Bass or Zander?

[Matt Parker]

I went for a lazy session yesterday down on the tidal Thames at Chiswick, with a pint of red maggots and a feeder. The session brought the usual dace (10+), roach (3) and bream (2), along with a about a dozen little fish I haven't seen before, and because they were so little, they were hard to identify.
They were about three inches long. At first I thought they were perch that were so young and living in cloudy water that they hadn't developed their green stripes and instead remained silvery. Then I thought they were juvenile bass (the river is tidal after all), but it is only as I've come away that it occurs to me they may have been zander. They were silvery, with a strong grey lateral line, a big mouth like a perch but more slender, with a pointy snout. Their eyes were quite close together and up towards the front. Obviously they were slimmer and longer than perch, and they reminded me of scaled-down versions of those bass you see in supermarket fishmongers.

The question is: what were they? There were a lot of them. Has anyone else caught them, or heard of them being caught? Do bass come upstream that far in those numbers? Are we about to see a zander explosion on the tidal Thames?

 

[Martin Scullion]

Yep they certainly sound like zeds to me, did they have a spiny dorsal like a perch ???

 

[Phil Hackett]

I'm not sure but have copied it to someone I know down there who might know. I'll get back to you when he ansewrs me.

 

[DAVE COOPER]

Ruffe perhaps?

 

[Chris Bishop]

Zanders - now officially present in the Thames. Matchmen sometimes get the tiny ones on the Relief Channel up here in summer.

 

[Ian Whittaker]

Sounds like they could be smelt Matt.

 

[Ron Clay]

Sound like zander to me.

I would love to have seen one.

 

[David Will]

Thames around Chiswick is full of little Zander, bodes well for the future.