Pics form RM
Darren Simon with a two pound bluegill, his personal best.
Alan Warren and Bruce Condello pose with some mighty nice bluegills.
A very interesting thing happened. Bruce caught the fish on the left. It weighed just over 1 lb, 13 oz. That's huge. As he looked, it wasn't a bluegill. It had several attributes of redbreast sunfish. He and Aaron used an iPhone to look up the North Carolina state records for redbreast and this fish was 2 oz. larger. He brought the fish in, both Dr. Willis, a fisheries biologist, and I looked at it. We agreed it wasn't a redbreast, but that it had attributes to both redbreast and bluegill. We kept the fish and Bruce wanted to weigh it and submit for a potential state record...even though we didn't know what the fish was.
As I thought more about it, this fish appears to be about 5 years old. It looks like a hybrid cross between a bluegill and redbreast. As I thought about it, Richmond Mill Lake was mainly empty during the time this fish was spawned. The conclusion I have tentatively arrived is that in the spring of 2005, while the lake was still low, the redbreast were spawning. As the fish were doing what they do, a "sneaker" bluegill came in, dumped some of his milt onto the female redbreast's eggs and ran off. It makes good sense and is a logical explanation.
The record was submitted and the fish is currently alive and being kept at Aberdeen Tackle, in Aberdeen, NC.
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