Live in Idaho Waters Part 2: Everybody loves a sucker

Basic Life History:

Like quite a few of our native species, suckers are springtime spawners. Some species make spawning runs similar to our native trout and move impressive distances from larger mainstem rivers into spawning tributaries in the spring and early summer as water warms. We also have some species which spawn in shallow waters in lakes. Female suckers can deposit a lot of eggs when they spawn, often in the tens of thousands. In a number of instances male suckers get bright red or orange coloration during spawning and are really quite pretty!

Juvenile and adult suckers often feed on algae or something called detritus (i.e. other stuff on the bottom) of the waters they live in. They are setup to do this given their mouth is facing the stream bottom, instead of straight ahead like a trout. But, that's not the only thing they eat, most sucker species also eat aquatic bugs like mayflies and caddis flies, small aquatic organisms called zooplankton, and terrestrial bugs like beetles and ants. A few species have had fish eggs found in their stomachs, but it doesn't appear to be a main food item.