THE GOLDEN MINNOW

A gift from God: the minnow, fish fodder par excellence, bioindicator of clean waters, the minnow has a golden role in rivers. The minnow is the European Don Juan of small scales. It dresses during the mating season, noble bridal adornments worthy of exotic fish. The male minnow becomes spotty on the face, blue, purple, trout red, it wriggles from the rainbow. It puts itself in all its colorimetric states to seduce the female rounds. Fearless, it spawns in a group forgetting its numerous predators. The minnow is at the base of the food chains of our fresh waters. It is the prey of trout, chub, perch, pike, pike perch which throw themselves into the banks of Phoxinus to feast on golden dresses. The impulsive minnow performs summer micro migrations in rivers to recover oxygen from cold waters. It can live in high mountain lakes over two thousand five hundred meters above sea level where it becomes the delight of brook salmon and arctic char.
The most beautiful minnows live in the amber shale waters of the Cévennes born from chestnut forests. They are bright like the black, pink, tricolor neon lights of the Amazon rivers. It is no coincidence, Cévenoles waters have the same ionic compositions as Amazon waters. The natural pressures are similar and the selections converge towards an identical fish profile. The dresses must be bright so that the fish find themselves and remain in safe schools while merging to escape predators with the amber ambiances of mirrors, rafts, fast waters where bubbles and gold shales play with the light. When a photon bounces from the Cévennes philosopher's stones on the golden robe of the fish, the gold minnow materializes the dream of the alchemists.