Common name: Mountain sucker
Family: Suckers
Species: Catostomus Platyrhynchus
Description: the Mountain suckers are small to moderately large, bottom-dwelling, fresh water fishes. This is a small sucker, seldom growing larger than 8 inches.
Habitat: The Mt. Sucker occurs in a wide variety of habitats, but usually prefers cool, clear streams with clean rubble or sandy bottoms, occasionally found in lakes.
Range/migration: Throughout the mountainous regions of the West from the Lahontan and Bonneville basins of California, Nevada, and Utah through the Columbia and Missouri drainages of British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. It is widespread throughout the Snake River systems in Idaho, and Washington.
Food: Suckers have mouths on the underside of their head, which allows them to feed on insects and other food particles attached to rocks and gravel on the stream bottom. The food of this species are almost entirely algae.
Reproduction: The suckers put their eggs in riffles near pools in fast flowing streams. They spawn in late spring or early summer when the water temperatures go above 10.5 C. The eggs are yellowish in color and they get larger as the female grows in length. The eggs hatch about 8 to 14 days after spawning. After hatching the young remain in shallow water, moving to deeper water with a stronger current as they grow.
Enemies: The enemies of the mountain sucker are people who dump trash, chlorinated water, old paints oil and other stuff into the rivers, and lakes. Also the bigger fishes eat them, and human catch them.
More information: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lewisandclark/record_species_063_19.html
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?ID=2975
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:TDBxFH5CFK8J:www.azgfd.com/w_c/edits/documents/Catodisc.fo.pdf+mountain+sucker&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:Z10MU_m4wgJ:wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/wld/
documnts/fishfacts/mountainsucker.pdf+mountain+sucker&hl=en&ie=UTF-8