Common Barbel

Names in dialect: barbi, barbiol, barbol.

Common barbel are greenish brown in colour with dark dots, small scales and reddish fins. They have an elongated head, small eyes and a low, protractile mouth, with well-developed lips and two pairs of barbs inserted into the upper jaw. They can reach lengths of 60 cm and 4 kg in weight.
They are a river fish typically inhabiting the middle to upper reaches of rivers. They are also found in some lakes but only where the water is clear, well oxygenated and has a gravel or sandy bed. They are rarely found above 600 metres above sea level.
They move in small groups and feed on the river bottom, often turning over pebbles in search of insect larvae. They spawn in May and June, swimming up against the currents in large schools in search of gravel riverbeds (eg. lower reaches of the Avisio); the females deposit a few thousand eggs (they are poisonous and must not be eaten), which hatch after about ten days. There are some hybrids with brook barbel.
While the construction of dams and barriers in one sense impedes the movement of barbel along the river, in another it encourages them to settle upstream of these, since they provide the deep waters that barbel like, especially for hibernating in winter. The warming up in summer of the residual waters downstream from dams has in some cases encouraged barbel as well as chub, to the detriment of trout. The flesh of the common barbel is good to eat but has a lot of bones.