The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Having just seen a picture of a perch with eight stripes, I remembered this thread. A lot of perch from my local river Regnitz have more than 6 stripes - 8 mostly.

Greetings from Bamberg

Martin

The one below is a Windermere perch, 'normal' stripes.

I think they start of with 8 stripes and reduce that to 6 - best look at the 'little' fish and then some 3's and 4's to see the difference?

Looking at some pics the middle stripe on big fish seems to form a Y.

JAA wrote:The one below is a Windermere perch, 'normal' stripes.

Very interesting, just adds to the mystery....

Duebel wrote:Having just seen a picture of a perch with eight stripes, I remembered this thread. A lot of perch from my local river Regnitz have more than 6 stripes - 8 mostly.

Greetings from Bamberg

Martin

Fascinating, I wonder if there is a sub species? I went perch fishing Monday, had 15 ranging from fingerling up to just a pound.... all had six stripes.

A little reading around the subject of pattern variation in fish and other vertebrates suggests that the ten stripped perch may be just a freak mutant in a gene responsible for the distribution of darkly coloured cells called melanophores. Such things are often seen in animals that have patterned skins. Interesting, to me that perch looks more like it has 12 stripes, not 10, with two much smaller ones near the tail. If so that is double the normal amount, so perhaps the key gene responsible for stripes is doubled in some way; perhaps turned on in twice as many skin cells. Apparently, this is quite a complicated area of genetics, especially in fish, so I will ask my son for his opinion since he studied this at university. However, there's no evidence this is a sub-species. And there might be an environmental trigger for this unusual pattern. Makes me wonder how common these perch are in that area.

JAA wrote:The one below is a Windermere perch, 'normal' stripes.

Do you mean this one Trevor? I agree twelve in total, six a side, a normal Perch to me? Martin and Scott were talking about 8 stripes a side, be interested to hear your son's thoughts.
Edit: just re-read previous posts, martin talked of 8 stripes per side, Scotts original post showed a fish with ten a side! Now I REALLY want to hear your son's thoughts.

Scott's perch looks like it might have 12 stripes on each side. Hard to tell by the photo.My son says it's just a variant with no obvious explanation. The vast majority of perch have six stripes but there are a few that will have more. Possibly a development thing. Just like most folk have ten toes but some have twelve. Which doesn't make them a different sub species. might be due to a mutation and it might not be!!

Aren't Perch just beautiful fish? I think it's my favourite species.....

I'll try to collect some pictures of perch with more than 6 stripes. I'll ask my fellow fishermen around here to have a close look at their pictures. I hope they'll agree to post a few photos here.