| Family |
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Ciprinidi
Specie (n. comune): Tench
(nome scientifico):Tinca tinca (L)
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| Name in the main European languages |
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I: Tinca |
F: Tanche |
E: Tenca |
D: Schleie | |
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| Max. size |
Kg: 6
cm: 60 |
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| Period of reproduction |
| Spring/Summer – from May to July |
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| Description |
| A medium-large size fish, it has a squat body covered with abundant mucus. Its overall colouring is green with dark-coloured back and yellow stomach. Its eyes have a red iris. Its mouth is quite small and protractile, with thick lips and two short barbels. Males have longer and stronger ventral fins than females; in fact, they come to reach the anal span. |
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| Biology |
| The tench lives nearly everywhere, although it prefers stagnant or slow-flowing waters with summer temperatures above 20°C. It is not rare, however, to find it also in mountain waters. Sexual maturity is reached after 2-4 years, males mature before females. Reproduction takes place by laying on aquatic plants 400,000-600,000 very tiny eggs (1 mm diameter) per kg of live weight, which, at the summer temperature, hatch in 4-5 days. The fry remains attached to the vegetation until it reabsorbs the yolk sac, which takes about 10 days. An omnivore, the tench feeds on frogs, aquatic plants, molluscs, crustaceans, insect grubs: its diet is strictly limited to bottom organisms. Highly vital and rustic, this fish is able to live in waters with minimum oxygen concentrations and to resist out of water for a long time. |
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| Fishing |
| It is a species of great commercial interest, also for professional fishing, which is practiced in lakes with set nets. It is also appreciated by sports fishers for its fighting spirit and it is caught mainly in summer. Its tender, fat and tasty flesh is very appreciated in different recipes. |
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| Acquaculture |
| The tench is easy to breed, although the scarce market demand, together with its slow growth, limit the breeding of this species to repopulation through young specimens. |
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| Curiosity |
| During the reproduction period it is not rare to see a female followed by a group of males. A picturesque scene that Carlo Luigi Bonaparte, a famous nineteenth-century ichthyologist described with these words: "They teem with eggs… and they lay them small and greenish… on water plants, among which they prefer the Potamogeton. And here you see at least two males stick to her by the sides to spawn the foetus with such a deep care and loving that it is easy to catch the bigamist and its lovers in just one glimpse…". |
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