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Volga pikeperch: the small zander without fangs that is spreading through northern Germany’s canals

It looks like a zander, but it stays small, carries no large fangs and has bolder dark stripes: the Volga pikeperch or Volga zander, *Sander volgensis* — in German Wolgazander or Steinschill (GBIF, German Wikipedia), in Dutch Wolgasnoekbaars, in Swedish volgagös, in Russian волжский судак or берш, in Turkish sekret balığı, in Hungarian kősüllő (GBIF, Wikidata). For Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Croatian, Slovenian, Albanian, Japanese and Arabic we found no confirmed species name of their own in GBIF and Wikidata. Its home is the Danube and the Volga — yet for a good 15 years it has been spreading through northern Germany via the Mittellandkanal, probably introduced by people. Here is how to recognise it, where it lives, what it eats, when it spawns — and why anglers in Lower Saxony now hook it regularly.

The zander’s little brother

According to German Wikipedia, the Volga pikeperch belongs to the true perches (Percidae) and to the same genus *Sander* as the zander. It was described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789, at the time as *Perca volgensis*; according to English Wikipedia he gave the Volga and the Ural as the locality. According to English Wikipedia it is the most basal member of the European lineage of the genus: the zander’s lineage split from that of the Volga pikeperch about 13.8 million years ago. According to German Wikipedia, the English naturalist Francis Willughby already noted that two species of zander live in the Austrian Danube.

How to tell it apart from the zander

The surest feature is in the mouth: according to German and English Wikipedia, the Volga pikeperch lacks the large fangs that the zander carries. According to German Wikipedia, its flanks show dark stripes that do not break up into blotches; according to English Wikipedia they are more distinct than in the zander, and the fish looks more silvery grey than greenish. According to a dpa (German Press Agency) report from March 2026, the Lower Saxony anglers’ association, Anglerverband Niedersachsen (AVN), describes very dark, bold stripes reaching down to the belly and a high first dorsal fin. According to German Wikipedia, the preopercle is fully scaled.

  • Teeth: no large fangs — clearly visible in the zander. According to the AVN and both Wikipedias, this is the main feature.
  • Stripes: darker, bolder, down to the belly, without breaking up into blotches.
  • Size: much smaller than the zander, which according to the AVN can reach over a metre and 10 kg in the Elbe and the Weser. How big the Volga pikeperch gets is disputed — see the contradictions below.
  • Fins and scales: according to English Wikipedia, 19 to 21 branched soft rays in the second dorsal fin and 70 to 83 scales along the lateral line.
  • Age and maturity: according to FishBase up to 12 years; sexually mature at 3 to 4 years at 20 to 30 cm standard length, females according to English Wikipedia about a year later than males.

What it eats

According to FishBase and English Wikipedia, the adult Volga pikeperch eats small fish and invertebrates; German Wikipedia names fish and small crustaceans and writes that it prefers perch. According to FishBase, larvae and juveniles live in open water and feed on zooplankton. FishBase gives it a trophic level of 4.1 — so it is a true predator, despite its missing fangs. According to German Wikipedia, it also feeds in the cold season.

Where it lives: Danube, Volga — and the Mittellandkanal

According to FishBase and English Wikipedia, its natural range extends across the northern Black Sea basin — from the Danube, upstream as far as Vienna, to the Kuban — and into the Caspian basin with the Volga and the Ural. English Wikipedia lists, among others, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia. According to FishBase it lives in large, turbid rivers and lakes as well as in brackish coastal lakes and estuaries, at 8 to 22 °C and a pH of 7.2 to 8.0; German Wikipedia names deeper, sandy river stretches and dense overhanging banks as cover. In the Czech Republic, according to German Wikipedia, it has only recently become native again, mainly in the Morava and the Dyje (Thaya).

Then the leap north: according to the German Red List of freshwater fishes (Freyhof and colleagues, 2023), it was first recorded in Germany in 2010 in the Mittellandkanal in Lower Saxony — according to the AVN near Braunschweig —, where it had apparently been stocked illegally. According to the same list, it is now widespread throughout the Mittellandkanal, the Elbe-Seitenkanal and the Elbe-Havel-Kanal, and is spreading into the Elbe and the Weser. According to the AVN, it has spread widely across northern Germany within 15 years; according to dpa (March 2026), the AVN biologist Matthias Emmrich speaks of confirmed records from eleven waters in six federal states — Lower Saxony, Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia. For this, the AVN evaluated over 1,100 catch reports and more than 200 fish. According to Emmrich, shipping canals such as the Mittellandkanal connect previously separate river systems; he considers colonisation of the western German canal network and the Rhine system very likely. Who stocked it is not known; in 2023, in connection with a research project with iDiv, the University of Jena and the UFZ, the angling portal Barsch-Alarm wrote that it was probably introduced by anglers.

Spawning and brood care

According to FishBase, English and German Wikipedia, it spawns in April and May in shallow water, according to FishBase along banks at 1 to 2 metres depth over sand, gravel or plant roots. According to FishBase, the males are territorial and dig a shallow depression as a nest; according to FishBase, the female lays her eggs in two to three batches. As in the zander, according to German Wikipedia, the male guards the brood. According to FishBase, some fish undertake short spawning migrations.

Status, rules — and what you can do

Globally, the Volga pikeperch is listed on the IUCN Red List as not threatened (Least Concern); according to English Wikipedia the population trend is unknown, and no particular threats have been identified. In the German Red List (2023), as a non-native species (neobiota), it is not evaluated; there the population is considered very rare, but with a clear increase. In its native range the picture is partly different: as early as 2003, Barsch-Alarm reported occurrences in Austria only in the Vienna Basin and on the Morava and classed it there as endangered. In 2013, answering a minor interpellation in the state parliament, the Lower Saxony state government wrote that it was not invasive and its distribution very limited; targeted measures against it were not planned, and informing the angling clubs through the state association was sufficient. And according to AVN biologist Emmrich, it is no serious threat to native predatory fish.

For you at the water, this means: in its native range on the Danube and the Morava, regional protection and catch rules apply — check with the club or fishery manager before your trip. In the north, it is worth identifying a Volga pikeperch you catch carefully (teeth, stripes) and reporting the catch, for example to the Anglerverband Niedersachsen, which has been tracing the spread for years with catch reports from anglers. Whether you must keep it or release it is set by your club’s water regulations — we found no uniform rule.

Five contradictions in the sources

  • How big does it get? FishBase: at most 40 cm standard length (without the tail fin). English Wikipedia: 40 cm and 2 kg. German Wikipedia: 40 to 50 cm and up to 2 kg. Barsch-Alarm 2003 from Hungary: around 35 cm, catches of around 1.5 kg only by hearsay. AVN according to dpa 2026: up to 65 cm.
  • When was it assessed? The status is the same everywhere — not threatened —, the date is not: German Wikipedia 2009 (in 2004 still “near threatened”), FishBase 29 May 2022, English Wikipedia Freyhof 2024.
  • How does it spawn? In its taxonomy section, English Wikipedia calls it an open-water spawner that simply releases its eggs — yet the same article, FishBase and German Wikipedia describe a male that digs a nest and guards the brood.
  • When does it hunt? FishBase and English Wikipedia: most active at dusk and dawn. German Wikipedia: mainly in the evening and at night. Barsch-Alarm 2003: bites even in the midday heat.
  • Is it a problem? Lower Saxony state government 2013: not invasive, distribution very limited. Red List 2023: widespread throughout three canals, spreading into the Elbe and the Weser. AVN 2026: eleven waters in six federal states, spread into the Rhine system likely — but according to Emmrich no serious threat to native predatory fish. Barsch-Alarm 2023, by contrast, stresses that non-native species often threaten native biodiversity.

Three name traps

  • Steinschill is not Schill. According to German Wikipedia, “Schill” is the name for the zander in Austria and parts of Lower Bavaria; the Steinschill (“stone Schill”; GBIF, German Wikipedia) is the Volga pikeperch. Anyone reading “Schill” in old German-language catch logs usually means the big brother.
  • Берш is not Barsch. In Russian and Ukrainian the Volga pikeperch is called берш (bersh), in Polish bersz, in Turkish according to GBIF also bers — that sounds like the German “Barsch” (perch), but it is the Volga pikeperch. The European perch is called окунь in Russian.
  • Pikeperch is not Volga pikeperch. In English the zander is called pikeperch, the Volga pikeperch Volga pikeperch; in Hungarian süllő is the zander, kősüllő (“stone zander”) the Volga pikeperch. One missing word turns one fish into the other — when in doubt, look for *Sander volgensis*.

That leaves the question every article in this series starts with: when. Habitat, prey and habits are above, and they are settled. What changes every day is everything else — light, air pressure, wind, water temperature, water level —, and that is exactly where it is decided whether an evening on the canal or the Danube is worth it. That is what StrikeAhead works out: it takes the conditions on your water and tells you when the trip is worth it. And because nobody knows an unfamiliar water, its edges and its rules from day one, StrikeAhead Pathfinder tells you who to go out with: curated guides and skippers, personally vetted before listing — licence and insurance —, with verified catches instead of advertising photos, no paid ranking and, for you as an angler, no booking fee. The app tells you when, Pathfinder with whom.