Fish sterlet - a truly royal representative of the family Sturgeon

Fish sterlet is the representative of the smallest subspecies in its family. Being only freshwater, it occurs exclusively on strong currents. This "elite" representative of the Sturgeon family never makes large migrations. Preferring the bottom habitat, fish sterlet only in the evenings or at night swim to shallow water in search of food. It is very demanding to the relief of the river and the quality of water and does not occur in slow channels with a muddy bottom.

In the autumn, in the beginning of September, the fish sterlet moves to the wintering pits, where it waits cold, practically not eating. In the summer months, the diet of her nutrition includes water larvae of insects, mollusks, eggs of other fish. Due to the lower location of its mouth, sterlets pull it out with a tube, sucking in the feed from the bottom, submerged snags or other objects.

Maturity comes from 4 years in males and from 5 in females when they reach a length of about 35 cm. When spawning fish, sterlet leaves in May, when the water warms up to almost 15 ° C. Places where females lay eggs are sometimes located at depth Up to 10 m.

A prerequisite is the presence of sand or pebbles and fast or medium flow. Each female lays up to 150 thousand eggs, the incubation period of which is 5 days.

From other types of sturgeon, sterlet fish , the photo of which can easily be distinguished along the length of its nose, antennae and lower lip, is covered with bone bones located in longitudinal rows, under which there is bare skin. Its color varies depending on the terrain, sometimes turning yellow.

Sturgeon fish is quite common in many rivers. Previously, it was found only in the Caspian and Black Sea basins, but today it has spread to the northern reservoirs, it shows them not as a passageway, but as a "sedentary one".

Being a commercial species, the fish sterlet possesses excellent taste qualities. Its meat is a unique product, which contains virtually no carbohydrates. Due to this, the sterlet, called the royal fish, is recommended for diets even for diets. In addition, it is unusually rich in proteins and amino acids, the lack of which in the human body often leads to diseases.

Many writers, including Pushkin, and Melnikov-Pechersky, mentioned in the works of fish sterlet.

On what to catch it, the best know the representatives of the Pomor people, who owned and own many ways and secrets of productive fishing. They were the ones who supplied this fish to the tsar's table of Peter the Great, and for Ivan the Terrible it was caught in a Moscow river.

The sterlet is best caught on donka. This kind of fishing does not require special skill. The main thing is to know the places of possible habitation of this representative of sturgeon, which is not "inventive" at all, therefore it comes to the hook almost at the first opportunity.

Sometimes for a single throw you can catch up to several adults, because the fish prefer to live in small flocks.