mass spawning roach

[Chubman]

ive been wandering the banks of the river itchen for over a week now with my polarized glasses to see if the roach are about to spawn ,up to now ive seen very few,that is untill today when i spotted two shoals in their favourite spawning beds, at a very rough count about 200 fish up to about 1.5lbs,it seems to happen almost to the same day every season,a wonderfull sight, some very large eels were taking advantage of the roach eggs sadly,is it both sexes that grow spawning nodules on there heads? it looks like a fungal infection at first glance or is it just the males.

[Shaun Harrison]

I always thought it just the males. I had 10 bream a couple of Saturday's ago, all around the double figure mark and the males were totally covered in them. Not very pleasant to handle really, part fish, part reptile they felt like, but it has given me the idea to go back and fish for them by design. Some of these were from quite close in so the pin and cane will be ideal. I have caught a fair few double figure bream in the past but never on cane. I do like a new challenge but will wait for them to get well over their spawning period first.

[Hovis]

This is from fishbase, a really useful website for all things fishy.

http://www.fishbase.org/glossary/Glossa ... g+tubercle

Doesn’t specify that it’s only male but from what I seen this is only seen on males. Certainly not in more than 40% of the fish spawning at any one time. I think I’m right in saying that this is where the term “coarse” fishing comes from.

[Tengisgol]

Worth looking at the Hampshire Avon Roach Project pages, they talk about the Avon roach spawning on exactly the same day for something like five of the last seven years!