Smelt

• Freshly caught it gives off an unmistakable smell of fresh cucumber, so characteristic that it is used to identify it.
• Its spawning runs used to gather enormous numbers of fish in European estuaries and supported local fisheries that river pollution wiped out during the twentieth century.
• The recovery of water quality in rivers such as the Thames and the Elbe has allowed it to run up them again.
• It smells of cucumber. It is its most-cited trait: freshly caught, it gives off an unmistakable vegetal scent, owing to volatile compounds in its skin.
• It is anadromous: it lives in the estuary and runs up the river to spawn in spring, although some populations were locked into lakes after the last glaciation and no longer migrate.
• It was a popular food fish in northern Europe, and its spawning runs were a seasonal event in river cities such as Hamburg.
• It is very sensitive to pollution and to river barriers, and it has disappeared from several rivers where it once abounded.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat & environment

Estuaries and coastal waters of northern Europe; it spawns in rivers and lakes

Sexual maturity

2 years

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmerus_eperlanus

Best time: Late winter and early spring, during the spawning run