Amphipods and mysids as prey
Explainer · Last reviewed 2026-08-11
Small shrimp-like crustaceans of the sediment, weed and shallows — individually negligible, collectively a large part of what small and juvenile fish live on.
A supporting record, not a fishing profile
This page is here so FishingHQ can describe a biological relationship accurately — usually because a fish covered elsewhere on the site feeds on this. It covers what it is, where it lives and the evidence behind that relationship, and deliberately nothing about methods, bait or tackle. Its presence here is not a statement that anybody fishes for it.
Amphipods and mysids are small crustaceans that occupy the size class between plankton and anything an angler would recognise as bait.
Amphipods — sandhoppers on the strandline, gammarids in weed and gravel, and a very large number of marine species — live in and on the substrate and among vegetation. In fresh water Gammarus is one of the most abundant invertebrates in clean stony rivers and a staple of trout and grayling diets.
Mysids, sometimes called opossum shrimps, swim in loose swarms near the bottom in estuaries and shallow coastal water, and they are a major food for juvenile flatfish, bass, seatrout and a great many other species during the part of their lives when they are too small to eat fish.
They matter to the graph for a specific reason: they explain what a predatory species eats before it becomes predatory. A diet record that begins with fish prey has skipped the first year or two of the animal's life.
The scope is the orders Amphipoda and Mysida. Isopods are frequently reported alongside them and are not covered here.
Where to go next
Fish this applies to
- Brown troutGammarus is one of the most abundant invertebrates in clean stony rivers and a staple of trout diets, particularly in winter when insect larvae are less available.
- Common soleSmall crustaceans make up the balance of the diet, particularly in juveniles on estuarine and nearshore nursery ground.
- Corkwing wrasseSmall crustaceans picked from weed are the staple of the diet and are described in the literature as a group.
- Lesser weeverAn ambush predator on small crustaceans passing over its buried position, described in the literature at group level.
- ShannySmall crustaceans picked from rock and weed, described in the literature at group level, alongside barnacle cirri taken directly from feeding barnacles.
- Spotted raySmall crustaceans of clean inshore ground, taken alongside the larger decapods that dominate the diet.
What these connections rest on (6)
Scientific evidence — 6 connections
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Brown trout
Recorded diet evidence identifies gammarid amphipods as a food item of this predator at group level rather than to species. The edge points at the taxon record for that reason, and encoding it as a species-level claim would assert something the source does not.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Food items recorded for this predator, given as gammarid amphipods.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Species account describing this predator's diet, recorded at the level of gammarid amphipods.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Common sole
Recorded diet evidence identifies amphipods and mysids as a food item of this predator at group level rather than to species. The edge points at the taxon record for that reason, and encoding it as a species-level claim would assert something the source does not.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Food items recorded for this predator, given as amphipods and mysids.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Species account describing this predator's diet, recorded at the level of amphipods and mysids.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Corkwing wrasse
A diet claim recorded at group level, pointed at a modelled prey CATEGORY, because the reference works describe the diet as a group rather than by species. Naming a particular species the catalogue happens to hold would invent a precision the evidence never had.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat association, identification and biology of the fishes and inshore fauna of the British Isles and north-west Europe.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Diagnostic characters, family placement, habitat and depth range as set out in the FAO species identification sheets for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Lesser weever
A diet claim recorded at group level, pointed at a modelled prey CATEGORY, because the reference works describe the diet as a group rather than by species. Naming a particular species the catalogue happens to hold would invent a precision the evidence never had.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat association, identification and biology of the fishes and inshore fauna of the British Isles and north-west Europe.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Diagnostic characters, family placement, habitat and depth range as set out in the FAO species identification sheets for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Shanny
A diet claim recorded at group level, pointed at a modelled prey CATEGORY, because the reference works describe the diet as a group rather than by species.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat association, identification and biology of the fishes and inshore fauna of the British Isles and north-west Europe.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Diagnostic characters, family placement, habitat and depth range as set out in the FAO species identification sheets for the region concerned.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Spotted ray
A dietary claim recorded at GROUP level against a modelled prey concept, because the sources describe the prey as a group and selecting a species for the edge to point at would assert a precision the evidence does not carry.
- The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe — Macmillan, 1969 (Reference work)Relied on for: Distribution, habitat association, identification and biology of the sharks, skates and rays of the British Isles and north-west Europe.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Diagnostic characters, habitat and depth range as set out in the FAO species identification sheets for the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Sources for this page
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded food items for the predatory species this taxon is cited as prey for, at the granularity the database records them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- FAO Species Identification Guides for Fishery Purposes and the FAO Species Catalogues — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Species and family accounts describing food items, given at family or functional-group level where that is what the account states.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
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