caught this one today. wondering whether this was some kind of hybrid RES X BG cross or if it's just a RES w/ a poorly defined border around its "ear". i am trying to learn as much as i can about the panfish in the pond and its turning into an obsession of sorts. i never thought i'd care this much about gills and crackers.

from the "never, EVER thought this would happen" file: today there was a 6 pound bass spawning on one side of the pond. another at least 8 spawning on the other. and all i cared about was fishing that big BG bed in front of me. i used to group all panfish into one category - "bass food". now i can't get enough of these awesome little fish and i'm trying to learn as much as i can about 'em.

thanks in advance for your help.

In my opinion it looks like a gill-cracker hybrid.

Yep, it's a gillcracker. And a nice one at that! Caught one today myself.

thanks guys! i was really hoping it was a cross. for some reason, i just think that's incredibly cool. probably because this is the first one i've ever seen in person.

is having these a good thing, bad thing, or no big deal either way?

Good thing in my book... they grow large, still retain the pharyngeal plate to crush snails with, readily take pelleted feed, are 97% male, and fight like the devil on light tackle.

Great fish to have in your pond.

If you're trying to grow big bass, they're bad. But, if you're becoming more interested in fishing for sunfish, they're an awesome hybrid.

I also am interested in the BG and RES and appreciate the ID so I can learn also. I have one pond that has 125 3" RES stocked last fall and only 10 5" BG. I'm hoping I get some hybrids from that pond. Don't know why I want them, for the novelty I guess.

Wife and I caught a few BG today. They are only 6" + or - because we have just had them in the pond about a year since they were fingerlings. But she commented how nice of a fight they put up. I told her imagine what it will be like when they are a couple inches longer and twice the weight they are now.

Looking forward to it.

Jignpig that looks like it has some PS genes.

Confirmed PS X BG

thanks again guys. here's 3 good ones from today:

first a real nice bull gill. he even had a tiny little helmet.



then another one of those crazy hybrids (or at least i think it is). if so, this is 2 in 2 days. i might have a pond full of these things and i didn't even know it.



and finally, a crappie-sized shell cracker. i was real proud of this one. no ruler handy so i went and got some paper. this one gave me such a tussle, i honestly thought for a minute that i had a bass on that ultralight. real cool colors too.



i can see now how these fish can cross so easily. all were caught out of the same bed

Are these the gill rakers of a crappie or a RES?

Crappie or RES????

I posted this dead fish I found over in another thread and two experts thought it looked like crappie. Here is the other thread for those interested.

I've found pictures of BG gill rakers but having trouble with the crappie and RES. Find descriptions but no pictures.

I'd like some more opinions.

Not that I distrust Esshup's and sprkplus's expert opinions, just that I live only 4 miles from Missouri and some of the show-me rubbed off.

Is there a good web site that has detailed pictures of the gills of all of the pond fish we are interested in? All in one place?

Don't insult Esshup by listing me in the expert category alongside him. I'm about as far removed from that description as it's possible to get.

What I saw in your photos that said crappie to me, was the general coloration, the yellow eye color, and the fact that the markings continued up onto what was left of the tail and fins.

snrub - the first gill arch of a crappie has rakers as long as or longer than the gill filaments. Thus the fish in your linked photo 'Crappie or RES' is definitely not a crappie.

Somewhere in the archives is a chart describing sunfish gill rakers, if I remember right RES have "short" gill rakers. I think it is in one of the HBG threads.

Found it.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=14459&page=7

Here are all of Snrub's photos together....if I understand correctly, these are all of the same fish.

Here is one on my RES, I will throw this in simply because I like this picture.

Due to the condition of snrub's dead fish I really don't have an opinion as to what it is, but it could possibly be a RES.

This is what I see:

Tony, I'm with you. Coloring, eye and sharp ear tab.

Someone, anyone, catch a crappie and or a RES and take a picture of the first gill arch. That will help a lot with this debate. Numerous members here have RES and quite a few have crappie,,,,, go fishing, take your camera, and sacrifice one for the debate.

I just can't move past the eye coloration, and the markings on the base of the caudal fin (as well as the anal and dorsal, to a lesser degree), on Snrub's fish. I have never seen a RES with yellow eyes, or those kinds of markings on it's fins. But I've seen many crappies thus equipped. I also struggle somewhat with the idea of a non-feed trained RES in a Kansas pond, gaining six inches in length in a year's time. I'm sure it's possible under ideal conditions, but that surely must be exceptional growth for a farm pond.


I can barely tell a gill rake from a hay rake, so I gladly yield to Bill's unquestioned expertise ....very curious fish. To me anyway.

No, you are not as far from that description as it's possible to get, because you are a thousand times closer to it than I am. You have obviously done a lot of fishing and looked at a lot of fish. I have looked at a lot of fish but they have been ocean fish and looking at them under the water, not at the end of a fillet knife. Till about a year and a half ago I didn't give squat about a RES or BCP or LMB or BG or FHM nor would I have even recognized those acronyms. So I value your judgment when it comes to pond fish ID.

I keep thinking about the fish that highflyer had a picture of from his Texas get together. We all stood around and watched as he sorted out BCP into the "bait" bucket to be destroyed and in went a fish with a red ear tab. (OK, FireIsHot did some work, the rest of us just gawked). We all looked at it and highflyer exclaimed a BCP/RES cross, and threw it in with the rest of the "trash" to be taken out of the pond. Well that is what it looked like for sure laying there amongst all the other BCP that was in that container (although I had never heard or read of such a cross nor had others). We thought we had something of a "special" fish that highflyer did not want as his breeding stock in his pond, and took a little ribbing from the post thinking it was a cross that could not happen. But it sure did, from visual indications only, look like a BCP with a red opercular tab. Likely, in retrospect, highflyer threw away a perfectly good pure RES.

Also look at some of the recent posting of catches of RES. Look at the upside down fish of Jignpig's above earlier in this thread. Don't they visually look like some BCP markings? They do to me, but I have not looked at that many BCP so don't trust my own interpretation of visual indications. It seems like to me the RES can be all over the place in the visual markings category with some having the vertical bars like BG, others not, etc. But then I have simply not had that much experience with even visual id's on pond fish., so I defer to others that have.

I just keep coming back to what I read about BCP having long gill rakers.

Esshup,

I do not disagree at all with the visuals.

I just keep coming back to those gill rakers. I have searched for pictures of BCP gill rakers and could find none. I have read descriptions, but having filleted few fish and looked at fewer gill rakers, my frame of reference comparison is poor to say the least. What is "long" and what is "short" is very subjective when I have looked at very few gill rakers.

The only reason I even questioned it is because in my strange interest I've taken in RES for what reason I have no idea, the short gill raker description of the RES from my Internet "book learning" popped into my mind when I saw the mangled fish.

Wish I had more presence of mind to have taken better pictures. Carolynn happened to be with me and I had her take the first picture of the gills with her phone. At that time the fish was still pretty fresh (likely a fresh kill early that morning) and had I thought could have spread the fins out and taken good ID pictures. But I did not think of taking more pictures till late in the day. I had thrown the fish up on the bank and it was sundown when I went back and snapped a couple more pictures with my phone, which takes much poorer pictures and the light of day was almost gone. Why do I think of this stuff after it is already too late?

They are all pictures of the same fish.

Thank you Shorty.

That is a good chart that I had not seen. My problem, having not been a dedicated angler all my life and not fished that much, is I have a poor frame of reference for comparisons. I just have not seen that many gill rakers, so I did quite a number of Internet searches trying to come up with BCP and RES gill pictures and came up empty handed. Quite a few of really good ones on BG, but nothing on crappie.

My fish gill rakers looked "short" to me, but I had no frame of reference to compare them to.

Thank you Bill Cody!

That is what my vast inexperience keeps bringing me back to.

I had what looked like a BCP, but I did not want it to be a BCP and those gill rakers did not meet the description as I imagined it of a BCP.

I did not want it to be a BCP because I had not stocked BCP and did not particularly want BCP in my pond (at least not in a number that would spawn big numbers of them and ruin the pond - have nothing against the fish personally .

So what might seem like a pointless debate to some, to me is somewhat important for my own peace of mind.

My BG and the original small percentage of RES were stocked a year ago March (2013). If that fish is a BCP, an off species fish escaped the stocking ID culling process. If it is a RES, I'm pretty proud of a 9" RES when the largest BG to date that has been caught from the pond might measure 7". In other words, all the gazillion snails around my disgusting FA might be a pretty good environment to raise RES and I might have a few more of the nice sized fish (for its age)just like it in my pond. In other words, it gives me hope I'm doing something right. Or at least the fish are doing something right.

I did not have a tape measure with me, but my hand from thumb to pinkie when streched out spans 9", and that is what that fish was.

So that is why I brought the subject up again to see if we could come to a conclusion. Or at least a conclusion that was more to my liking.

Wisconsin Fish has a large data base with excellent pics of positively ided fish with gill raker pics.

See this link from the archives on fish id sites

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92461#Post92461

Here is the series of pictures from Highflyer's get together where with the fish that we thought might have been a BCB/RES cross. Laying in the bait bucket together, the visual body markings at first glance looked just like his BCP fish's markings.

Highflyer Texas get together pictures with RES pic

As far as the mouth size of the fish in my pictures, that may be deceiving. One side of the mouth/head was ripped off of the fish, so the mouth in the picture may look a lot bigger than what it really was because it was stretched out. The other side of it was gone. Wish I had got better pictures.

From Wisc. Fish ID system. You can take this info or better yet download the software and look at all the pics and descriptions etc.

http://wiscfish.org/


GSF
Mouth and snout: Mouth Terminal, large and oblique, with pads of small teeth on the jaws. No barbels. Body patterning, color, and scales: Back dark brown, olive, or green, sides yellow-green or blue-green, belly tan or yellow. Sides either with a more-or-less solid color, faint dark blotches or mottling, irregular faint light blue or yellowish SPOTS, and/or diffuse dark vertical bars. Sometimes 3-5 bluish lines radiating backward from underneath the eye; opercular flap dark with a light margin. Dorsal, caudal, and to a lesser extent anal fins usually darkly pigmented with faint dark blotches or light dark spots and often a light yellow/cream margin; pelvic and pectoral fins lightly pigmented to dusky. 44-51 ctenoid lateral scales. Body shape and size: Body laterally compressed and deep, somewhat elongated; oval in cross section. Typically 75-150 mm (3-6 in) TL; maximum in Wisconsin about 250 mm (10 in).

Tail, dorsal and other fins: Slightly Forked or round tail. Dorsal fin with 2 lobes, broadly joined by a membrane and appearing as one fin, the first with 9-11 spines and the second with 10-12 rays. Pelvic fins thoracic. Adipose fin absent. Anal fin with 3 spines and 9-10 rays.

GSF There are 9-12 short and thick primary gill rakers on the 1st arch.

BG
BG There are 13-16 moderately long primary gill rakers on the 1st arch.


HBG
Hybrid of green sunfish X bluegill: Notice intermediate appearance of gill rakers

Let us know what you see and find out.

These should help

GSF



GSF gill rakers



HBG


HBG (Bg x GSF) gill rakers

If only I could catch one!

Fished two hours last night and all I caught was a bullhead out of the old refurbished pond, which is a fish I DID NOT want to see.

In snrub's photo where the fish is lying on the rocks facing to the left, check out the wavy patterns or striations on what remains of the tail?

And Esshup brings up a point I hadn't noticed. The gill flap appears relatively intact in this photo, and it seems to come to a point, with no evidence of an opercular tab like a 9" RES should display.

And yellow eyes on a RES?

Are we seeing everything we should be seeing in the photo where the gills are displayed, or has damage been done there?

Man, I gotta' stay with crappie.


And in Highflyer's mystery fish photo, it looks like a RES to me, possibly with some BG in the lineage.

Thanks ewest.

I had found a lot of those John Lyons pictures in my searches and they are good, but still no RES gill raker pictures.

The written descriptions help, but they remind me of trying to read about my ailments in a medical book based on my symptoms. Pretty soon I think I have every disease and malady known to mankind.

Like the GSF description in your post:
"Sometimes 3-5 bluish lines radiating backward from underneath the eye"

Those bluish lines along with the big mouth are the first things I key to when looking for GSF characteristics. Yet the description says "sometimes". So "sometimes" means there may be GSF out there without any bluish lines. So not being a fish biologists, I likely would incorrectly ID a GSF that lacked the lines because I would not be looking for the other critical indicators.

And THAT's why I come here to PBF for the ID help. And a lot of good help there is! Thanks everyone!

The opercular tabs are "gone", as in eaten. I may not have pointed that out, thinking it was obvious in the picture when it might not have been. It was obvious to me when handling the fish. Both sides were gone. That could be throwing you a loop if you were looking for the red opercular tab, because it is not there at all. It is in some animal or bird or turtle's excrement by now.

Yellow eyes........... could the fact that the two darker pictures were taken after the fish had dried out on the bank under the sun all day have a bearing? I don't know. Would the red pigment stay in the eyes after the fish had dried out.

I'm giving you guys poor pictures and poor descriptions of the event, so any errors of identification are certainly going to be understandable. The picture of the gill raker is when the fish is pretty fresh and still limber. The other two pictures is after the fish had dried out on the bank all day and was completely stiff. Might have been good if I would have pointed that out earlier.

I have pictures of the crappie gill rakers. One of the pics was presented at the last PBoss Conference in Branson. Note to all - the 1st gill arch has long rakers but the other gills have shorter rakers as is evident in my picture. If someone wants to post my WCP gill picture just PM me and I will send the picture to you for posting. I repeat, interested members can easily walk out to there pond and catch a RES and or crappie and post a fresh close-up picture of the gill arch. I would do it but I don't have RES and BCP in my pond. I can do it for a YP anytime.

I've got RES on the beds now, I'll try and catch one tonight, but as we all know they take their parental responsibilities quite seriously.

No crappie however, either dead or alive.

What kind of water temps do you have Tony? Mne are still in the 50's but I expect change soon.

69 degrees on the surface last night Cecil, probably went up some today. We have RES building nests, with a few already committed to guard duty, and the BG are staged in deeper water just off the nesting sites. Wouldn't be surprised to find gills on tonight.

I've asked and been welcomed to fish in a RES-YP pond. I will do that this afternoon. Maybe sprkplug and I can provide pictures of RES gill rakers soon. I have a call into the owner of a pond with blk crappie (BCP). Hopefully I will also get a crappie for more pics of the gill rakers.

Someone mention BCP???

Having this thread brought to my attention, I have 30 BCP in the live-well ready to meet their maker, so I'd be happy to get some photos of the gill rakers tonight.

If there's any other part of the BCP you want photos of, I would be happy to be your resident disector. I clean at least 50 a week.

Bill and I have pics of RES gill rakers and other morphological features. I will find them.

Tonight's candidates: A male RES and a male BG x RES hybrid. Since this is PondBoss and details matter, the RES went 10.25" and 14.4 ozs, and the hybrid was 10" and an even 15 ozs.

Outermost gill rakers on BG x RES hybrid.

Outermost gill rakers on RES.

BG x RES rakers

RES rakers.

Both together....RES on top, BG x RES on bottom.



In all of the photos I was doing my best to show the maximum extension of the rakers, to display length. I can also provide photos of the second row of rakers, if it would help.

Thanks Sparkplug!

Sprkplug - Great work! No doubt now about the size of RES rakers. Now if Lovnlivin provides some pics of the rakers from his crappie we should be able to settle this debate.

FYI. I went to the pond near me with YP-RES and a few WE. Caught 20 fish in one hour. Four were YP and rest were all GSF - no RES! Somehow GSF have invaded this pond and are multiplying like flies. Biggest GSF was 3.25" and smallest was 2.25". This pond will now go 'downhill' fast. GSF will easily control RES reproduction by eating all the GSF eggs and fry. YP were 9" long and very thin bodied. One would expect the YP to be plump from eating GSF. Evidently YP do not eat GSF very well.

Tough luck Bill. That's a shame about the pond. Any chance of switching over to LMB as the apex predator, and maybe salvaging something?

I took another look at snrub's photo showing the gill rakers on the mystery fish. It looks pretty mauled up....are we sure we are seeing the outermost gill arch in that pic? Maybe that's why the rakers aren't as long as expected for a crappie?

Sorry it took me so long and I hope these are good photos. If not, I have several more, I just tried to pick ones similar to Sprkplug's.

8" Male (I think) BCP. None bigger out of the 24 I just cleaned.

Thanks Sprkplug for getting some good pics of the RES gill rakers.

A couple of observations. I had read somewhere that RES have rakers that fewer in number than BG. Your pictures point this out with the RES having fewer protrusions spaced further apart than the hybrid.

I may have been wrong about the missing opercular tab. I may have just assumed it was missing on both sides because the assumption at the time was it had to be either BG or RES, so I was expecting to see a dark colored tab either with or without the RES red or orange margin. Having not even considered it could be a crappie at the time, I may have made an incorrect assumption.

I do not know for sure that we are looking at the first gill arch in my picture.

Thanks again for sacrificing one of your fish to help get a positive ID.

Thanks Lovnlivin for the good pictures.

Now I am questioning, as sprkplug pointed out, are we looking at the first gill arch in my picture?

If we are, it definitely was not a BCP. But if it was other than the first arch as your pictures show and Bill Cody pointed out, the "other than first arch" BCP gill rakers are shorter.

So if we are seeing the second row of gill rakers in my fish, it looks a lot closer to the second row in your picture.

I don't know enough yet to look at the right things to come up with good observations, so I did not get good enough pictures or examine the fish well enough.

This is turning into a "where's Waldo" type of deal. I appreciate everybody's input and time spent trying to figure out something I did not give very good information.

Ok, I went back to my original photo and blew it up. It gets grainy fast, but it looks like to me we might be looking at the second gill arch instead of the first. I can see only one other gill arch behind.

Also look at the second arch on Lovnlivin's picture. Look at how numerous the protrusions are. They are also numerous on my picture. Lots more than on sprkplug's RES or even the RES/BG hybrid.

Now I'm leaning towards sprkplug and Esshup being correct with their observation of it being a BCP.

Guess if I had to loose a fish it was the right one to loose. Sometimes being lucky works out.

I'll be interested if others come up with different observations than what I have expressed.

lovnlivin:

If you get a chance, can you slip a piece of white paper under the opecular "tab" of a crappie and take a picture? That could be compared directly to the picture on snrub's fish.

If anybody catches a RES, feel in the opecular tab to see if there is a pointy bony piece like what is showing in snrub's picture. (as if the fleshy part of the opecular tab was missing)

I still say crappie.

That fish in Brians pic is a RES to these tired eyes.

I think you are right.

After looking at my own picture I think I just made the assumption the opercular tab was gone, because I was expecting to see the tab of a BG or RES. I just assumed, likely incorrectly, it was gone with the rest that was eaten.

Opercular flap, BCP female (I think)




Hoping that helps!

Awesome!

Very good pictures and info about gill rakers and gill flap/tab of RES and BCP. Thanks all for the good help with this debate. I will work this thread into the archives about crappie and RES. Link to this thread was placed in the Common Pond Fish Primer - Sunfish Edition. It was also added to the Crappie In Ponds thread in the Archives.

Awesome is right Shorty!

Thanks everyone for participating in my unintentional goose chase. You guys went well above the call of PBF duty to give me some closure on the identity of the fish.

I'll know to keep an eye out for BCP when fishing now, and hope that one was the only one in the pond.