Let battle commence

A sturdy bonsai freshwater swashbuckler, the spiny stickleback is often the first fish we catch as children

- By David Profumo

FAMILIAR to many children as it stares moon-eyed from its jam-jar prison, the common stickleback is Britain’s smallest freshwater fish and the archetypal tiddler—a nursery word deriving from one of its many affectionate folk names, ‘tiddlebat’ (others include Jack Sharp, pinkeen and Tommy-Logge.) Back in 1959, with a butterfly net from a godfather's pond, this was the first thing I ever caught. Today, many thousands of fish later, I still recall it with admiration.

The family Gasterosteidae (meaning ‘bony-bellied’) is abundant in Europe, inhabiting lakes, streams and humble ditches. In areas such as East Anglia, they were once so numerous they were netted out for fertiliser. We have two main varieties, the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus, which is my main focus here) and its scarcer cousin the 10-spined (Pungitius pungitius), which, in fact, may carry eight or nine spines—shorter and more offset, like the teeth of a saw. Their populations sometimes overlap, but all are tolerant of pollution and notably adaptable. Some inhabit brackish water and, occasionally, they take to the high seas, where they are scooped up together with whitebait—it pays to check your starter in that beach-side restaurant. There is a 15-spined variety (