Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose warmouth vs. green sunfish

is the warmouth and the green sunfish the same species diffrent name?

No, greenie is lepomis cyanellus, warmouth is l. gulosus.

The warmouth has a considerably larger mouth.

is that the only diffrence between them. they both look alike and can come in some diffrent shade, but from what i have seen they both can come in the same shades.

Green sunfish have a lot of green or olive colored scales, and have neon edges on the fins.

Here's an excellent specimen of a greenie: http://www.uaex.edu/wneal/pond_management/images/greensunfish.jpg

Warmouth have more browns and grays in the color, and usually have red eyes.

Here's a not-so great specimen of warmouth:
http://www.cnr.vt.edu/efish/families/images/jpegs/warmouth.jpg

These are all Warmouths from the same pond in SW Georgia.

(click to enlarge)

Here are a couple of warmouth I recently put in my pond. They can have real different colors.

no, warmouth have larger mouthes and they get bigger than green sunfish.

Warmouth typically have several line or stripes that radiate from the eye.

Start here

GSF -- http://www.cnr.vt.edu/efish/families/greensun.html


WM -- http://www.cnr.vt.edu/efish/families/warmouth.html

Have to disagree with you there. Warmouth and pure GSF have mouths that are very similar.

Ewest has posted, but I'm too lazy to search for and link, a Sunfish family tree, if you find it you will see that Warmouth and GSF are very closely related.

Find any photos of DIED's or my GSF and you'll find that their mouths are very similar in size and shape to WM.

Also not true that WM are much larger than GSF. From my research the record for WM is 2 pounds 7 ounces, the record that I found for GSF is 2 pounds 5.7 ounces and 12.5 inches from a pond in Kansas. I think it is safe to say that most folks catch GSF that are rather small but that doesn't mean that they can't achieve a good size.

I violently agree Jeff.

I was working from memory, and it's been a while since I have caught either fish. Apologies for any confusion.

Is it common for GSF to be mixed in with HBG when being stocked? I think we have GSF in my pond but they have never been purposely stocked. The HBG are usualy more round than the fish I suspect are GSF.

Brett295 take a look at this thread on the 2 different looking types of HBG - mBG X fGSF and mGSF X fBG. You probably have some of each but could have a few non HBG parentals (BG or GSF).

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=1341&Number=14459#Post14459