Minnows

Names in dialect: salgarola, botola, pesce popolo, pessata rossa, sanghinarola.

Minnows have a rounded nose and slender body with very small scales. The back is an olive-green brown colour; a dark lateral band made up of spots runs down each side. The belly is pale in colour and turns red during the spawning period, when the base of the pectoral, ventral and anal fins also turns red in the male, while the back and head go very dark and the sides assume greenish or bluish metallic reflections. Adults reach a length of 7-9 cm.
They are common in all clear, cool waters rich in oxygen. They are also found in some marshlands, remnants of lakes that have disappeared (Lagabrun, Fiavè, Lomasona). They even manage to turn up in seasonal bodies of water (such as Lake Andalo). Minnows share much of their habitat with trout and Artic char, who often prey on them.
Minnows are highly gregarious. They tend to stay near the banks, hiding amongst the stones or shoreline vegetation. Their diet includes the larvae of aquatic insects, crustaceans and fragments of plants. Sometimes all it takes is a few crumbs thrown into an Alpine lake to see them swarm en masse.
They reach sexual maturity in their second year and spawn from May to July. The eggs are laid by large groups of minnows, in very shallows waters near the shores, on gravel. Each female can lay a thousand eggs. The fry hatch after about ten days.
Fishermen use minnows as bait to fish for trout and char. An effective system to catch them is as follows: place a bottle containing a piece of bread in the water. Pull it out quickly as soon as two or three minnows have entered it.