Our first fish from the Salmonidae family the Huchen, or Danube salmon (Hucho hucho), is the featured fish species this month. This fish is native (that is - humans didn't put them there) to the Danube River basin of Europe.
The reason they are featured here is because they are a fantastic fly fishing species (bucket list stuff!) and are the focus of one of this month's videos featured in The Flow. The Huchen can grow pretty big - up to 50kg (110lb), but most are much smaller providing great sport on heavy fly rods (9-10 weight) and sinking lines.
Sadly, the poor Huchen does not live in many of the places it used to. Much of the reason for this is something called 'habitat fragmentation', which I will explain in detail in another post, but basically means barriers, or other things have stopped the fish from occupying the places they used to. This is a big reason why the Huchen has been listed as 'endangered' on the IUCN red list of threatened species. Like most Salmonids, the huchen likes cold, clean water to live in, so pollution of rivers and other human influences can harm these fish and their habitat. Ever wondered how to easily tell if a fish is from the Salmonidae family? look at the fish's back, just in front of the man's hand in the photo above. That small, fleshy fin is called the adipose fin - something common to all trout, salmon,char, grayling and whitefish.
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