European Whitefish

Names in dialect: coregon, lavarel.

The Common or European whitefish has a small head and mouth, and a body covered with easily removable silvery scales and a tail with pointed fins. It can reach a total length of 60 cm and around 4 kg in weight.
Whitefish live in cold-water lakes containing plenty of dissolved oxygen, where they complete their entire life cycle. They move in large shoals tfeeding mainly on zooplankton (copepods and water fleas), but also benthic invertebrates such as molluscs, worms, isopod crustaceans and dipteran larvae. In Lake Toblino, given its special hydrological features, whitefish mainly feed on the benthos and amateur fishermen use ledgering to catch them.
Whitefish reach sexual maturity in their second year. They spawn from December to January, on gravel bottoms of lakes near the banks or where tributaries flow in. Each female lays a few thousand eggs of around 2.5 mm in diameter. These hatch after about a month.
Originating from Lake Constance, European whitefish were introduced into Lake Garda in 1918 where they acclimatised. A large part of the income of commercial fishermen working on the lake depends on this fish today. Whitefish have been regularly introduced into several different lakes in Trentino, using fry from the hatcheries in Peschiera and Cassone (Lake Garda). Whitefish are a high quality, delicately flavoured food fish.