Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass need help w/ ID please

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!