Afishionado: A ‘large minnow’ that builds and shares a spawning bed

It’s always the first example of an oxymoronic phrase — jumbo shrimp. Here’s a new one — large minnow. 

Yes, there is such a thing. It’s called a fallfish, a silvery species that swims in rivers of the U.S. Northeast and Canada. It’s a chub of the family Cyprinidae, and the largest minnow species native to eastern North America.

It’s not unusual for those who prospect for wild trout to hook a small fallfish and consider it a nuisance, a low-class intruder, an uninvited guest trying to crash the trout cotillion.

But hook a “large minnow” and the groans go away. They put up a good, stubborn fight.

My son caught and released a surprisingly large one in the Gunpowder River when he was targeting brown trout. It looked to be about 18 inches long. The Maryland state record is a fallfish caught in the North Branch of the Potomac River in June 2023. It was 20 inches in length and weighed 3.01 pounds. (According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the fish was weighed on a certified scale at a meat processor in Oakland. Apparently having a state record was more important than releasing and keeping the large fallfish alive.)

Because of their silver scales, fallfish are known in Virginia as “little tarpon of the Commonwealth”.

Recently, while fishing in another western Maryland stream, I came across and tried to photograph two fallfish spawning mounds (above and below) — that is, piles of pebbles carried by male fallfish in their mouths to form a place for the laying of eggs by females in spring. There’s a communal aspect to this. Once a spawning mound is built, several pairs of fallfish might use it. And Ken Pavol, a marine biologist and longtime fishing guide in western Maryland, has observed rainbow trout using fallfish mounds for spawning as well.