Zander

Fascinating facts about the Zander

• When Carolus Linnaeus first described the fish in 1758, he placed it in the perch genus Perca; it only left that group 20.8 million years ago when the European and North American Sander lineages split.
• A zander can grow up to a full meter long – about the height of a tall kitchen counter – and weigh as much as 15 kg, though the all-tackle world record is a 11.48 kg specimen caught in Switzerland in June 2016.
• Males carve shallow nests roughly 50 cm across and 5–10 cm deep on gravel or among plant roots, then guard the eggs while fanning them with their pectoral fins until the larvae, attracted to light, drift away.
• Zanders that live in brackish water will travel up rivers as far as 250 km (160 mi) to reach fresh-water spawning grounds each spring when temperatures hit 10–14 °C.
• They can live up to 17 years and usually become sexually mature between ages 3 and 10, with four-year-olds being the most common age to start reproducing.

At a glance

About the Zander

The zander, Sander lucioperca, is the largest member of the perch family, bearing a sleek, muscular silhouette that hints at its distant cousin, the Northern pike. Its upper body shimmers in green-brown tones, streaked with dark vertical bars reminiscent of the European perch, while a creamy-white belly and dark caudal fin complete its striking palette. Powerful jaws armed with sharp teeth and two prominent canines give it a predatory edge, and its unusually large, opaque eyes are an adaptation for hunting in the turbid, low-light waters it favors. Zander thrive in large rivers, eutrophic lakes, and even brackish estuaries across western Eurasia, migrating up to 250 km (160 mi) upriver to spawn in gravel nests that males defend and aerate. Their diet is a carnivorous buffet of smaller schooling fish, European smelt, ruffe, perch, vendace, roach, and even conspecific juveniles. A surprising trait is their reproductive strategy: unlike many percids, zander males build and guard nests, fanning the eggs until the larvae, attracted to light, emerge to feed on zooplankton.

More fish to discover

Browse Feravox