not only is rotan a predator, it is also characterized by cannibalism. The fish feeds not only on the fry of other species, it eats its own relatives. Adults eat almost all living things that are found in a pond, including tadpoles and leeches. The fry's diet consists of plankton and zoobenthos - living organisms living in the bottom layer.

Rotan itself is a tasty prey for more large predator. It becomes the target of hunting for perch and pike. Pike are specially released into reservoirs to get rid of the voracious alien. Fishing for rotan is very interesting, especially in winter, but for pond farms this fish becomes a real natural disaster. She has no sense of proportion, so she eats a lot. After it is full, it can sit on the bottom for several days, digesting food.

In late spring, rotan goes to spawn. The spawning period is extended from May to July. During this period, females become lighter, males darken. A growth forms on the male’s head, by which it is easy to determine the gender of the fish.

On average, the female spawns about 1000 eggs, yellow in color and oblong in shape. The male protects the future offspring, but after the larvae appear from the eggs, he loses all his care and can feed on these very offspring.

Fishing for rotan

To successfully catch rotan, you do not need to have much experience. During periods of its greatest activity, it is difficult to remain without a catch. It bites both during the day and at night. It swallows the bait so greedily that you should make sure you have it on hand. Without it, it will be impossible to remove the hook without damaging the insides of the fish.

Fishing for rotan is effective at any time of the year. Neither heat nor inclement weather can spoil his appetite. In the summer it is caught with a float rod, less often with a spinning rod. The peculiarity of biting rotan is that even with a slight fluctuation of the float, the fish can sit firmly on the hook. The bite looks like this:

• First, the float is slightly submerged;
• Then it sways barely noticeably;
• Then he walks away.

Sometimes after drowning, absolutely nothing happens. Rotan simply shuts his mouth and stands there without moving. This leaves its mark on the fishing process. At strong wind bites may not be noticed. And only after you decide to check the bait, it turns out that the fish has been sitting on the hook for a long time.

Since rotan is a predator, there is an element of hunting in its behavior, but strong desire he doesn’t have the ability to chase prey. Based on this, passive ones are used when fishing with spinning rods. Installation - drop shot. But the best summer tackle for rotan is considered to be a float rod. It is very important that the hook is thin and sharp: the fish’s mouth is hard and it is not easy to penetrate it.

Like any predatory fish, rotan prefers food of animal origin; it is better to find out what kind of bait it is directly on the pond from fellow fishermen. He willingly bites on:

• Worm;
• Bloodworm;
• Maggot;
• Live bait;
• Salo;
• Lung and liver.

In some reservoirs, rotan is caught, as they say, on an empty hook - no matter what you attach, a bite will be guaranteed.

Another promising bait is intestines, moreover, of its own relatives. Everyone knows that very often he swallows the hook almost to the tail and in order to get it, he has to rip open his belly. These entrails can be good bait.

When fishing with bait of animal origin, it is very useful to periodically move the tackle to activate the bite. Light twitching of the fishing line animates the worm and provokes the rotan to bite. Sometimes you have to work hard to catch these fish. If it doesn’t bite in one place, you need to change the location. This primarily applies to large individuals. You need to look for them. They are often lured with bait containing fish offal.

Large rotan do not flock together, but in winter you can often catch several decent-sized fish from one hole. If the bite weakens or stops, it is recommended to move to another hole. Immediately after the ice melts, there is a lull, the rotan refuses any bait, but after just a few weeks everything changes, its usual gluttony returns to it. After the ice breaks up in the reservoirs, the rotan is the first to start pecking on summer gear.

Around mid-summer, fishing for large specimens stops. Reservoirs are covered with vegetation, approaches to promising places are complicated, and there is too much natural food for a lazy predator to waste energy searching for a worm. But the little fish continue to move actively, and their bite does not subside throughout the entire warm season.

We invite you to watch an educational video about catching rotan in winter.

Rotan is a fish of the order Perciformes. Its body does not exceed 25 cm in length. Amur sleeper is found in the rivers of Primorye and in the Amur basin, but several decades ago it was introduced into many reservoirs, where in a short time it became the main inhabitant.

Rotan is a small fish, often called firebrand. Its color is dark, from brown to almost black. Brown spots are clearly visible on the belly and sides. Rotan is also distinguished by two separate dorsal fin. The closest relative of this species is the southern goby. The rotan's mouth is large, it is directed upward, protruding forward barely noticeably. Pelvic fins are separate. During spawning, males become almost black. Probably, it is for this reason and, perhaps, for its low mobility that rotan is called a firebrand.

This fish prefers to stay near flooded bushes, in small snags, and in shallows. It feeds mainly on animal food. Rotan is a fish that most prefers the eggs of fry, so it very quickly minimizes the number of other species in the reservoir. Very often, where this species settles, after a year or two there are no other fish left. Amur sleeper reproduces only in summer; females lay their eggs on the lower part of the leaves. aquatic plants. Most often, spawning occurs in thickets of pondweeds, egg capsules and water lilies. The number of eggs in one such clutch is about 10 thousand. Rotan is a very tenacious fish. It can survive even where other species, including crucian carp and tench, die.

Today, rotan is an inhabitant of almost all reservoirs in Russia with the exception of Crimean peninsula. But it is possible that it will soon appear in these places. It has been noticed that in those reservoirs where perch and pike are active, rotan fails to take a leading position. These species do not allow it to reproduce heavily and eat the eggs of peaceful fish. But in ponds and lakes where only crucian carp lives, rotan very quickly masters and becomes the master of the situation. Most often, this voracious fish turns out to be the only inhabitant of small reservoirs with very harsh living conditions. These are stagnant quarries, overgrown with mud, overgrown ponds. Rotan is able, no worse than crucian carp, to withstand a critical lack of oxygen and complete freezing of a reservoir in winter.

Rotan is a fish that can be a lot of fun to catch. The largest individuals stay under the cover of duckweed or under the wide leaves of water lilies. This behavior is completely unusual for bulls. When the reservoir is heavily overgrown, they look for clearings or windows among aquatic vegetation. Such places can be created artificially, even with the help of an ordinary shelf. Rotans are not at all shy. They float to a place free of vegetation very quickly, and are not bothered by the presence of humans. Another one spotted interesting feature. Rotan loves the red and white float very much. The reasons for this are not clear. But the fishermen noticed that it was he who attracted the attention of the nimble fish.

This is such an interesting rotan fish. A photo of her can be seen in this article. This fish has individuality and is undeservedly not popular among professional fishermen.

The first appearance of rotan in water bodies of the European part of Russia was recorded about a hundred years ago. It is not known exactly how this Far Eastern fish, whose habitat was limited to the Amur River and some Chinese reservoirs, first found its way into Moscow reservoirs, then into St. Petersburg rivers and lakes. However, there is an opinion that those who like to keep home aquariums are to blame for this. It is not clear why they were attracted to the nondescript, ugly rotan. After a very short time, it exterminated the other inhabitants, and it became clear that it was not worth introducing rotan into the aquarium with other more attractive fish. And this small but very voracious predator was released into the wild.

Appearance

A hundred years have passed, but even now some fishermen do not really know what rotan looks like, often confusing it with a goby. Rotan and goby have external similarities, but it is quite easy to distinguish them. Rotan has two dorsal fins. The front one is high, but not long. The rear one is approximately the same in height, but twice as long.

Colors vary. It depends on the habitat. If the reservoir is sandy with a light bottom, then rotan is light brown with dark, chaotically located spots. In a reservoir with a peat bottom it is darker.

The body is wide, dense, tapering significantly towards the tail. The length rarely exceeds 25 cm. The maximum recorded weight is 800 g.

The pectoral fins can also be different. In one rotan they are scanty and small. The other has wide, fluffy wings, like the wings of a butterfly. It is not possible to find out what this depends on.

Main hallmark Rotana is a head for which it received not only the nickname “little firebrand”, but also belongs to the species of firebrand. She's huge. May occupy a third of the entire body. The gill covers are large and extend far into the body. The mouth is wide, equipped with several rows of small, sharp teeth, set and replaced according to the principle of a shark. The eyes are large, providing the rotan with clear and long-range vision.

Habits

Even in the photo of the rotan fish it is clearly visible that it is a pronounced predator. Having hatched from the egg, it begins to feed on zooplankton and, as it grows, gradually switches to worms, insects, eggs of other types of fish and fry. It does not disdain its smaller relatives.

A description of the sleeper's habits can be summed up in two words - a voracious sloth. He does not like to chase potential prey, preferring to grab fish swimming in close proximity. If there are no suitable fry nearby, rotan will eat worms, bloodworms, insects and other living creatures.

Rotan's teeth are small, but very sharp.

Rotan spawns for a long time. The process can last from mid-May to the end of July. The female lays up to 1000 oblong eggs and instantly goes about her voracious business. A male remains near the clutch, changing its color to charcoal black. It protects the offspring until hatching. The hatched fry are forced to escape the teeth of their hungry father, but not everyone succeeds.

Habitat

Contrary to the prevailing opinion, which claims that due to its unique unpretentiousness, rotan can live in almost any body of water, the facts indicate the opposite. The firebrand can actually survive in a very small and polluted pond. This fish likes such places. But rotan does not visit flowing, clean rivers and lakes willingly. Its favorable existence in such reservoirs is hindered by the local predators living here - pike and pike perch, which are not averse to feasting on small rotan and do not allow it to breed. For this reason, river rotan is very rare.

In small ponds, where the bottom is densely covered with vegetation, the water begins to bloom at the end of June, and living creatures in the form of all kinds of worms, frogs and fry are quite accessible, rotan feels like the master of the situation.

Densely overgrown pond - favorite place rotan habitat

These facts destroy another widespread myth. Many fishermen, having caught rotan in their favorite body of water, begin to panic that this voracious and rapidly reproducing predator will soon destroy all other fish. Observations prove the opposite. If other predators live in the lake or pond where the rotan appeared, they will not allow the firebrand to develop its population too widely. On the other hand, in reservoirs where peaceful fish, the appearance of rotan will lead to a significant increase in the size of crucian carp, bream, roach and carp. In the absence of a predator, peaceful fish in such reservoirs are usually too numerous and do not grow to impressive sizes due to a lack of food for the entire population. Rotan, eating eggs and fry, thins out the population, thereby ensuring the availability and abundance of food for the remaining crucian carp and carp, which leads to their intensive growth.

In not a single reservoir where rotan appeared, not a single species of fish that lived there before has disappeared.

Fishing for rotan

Despite its not very attractive appearance, catching rotan is quite exciting. He bites greedily, aggressively, and is practically not afraid of what is happening on the shore or in the boat. You can get it with regular float tackle. The only condition is that the bait must be alive, fragrant and active. If a bite does not occur within 20-30 minutes, the worm, bloodworm or maggot should be replaced.

If planned sporty look For catch-and-release fishing, the angler must have an extractor with him. Rotan swallows the bait very deeply, and in most cases it is impossible to remove it from the hook without damaging the inside without this simple device.

When catching rotan with a spinning rod, all kinds of small silicone baits are most often used. The wiring can be any kind in any layer of water. Rotan can attack both at the very bottom and at the surface. The only difference is that at depth the wiring speed should be slower. A firebrand standing in thickets or under a snag does not like to chase bait over long distances. Near the surface, it is more active and pursues the prey much longer and more willingly.

Read more about fishing for rotan.

As live bait

Rotan fish is interesting to fishermen not only as a trophy. Small and even medium-sized firebrands are excellent live bait. Several facts speak in his favor, in relation to other fry.

• Easy to catch. If rotan is present in a reservoir, it will not be difficult to obtain it even in winter.
• Vitality. With one rotan it is quite possible to catch several pikes, pike perch or burbot. Even severely wounded by pike teeth or pike perch fangs, rotan does not lose activity and remains attractive to predators.
• Versatility. This means that any predator living in a body of water can be attracted to rotan.

Rotan is used as live bait when equipping girders, stands, donks and other types of gear intended for catching large predators.

Culinary features

Another question that occupies many anglers is rotan, is the fish edible or not? The answer is clear - rotan is not a delicacy, but it is quite suitable for food. Its meat is white, dense and quite tasty. A properly fried firebrand is much tastier than crucian carp. Rotan cutlets cook quickly, do not fall apart in the pan and are suitable for any side dish. Especially good with potatoes or rice.

Another plus for cooks is the small number of bones. Like most predators, rotan lacks the small bones that bream, crucian carp and carp have. The spine and ribs are the entire bone structure of this fish, which can be removed without any problems.

Small rotan is fried with its head

One roast and cutlets culinary features This fish is not limited. Rotan is suitable for almost any type of cooking. Fish soup is cooked from it, producing a fairly fatty broth. Dumplings, dumplings and pies are made with rotan minced meat. A large firebrand pie is also very tasty. Boiled rotan meat can serve as the basis for fish salad or stuffed vegetables. Casseroles, omelettes, appetizers and even marinated fish are not excluded.

Cleaning rotan is easy. The scales are easily removed with a regular knife. The insides won't cause any extra trouble either. After removing them, it is recommended to rinse the carcass with running water, cut off the fins and can be cooked in any chosen way. There is no need to be afraid of the taste of mud or other unpleasant odor. Rotan, although it lives in rather muddy waters, has an active lifestyle and therefore the meat does not absorb foreign odors.

To prove that rotan can be cooked different ways, it’s worth giving three recipes.

Casserole

The name of the dish is “Rotan in scales”. In this case, the scales are potatoes cut into thin circles. Place half of the pre-fried potatoes in a baking dish. Then the fish carcasses fried in flour are placed in an even layer. On top is another layer of potatoes with onions and boiled eggs. Season everything with salt, pepper and sour cream. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 40 minutes.

Fish balls

Pre-boiled fish is passed through a meat grinder or crushed in any other way. The resulting minced meat is mixed with mashed potatoes in a 1:1 ratio. Added a raw egg, butter, pepper, salt. Hand-shaped balls can be prepared in two ways. Roll in breadcrumbs and fry in a frying pan. Or stew in tomato sauce.

Rotan under marinade

Boiled fish is cleaned of bones and cut into small pieces. Place in an even layer on a plate. Coarsely grated carrots and finely chopped onions are fried, add 3-4 tablespoons tomato paste, one tablespoon of vinegar, a couple of spoons vegetable oil, salt, pepper and spices to taste. The resulting marinade is poured over the fish pieces. The dish is put in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Served as a snack with strong drinks.

Main

A small, ugly-looking, but very picky and voracious rotan fish lives in overgrown reservoirs with a muddy or earthen bottom. It feels great in dense thickets and hunts everything that moves and matches its size.

The fear that rotan can destroy the entire population of other fish has no basis. In some reservoirs, on the contrary, it helps maintain the health of other aquatic inhabitants. Thins out their population.

Catching rotan is a gambling activity, not difficult and rewarding. It does not require any special gear, but it must be taken into account that the firebrand swallows the bait deeply and when pulling the hook out of its mouth you need to be careful.

Rotan dishes are varied and can take their rightful place on any holiday table.

Rotan, with all its inconspicuousness and the accompanying secrets and myths, can bring real pleasure to fishermen during a crazy bite and to real gourmets. His activity and gluttony are excitement on the pond. And properly cooked meat is an exquisite dish.

Rotan – bony fish goby family. This fish has a short, dense body. The scales are medium in size.

The color of rotan is dull, mainly green-gray and brown colors. Stripes and spots scattered across the body irregular shape. The belly is most often gray. During spawning, rotan turns black.

The head is large, the mouth is filled with sharp teeth arranged in several rows. The fins are soft and do not have sharp spines. The gill covers are directed backwards. There are two dorsal fins, with the back one being longer than the front one. The anal fin is small. The caudal fin is rounded.

By appearance rotan is similar to other representatives of fish gobies. The main feature is the pelvic fins: in rotan, the paired fins are located close to the head and are very small in size, and in gobies, two fins grow together into one, and in appearance they look like a sucker.

The average body length varies between 14-25 centimeters. The size of rotans depends on living conditions, but large individuals are not common.

Rotans live for about 7 years, but most often their life expectancy is 4-5 years.

Puberty in rotans occurs at 2 years. Rotans spawn in May-July. One female brings about 1 thousand eggs. The eggs stick to the plants. The clutch is guarded by the male.

The most suitable habitat for rotans is standing water bodies with abundant aquatic vegetation. These fish are able to tolerate partial drying out of the reservoir. In addition, they survive if the reservoir freezes completely.

This is a predatory fish. The fry initially eat plankton and then move on to small invertebrates. Adults feed on fish fry, eggs, leeches, tadpoles, and newts. Cannibalism is widespread among these fish; they often eat smaller relatives.

In small bodies of water, rotans multiply quickly, so much so that they can almost completely destroy other living creatures. And in large bodies of water their numbers are regulated by predators such as catfish, pike and perch.

Habitat of rotans

These fish live on Far East, northern China, and in North Korea. They are mainly found in the Amur River basins. In the 20th century, rotan entered Lake Baikal; scientists perceived this phenomenon as pollution of the lake.

In 1916, these fish were introduced into the reservoirs of St. Petersburg. Over time they spread into numerous rivers Northern Eurasia. Rotans live in most of our country and in many European countries.

Today, these fish live in the Dnieper, Volga, Dniester, Don and Danube. The spread of rotans is facilitated by birds, which spread their eggs on their paws.

Rotans and crucian carp are not competitors in nutrition; some consume animal food, others - plant food. And the fact that rotans destroy some of the small crucian carp creates Better conditions in the pond for the rest. In lakes and ponds that are overpopulated, like the Lyubvinsky Pond, with fish of the same species, sleeper can perform the function of a “biological reclamation agent,” as an ichthyologist would say.

On that June day when I was fishing on Lyubvinsky Pond, all the other fishermen had a good catch of crucian carp. Almost all the crucian carp caught were obviously of the same age. I thought then that rotans eat up not such a significant part of the fry of one generation. Most remain unharmed and survive safely to a size where such a small predator as rotan becomes fearless to them.

They say that rotans eat fish eggs, including valuable ones. I have doubts about this. After all, rotan is a predator and that is why it should not pay attention to motionless eggs; it seems to me that it is only interested in what moves - a fry, a worm, an insect larva. And the rotan’s mouth is so large that it is clear: by nature itself it is intended not for sucking up small eggs, but for capturing much larger (moving) prey. The rotan has numerous small but sharp teeth in order to hold this moving prey and prevent it from slipping out. Caviar is included in the diet of small bottom-dwelling fish that have a good sense of smell, for example, loach, loach, and gudgeon.

Rotan reaches quite a large number in ponds. It seems to me that this happens because the survival rate of eggs and the fish themselves is very high. The reason, obviously, is that in their habitats there is little left of the fish that feed on caviar and which were mentioned above (they are eaten in significant quantities by rotan), and also predators such as perch and pike, capable of destroying fry, usually do not live rotan and adult fish.

It must be assumed that rotan itself regulates the size of its population by eating its own young.

One more observation. Since the mass appearance of rotan in the pond, no loach has been caught on the bait. Obviously, rotans caused significant damage to it, and it became rare in the reservoir. It is more difficult for a small fish to escape from a rotan than for a crucian carp.

For the amateur fisherman, rotan is interesting in many respects. I will try to describe this fish in detail as much as possible and prove that fishermen needlessly neglect it.

I read that rotan reaches 300 grams of weight. To my joy, one day in a pond in the village of Lyubvino I managed to catch almost three hundred gram rotan. Neither I nor the fishermen around me had not only caught such large rotans, but had never seen them.

Regarding the size of rotan, there is information that 300 grams is far from the limit. Reader Olga Laiko sent photos of rotan weighing 1 kilogram 300 grams. Moreover, when defrosting rotan stored in freezer, he comes to life and even floats.

Rotan has a very large head, it is one third of the length of the entire body. The huge mouth, as I already said, is equipped with brushes of small but sharp teeth. It usually swallows the baited hook deeply, and to avoid injuring your hands when removing the hook, the angler should use an extractor.

A rotan has two dorsal fins: the first is small, the second, located closer to the tail, is large. The caudal fin is rounded, like, for example, a loach and a loach. The pelvic fins are very small and narrow.

The body of rotan is covered with scales, overall color its grey-brown. Despite the fact that rotan is a predator, it is slow in its movements and resists being pulled out rather sluggishly. meat it white, tastes good, but in fish caught in places rich in algae, it has a specific smell (we notice this in both gold and silver crucian carp).

Caught in summer heat and when asleep, rotan survives longer than, for example, silver crucian carp. In terms of its vitality and ability to live for a long time without water in cool times, it is not inferior to crucian carp, it tolerates a lack of oxygen in water well, and in small enclosed reservoirs it can endure a difficult winter, when fish such as pike, perch, and roach die. Therefore, I think that in such reservoirs, only rotan, and not, say, pike or perch, can regulate the number of, for example, crucian carp (so that they do not degenerate into a dwarf form) and play the role of an orderly. This is where I see the value of rotan. How many small lakes we have with dwarf crucian carp! If you introduce rotan into such lakes, then the crucian carp will gradually become larger in them, which will become a desired trophy for the fisherman.

Rotan bites greedily in any weather and almost at any time of the year. I only observed a weak bite at the end of June. For example, on June 23, 1985, in the pond in the village of Lyubvino, I caught only one small rotan, and crucian carp - about three kilograms. Other fishermen had the same picture. I don’t know what this was connected with. After that, I came to Lyubvino for fishing in August. Rotans were caught very well. The solid, 150-250 gram crucian carp also bit well.

In September and October I went to Lyubvino several times, and always, in any weather, rotans were caught, and crucian carp - only in warm weather.

It is rare to find a body of water where crucian carp is caught in winter; in the Morshansky region we know only two ponds where silver crucian carp bite in winter. Rotan takes it everywhere in winter too.

I caught rotans only with a worm; I haven’t tried fishing with live bait or any other bait. The best bite was observed close to the shore, in the clearings between the thickets of cattails and reeds. Rotan also pecked far from the shore (on a donka with a rubber shock absorber), but worse.

His bite is phlegmatic: he slowly moves and lowers the float, very rarely slightly drags it to the side. This is how the rotan bite differs from the crucian carp: the crucian carp, having moved the float, as a rule, smoothly moves it to the side.

It seems to me that it’s time to part with the prejudice towards rotan. For an angler, fishing for rotan can be quite interesting. As for the presence of this predator in water bodies, a differentiated, strictly scientific approach is probably needed here.

A. Tsurikov

Morshansk