Fruit-Eating Fish

[Irish Rover]

Where I anchor in a shallow sandy bay there are always lots of small fish around 5-10cm long - they may be damselfish but im not sure. If I throw some bread or other small particles of food in the water there's an immediate feeding frenzy. I've noticed they also go wild for fruit. If I throw an apple core in they devour it in seconds. Same with orange pulp or a bit of banana. They gulp down apple or orange seeds whole. It never really occurred to me that fish would eat fruit.

 

[mjcoon]

Where I anchor in a shallow sandy bay there are always lots of small fish around 5-10cm long - they may be damselfish but im not sure. If I throw some bread or other small particles of food in the water there's an immediate feeding frenzy. I've noticed they also go wild for fruit. If I throw an apple core in they devour it in seconds. Same with orange pulp or a bit of banana. They gulp down apple or orange seeds whole. It never really occurred to me that fish would eat fruit.

IIRC, there is a species of the famously carnivorous piranha that eats fruit, too. (From Google: "Despite its reputation as a flesh-eating creature, the piranha is omnivorous which means they eat a mix of plants and animals. In fact, some species of piranha are even vegetarian. A typical diet for the piranha includes seeds, insects and fish.") But I don't know if any archer fish, which knock their prey down into the water with a spouted jet, do the same for fruit...

 

[Davy_S]

It could be a banana Wrasse

 

[Halo]

My son is into fish tanks and often feeds the fish some cucumber which goes down well.
Some mullet eat the weed off boats do I expect fruit is a luxury.

 

[Irish Rover]

My son is into fish tanks and often feeds the fish some cucumber which goes down well.
Some mullet eat the weed off boats do I expect fruit is a luxury.

Yeah. I scraped some of the green slime off my hulls today and the fish were gobbling it up as it fell. I'm assuming anything that's left of the antifoul after 17 months is fairly harmless to them.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

If you want to catch a lot of fish find a sewage outfall. Fish seem to eat anything.

 

[mjcoon]

If you want to catch a lot of fish find a sewage outfall. Fish seem to eat anything.

I never eat fish... And I approve of W.C. Fields' dictum: "I never drink water. Fish fornicate in it!"

 

[ducked]

If you want to catch a lot of fish find a sewage outfall. Fish seem to eat anything.

The ones near the Granton bay outfall didnt eat the weirdly pink contents of a Scotch Pie I spat from my dinghy. They darted in, grabbed some of the slowly sinking debris, spat it out and darted away again.

So a cross-species negative endorsement. 9 out of 10 vertebrates who expressed a preference would prefer to eat shit.

 

[rotrax]

I caught a small gilt head bream in Menorca using a small piece of tomato on the hook some 20 years ago.