The Russian name of this fish is lenok, Evenki - maygun, Yakut - limba, Turkic - uskuch. There is another name, literary - Siberian trout. These are all the names of one fish that lives in various places - from west to east from the Urals to Sakhalin, and from the northern polar regions of Asia to the southern deserts of central Mongolia.
After reviewing the information in the article, you can find out some information about the Uskuch fish: where is it found, etc.
A bit of history
In 1773, the professor-naturalist P.S. Pallas (Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg) made the very first description of lenok. The famous Russian traveler did this according to the specimens that were mined in the Yenisei. Pallas attributed this fish to the family of salmon and gave him the name Salmo lenok. In 1811, he renamed it Salmo coregonoides, believing that this fish resembles whitefish in appearance.
A. Gunter (German ichthyologist) in 1866, in the process of compiling a catalog of fish collections at the British Museum of History, took lenok fish to an independent genus - Brachymystax.
Characteristics
Uskuch fish (the so-called lenok in Altai), like taimen, belongs to the salmon family. It is considered a valuable commercial fish, but its abundance in many water bodies is relatively small.
This is a fairly large individual with a body length reaching 70 centimeters and weighing 5 kilograms. In external characteristics, it is slightly similar to taimen (especially individuals of medium size and smaller), but differs in smaller dimensions, a valky body (snout dumber, head shorter), darker color and small scales.
The mouth of the fish is quite wide with medium-sized but sharp teeth. It should be noted that the teeth are located even in the tongue and palate. The Uskuch fish is colored (photo see in the article) in a golden brown or golden blackish color, and on the sides of the head and body there are dark round spots, about the size of the pupil. On the sides there are large dark red stripes. Small fish have them 8-19 across.
Distribution and lifestyle
The habitat captures the water bodies of the territories from Kazakhstan to the Amur; it is also found in Lake Teletsk in Altai and in the basin of Lake. Markakol, located on the territory of East Kazakhstan. The lenok range is close to the taimen habitat. They are found in Siberia - from the Ob River to the Kolyma River, in the Amur basin, as well as in bodies of water that flow into the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The range of lenoks in the northern territory of the Far East reaches the Uda and Tugur rivers, in the south - to Yala and the south of the Korean Peninsula. Uskuch fish is also found in the rivers of Northern China.
The wide habitat of lenok does not mean that there are many of them in all reservoirs. In many places, man has tried to create unsuitable conditions for the habitat of this fish. For example, from the Urals to the Yenisei, this species is not numerous, and in places it completely disappeared. But any avid angler who answers the question which fish live in Siberian taiga rivers will answer - lenok, taimen and grayling.
It should be said separately about the fish of Lake Markakol. The isolated lenok variety in this reservoir formed a separate endemic predatory species that dominates this lake. Uskuch fish is widespread throughout the lake. In summer, the central part of the lake is the preferred place, while in the autumn and spring it is the coastal part. Caviar of this variety is larger in comparison with Siberian napuschi. The latter factor contributed to the total catch of fish from the lake in the XX century.
