[1][3] It is a silvery fish which resembles trout of the family Salmonidae[4] and lacks the pink or orange coloured fins of many of its congeners.

The juvenile fish stay close inshore near the mouths of the tributary rivers.

During the rainy season the adult fish migrate up the tributary rivers from the lake to spawn, this mainly takes place at night in shallow, well-oxygenated, flowing waters over gravel substrates with no silt.

[6] The lake salmon is threatened by overfishing and there are very high mortality rates in adult fish during the spawning season as the rivers are often totally blocked with weirs and with gill nets which prevent the fish from running upstream, especially during years of low rainfall.

Other threats include deliberate poisoning and the deterioration of the spawning grounds due to siltation from soil erosion caused by deforestation and agriculture, which also causes habitat deterioration as water is abstracted from the breeding streams for irrigation and this makes it difficult for the juveniles to return to the lake from the spawning areas.