You'll Find Them in Rivers and Lakes Quiz

Answer: Common carp

The carp originated in Asia but has since been introduced to most regions of the world. Carp were farmed as far back as Roman times and yet they are now widely considered a pest due to their ability to out-compete native species.
Able to survive in most conditions, the common carp prefers large bodies of slow or standing water. Omnivorous, they eat a variety of water plants but also trawl the lower levels of lakes and rivers for worms, insects and crustaceans.

Answer: Pike

Usually found in slow-moving streams and shallow, weedy places in lakes, pike are ambush predators; lying perfectly still wait for prey and then striking with remarkable acceleration. Pike eat mostly fish, frogs, small mammals and birds, but are also cannibalistic. Young pike are often found choking on other pike of similar size.
Pike are particularly popular with anglers because of the aggressive, hard-fighting nature.

Answer: Brown trout

Closely related to the Atlantic salmon, brown trout are a smaller fish that can grow to a weight of 40 pounds. They can live for up to 20 years, but fewer than 20% survive after mating and spawning.
They live on a diet of invertebrates from the river beds, other fish, frogs, mice, birds and insects flying near the surface, but this latter taste also makes them a popular target with fly fishermen.

Answer: Stickleback

The pictured fish is specifically the ninespine stickleback (also, curiously, sometimes called a ten-spined stickleback). The number of actual spines varies between eight and twelve. Sticklebacks are unusual amongst fish in that they have no scales but, rather, a series of bony plates. They are closely related to seahorses.
All stickleback species breed in similar fashion, with the males constructing a nest near the bottom of the water, the females arriving to lay her eggs and then leaving the male to fertilize them and guard to eggs until the offspring hatch.

Answer: Dace

Preyed upon by many of the larger freshwater fish, its bright, silvery appearance makes the dace popular with anglers as bait for pike-fishing. The dace feeds on worms, insects, insect-larvae, snails and occasionally on water plants.

Answer: White Sturgeon

Found in rivers and bays from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to southern California, the white sturgeon can live to be 100 years old. It can reach up to 20 feet in length and weigh as much as 1,800 pounds -- you'd need an awful lot of chips to go with that! Only the beluga (found in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, so not a strictly freshwater species) and the Kaluga (a sturgeon native to Russia's Amur River) are larger.
The white sturgeon has no scales, but bony armour. They are cartilaginous, like a shark, and have evolved little since they first appeared more than 175 millions years ago.
What does a white sturgeon eat? (Anything it likes, would be my guess). Crustaceans and mollusks are popular. Lampreys, shad and smelt entering the sturgeon's river to spawn are also on the menu, particularly since these species die after spawning and the sturgeon are happy to feast on the rotting corpses. They have also been known to invade clam beds when nothing else is available.

Answer: Mosquitofish

Their diet consists of small insects, insect larvae and detritus material. As the name suggests though, the mosquitofish particularly enjoys eating mosquito larvae -- each day, they consume between 42% and 167% of their own body weight in mosquito larvae.

It is for this reason that they have been introduced into many parts of the world with large mosquito populations. This has not always worked though, since the mosquitofish often prove more damaging to indigenous aquatic species that were already dealing with the mosquito problem than they are to the mosquitoes.

Answer: Largemouth bass

Usually found in shallow water with plenty of weeds or other vegetation, the record size for a largemouth bass catch is 22 pounds 4 ounces. Anglers are encouraged to release large bass, since these will often be breeding females and thus important to maintaining stocks.
Largemouth bass live on a diet of fish, snails, crayfish, frogs, snakes, salamanders, bats, small water birds and mammals and even baby alligators. They often eat prey weighing as much as 50% of their own body weight, so pike, catfish, trout, walleye and other bass species rate highly on their shopping list.

Answer: Chinook salmon

The largest species of Pacific Ocean salmon, the Chinook salmon (named for the Native American people of the Pacific Northwest) is also sometimes called a king salmon. Usually 24-36 inches in length they can grow to almost five feet and can weigh more than 120 pounds. Too big for my oven!
Eaten by the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Lewis described freshly-caught Chinook as "the best fish I have ever eaten".
The Chinook salmon is the state fish of Oregon and the king salmon fulfils the same role in Alaska.

Answer: Perch

Perciformes, meaning "perch-like", is the largest of all orders of vertebrates, containing more than 160 families and representing more than 40% of all bony fish. The species pictured here is specifically the 'yellow perch', which is usually simply called 'perch'. The record for the largest perch ever caught dates back to 1865 (an 18-inch long fish weighing 4 pound, 3 ounces) -- this is a record that has stood for longer than that for any other freshwater species.