RUDD. Scardinius erythropthalmus.
Family Cyprinidae

Distribution: Common in England, Ireland and parts of Wales and southern Scotland

Habitat: A common fish found in most lakes, ponds, gravel pits, canals and slow rivers.

Description: Small rudd tend to be quite silvery/white in appearance with greeny/blue-brown backs and can be difficult to identify from roach, but as they mature their flanks take on a beautiful bronze/golden colour and their fins turn a bright scarlet red.

The mouth is distinctive with a steeply angled protruding lower lip.

The eyes have yellow to orange irises as distinct from the red-eyed roach.

Another identifying feature in the rudd is that the beginning of its dorsal fin is set well behind the front of the pelvis fins. In roach, the beginning of the dorsal fin is directly above the base of the pelvic fins.

British record: Rudd 4lb 10z caught by Simon Perry, Co. Armargh Lake, 2001. A rudd of 2lb is considered a worthy catch.

With its intense colours, few anglers would argue that the rudd is one of our most beautiful fish, but because it has a tendency to hybridise with roach, bream and bleak, it can often be identified incorrectly.

The best way to tell if your catch is a true rudd is to look at its mouth. Rudd are surface feeders and, as a result, possess a lower lip that protrudes beyond the upper.

One way of checking a hybrid is to look at the lips - the roach/rudd hybrid often has equal lips, neither protruding nor receding.

Sadly, the only positive identification (in the case of a record claim) is to examine its pharyngeal (throat) teeth. Rudd have two rows of throat teeth, while roach have only one row. Hybrids, intermediate between the two, have only a partial second row.

Rudd numbers are thought to be in decline, in Ireland, for instance, rudd fishing used to be very popular but since the non-native roach was introduced around 50 years ago, the rudd population has gradually diminished.

Baits and Lures: The most commonly used bait for rudd is bread, maggots, casters, hemp, sweetcorn and small red worms

An ordinary light match rod and line coupled with a crystal waggler is an ideal method to catch rudd ‘on the drop.’

Put all the shot around the base of the float, leaving a hook-length of around 2-3 feet for starters. The hook needs to be a fine wire 18 or 20. The idea is to allow the bait to fall naturally through the water alongside some freebies.

Catapult in some bait, cast the float well over the area, then retrieve into the baited spot - bites are very quick - so be prepared!

Try using a floating maggot on the hook. A floating maggot will counterbalance the weight of the hook and either sit on the surface film of the water or sink very slowly.

To make maggots float, place a few in a 2mm of water in the bottom of a bait box, the maggots will gulp in air - and within five minutes they will all be ‘floaters.’ Watch out though, because wet maggots can climb out of the box!

Very dark floating casters are also worth a try, but be sure to ‘bury’ the hook totally inside the caster.

Bread flake on a size 14 will generally pick out the bigger fish, again fish it ‘on the drop.’ A few walnut-sized balls of very fine groundbait or cloud bait will bring the fish into the swim, but remember to keep trickling in some free hookbait samples.

As a fun alternative - try fly-fishing. A small black fly, fished just under the surface gives good sport. A tiny red-tag on a fine leader slowly inched back will invariably catch you a rudd.

Rudd are shy feeders, so every effort must be made not to frighten the shoal, so when you hook a fish, guide it away from the rest of the shoal as quickly as you can.

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