Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help First Catch! :) What is it?

I went to my lake earlier this week. Some kind of bugs (I need to learn more about varieties) were apparently hatching and swarming all over the place. I think they may have been mayflies as they looked like a picture I found on the web. Anyway, fish were hitting the surface in part of my pond so last night I went out with my flyrod with a small fly on it. Started catching fish pretty quickly. This is what they looked like. Is this a bluegill, redear, or green sunfish? Bluegill and redear were stocked in 2004. I'm wondering if this is a green sunfish...



http://www.geocities.com/rangersedge/Photo_052506_005.jpg

Although the body is rather long for the height, coloration & flank pattern look to me like BG - kind of stunted (eye seems large for body size).

Stunted green sunfish.

I agree with Cecil. By clicking on the link, you can get a little bit better resolution. As usual, I could be wrong.

The questions to solve is why you have green sunfish. OK, they most likely came from the fish seller and I've never considered them the problem that others do. The bigger question to identify and correct is why they are stunted.

Did you catch any BG and what is their condition?

Rangersedge,

I agree with DD...the link gives better resolution and you can see the GS markings. It is a stunted fish. This is probably another example of unwanted stocking from the commercial supplier.

What was the predator stocking? Looks like you may want to increase the predators.

Withdraw what I said at midnight - the mouth looks a lot bigger this morning and there's a light edge to the opercule - GSF, I stand corrected. Amazing how it changed species overnight! It must have got some sleep.

I agree; from the fuzzy photo it looks like a green sunfish. I am not sure how stunted this fish is. The eye is fairly large compared to head size on smaller GSF. Picture is too fuzzy to get any details.

Thanks for all the responses. Sorry about the bad pictures. I took them with my cell phone's camera.

I can't imagine why they might be stunted. There are still tons of fathead minnows, tiny minnows, mayflies, and other critters. Plus it was stocked with fatheads (40#s - 2003) bluegill, redear, channel cat, (all in fall 2004) and LMB (June 2005) based upon a lake half its size (note: it didn't really take it long to fill back up most of the way after I drained it down somewhat).

The only other fish I have caught in this pond were bullheads (which were caught in traps and also not stocked by me - intentionally anyway).

Could be a Redear.Some redear in my lake have very little red on operculum.Hard to tell from picture.It does appear to be stunted,however.