A contest entry I made fopr an invent a fish contest that I went over board on

A common fish species endemic to Maritime Canada, the Valgrague (pronounce Vahl-drahg) (Binomial Praenuntius Cheimonas, literally the Winter's Harbinger) are an omnivorous fish that are usually around 60 to 90 cm long (around 2-3 feet) that will feed on anything that will fit in their mouth. They live in freshwater, salt marshes, and oceans in different parts of the year in cycles of mass migrations.

In early spring to early autumn, adults life in Fresh water lakes, streams, and ponds, bulking as much as they can before the autumn migration, eating seeds, small fish, fruits, nuts, and even waterfowl, eviscerating prey with their incredibly and breaking shells of nuts and seed with incredibly strong jaws.

As the weather becomes cooler the males will start to undergo physical changes and will start showing more secondary sex characteristics, the scales will start becoming a brilliant red on the ends and they will become very aggressive and territorial, with the frills on their fins also becoming green, until autumn comes around and the mass migrations begin.

In the autumn massive amounts of these fish will come out of the water and start to migrate over land, using their strong, muscular pectoral and pelvic fins as well as their ability to extract oxygen from the air to start moving towards that salt marshes near the coast. This is when they are most vulnerable to predation by bears, seagulls, and domestic cats however they have many adaptations to protect themselves. Their scales are hard, thick, containing ganoine much like the alligator gar. They also have thorns on their backs for added protection though this not deter all predation.

As the European colonizers arrive in the area that these fish call home they start to associate them with their autumn mass migrations, inspiring their Latin name and their modern french name (from the expression “A la valdrague”, to go to belly up, to go to ruins or to be abandoned, hinting at the harshness of pre-modern winters)

When they arrive in the salt water marshes, the males will fight over mates by grappling eachother with their mouths, with the first one to let go being the loser, this also often leads to death of the loser, weeding out weaker specimens. The mating pair will lay their eggs in the mud and muck on the saltwater marsh, using their ability to breath air to prevent suffocation in the low oxygen waters. The females will move on into the ocean as the males protect the eggs, being known to bite at anything that comes near. Often times the males will die here, starving to death so they can defend their brood.

Before winter arrives, the eggs will hatch and the babies and the father, if still living, will undergo their own migration to the ocean, avoiding the freezing over of freshwater bodies and they will move inland back towards fresh bodies of water

Fig A Skeleton
Fig B A mating age male undergoing the yearly mating cycle. Note the red pigments appear in clusters
Fig C A sun bathing Valdrague
Fig D A Valgrague launching itself at a very unfortunate duckling
Fig E the native range of the species