Learn more about roach

The roach is a member of the carp family and one of the most common and one of the first fish you come across when you start out fishing. The roach is recognisable by its silvery elongated body, red fins and eyes, overbite, and dorsal fin, which starts as a line directly above the ventral fins. The largest roach is around 50 cm, although you most commonly catch roach around 15–30 cm long. Beginners easily confuse roach with tench, bleak, or silver bream.

Roach can be found both in brackish water along Sweden’s coasts and in fresh water in lakes. Roach prefer calm water to turbulent flowing water. Roach can be found in most of Sweden, apart from high up in the mountain regions.

Roach spawn along shorelines, under overhanging trees, and over vegetation. A loud splashing sound is often heard from the roach during spawning. Spawning takes place after the ice melts between April and June.

In terms of diet, roach feed on most things. Plants/zooplankton, algae, various insects, bottom-dwelling larvae, mussels, snails, crustaceans, and land-dwelling insects that end up on the water’s surface.

If you want to fish for roach, it’s best to use different angling methods, and also avoid casting out bait in the place where you want to fish. Match fishing with worms, maggots, corn, or dough is the easiest method to get started on your roach fishing. Bottom fishing is also an effective method. Roach move in shoals, often close to shore, which makes it a perfect fish to catch from land. Roach like to look for places where they’re protected from predatory fish. Such places include rocks, jetties, or similar structures.

Bear in mind that roach is a prey fish for pike, perch, and zander. So if you find roach, you may well catch these predatory fish nearby, too. You can learn how to catch these species in our other articles.