| Family |
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Salmonidae
Species (popular name): Brown trout (river trout and lake trout)
(scientific name): Salmo (trutta) trutta (Linnaeus 1758) | | |
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| Name in the main European languages |
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I:Trota comune
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F:Truite de rivière
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E: Trucha
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D:Bachforelle
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| Max. size |
Kg: over 10
cm: 130 |
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| Period of reproduction |
| Winter – from November to February |
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| Description |
| A medium-large size fish, it has a slender, flat body. Its overall colouring is incredibly varied, according to the environments it lives in. The river trout presents a dark back, scattered with few small black spots all along the sides, never on the tail. Along the yellowish sides it has also red spots, sometimes encircled by a bright ring. On the other hand, lake trout show typical silver-coloured sides, fading into a white stomach. Blackish x-shaped blotches are irregularly distributed in the upper body. The trout has a big mouth with teeth on the jaw, the vomer, the palate bones and the tongue, signs of its predatory nature. |
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| Biology |
| It is one of the most popular ichthyic species in the Italian waters. A strong and resistant swimmer, it lives in fresh, clear and well-oxygenated waters provided with rapid springs and a pebbly-gravely bottom, up to a 2,000 m height (the trout area). The trout widely spread also after repopulation activities, although often carried out not very rationally or responsibly, just trying to meet sports fishers' requirements, causing damage to the environment and creating structural discontinuities in the relevant ecosystem. Male trout reach their sexual maturity on their second year, females on their third year and produce 800-2,000 eggs per kg of live weight. Eggs, with a diameter of 4-6 mm, are considered very "big". Incubation, at a temperature of 10°C, lasts for 42-45 days. From the egg a fry comes out provided with a huge yolk sac which will feed it for about three weeks. Feed mainly consists of small aquatic invertebrates: insects and their grubs, crustaceans, worms and molluscs. As the trout grows bigger, it also feeds on small fish. |
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| Fishing |
| The trout is highly appreciated by sports fishers, whose "fishing pressure" is far superior than on other species of fish. |
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| Acquaculture |
| Popular all over the world, the trout breeding is the most extensively practiced form of coldwater pisciculture. The opportunity of easy artificial spawning, its high adaptability to artificial life conditions, its rapid growth, its high food value make the trout the ideal subject for mass-production fish-breeding plants. |
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| Curiosity |
| Trout-breeding, unlike other kinds of fish-breeding, is quite recent. It started when man identified the cycles of natural reproduction: the spawning and the growth of eggs; after observing salmons and trout in the rivers, he tried to obtain similar results by artificial means. In 1763, Jacobi, a Prussian officer from Hohenhausen (Hannover), carried out the first documented experiment of artificial spawning. |
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