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#470413 04/25/17 10:42 PM
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I don't take photos (not since film went out)so maybe this question is below standard requirements, but... I caught a BG today that was blue gray (about the color Navy planes were painted on their bellies during WWII) from the tip of its lower jaw to well back on its belly. A broad strip of this color, and it was nowhere else. I can't recall ever seeing this color on a fish before. There are RES in the pond, and I stocked GSF last fall, but this wasn't any of their colors.

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Did he look like this?


AL

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Age, water color, temperature, stress, and other factors affect the color of most fish. Bluegill, and pretty much all of the sunfish family, can really change over very short periods of time.

Recently, Bob Lusk arranged for the Pond Boss Moderators to have the great opportunity to visit a spectacular lake that he and his crew manage in Oklahoma on a 6800 acre property called Wildcat Spring Ranch.

Several of us decided to spend our day electro-shocking the main lake on this beautiful property.

I'd never before done shocking. I was't surprised at what was shocked up. Instead, I was amazed at what the shocking did to the colors of the fish between the short period between when they were first shocked and when they returned from their comatose state in
a big livewell, where they were again full of life.

With more than 65 years of identifying freshwater fish, I had to ask about one of the types of fish we were shocking and bringing in for observation. Within a few minutes of putting these fish in the livewell, it was quite obvious they were big black crappie (12-14 inch). They had very few markings, and looked like they had just been pulled from a pail of Clorox water when we first pulled them after being shocked.

On that same lake we pulled in largemouth bass (LMB) coming up with red eyes very similar to of our eastern populations of Appalachian river system Small Mouth Bass ("brownbacks"). Within several minutes of being revived in the live tank, these LMB looked like regular LMB. They were a mix of Florida strain and plain old regular northern strain LMB.

Growing up way-north, I pulled thousands of fish from extremely cold water through small holes in the ice to find that they were all very bland in color.

Color is only one of several methods of identifying fish.


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FireisHot,
That fish looks very much like one I caught today. The first one with that color had more of it, but it was the same color. My BG are all sorts of colors. That may be due in part to their coming from many different sources. The guy I bought this place from said the pond has every kind of fish in it. That includes a lot.

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Turtlemtn, this was one of my original Florida stockers (no fin tipping). If you get a chance, fish for yours several days before the next full moon. Both male and female CNBG really color up right before they spawn. They can almost be chameleon like.


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So included in the everything, I may have some CNBG? I didn't know they would do well this far north. It would be great if that's what they are.

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As I was doing mighty battle with one of those big BG on a 3 wt rod and line today, a memory flashed before my eyes of pompano that I had caught off a pier in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, half a century ago. The fish had turned its side to me and I could see it just below the surface. Those little buggers really can fight hard. They need to be fished on light tackle to do justice to how game they are.

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Turtlemtn, my only experience is with CNBG, so I'll ask others, do Northern BG and HBG color up around the spawn? And if so, is one sex more colorful than the other? I just don't know.


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Originally Posted By: Turtlemtn
I don't take photos (not since film went out)so maybe this question is below standard requirements, but... I caught a BG today that was blue gray (about the color Navy planes were painted on their bellies during WWII) from the tip of its lower jaw to well back on its belly. A broad strip of this color, and it was nowhere else. I can't recall ever seeing this color on a fish before. There are RES in the pond, and I stocked GSF last fall, but this wasn't any of their colors.


My sediment pond goes from reasonably clear to turbid with rain events and runoff coming off agricultural land. When I had CNBG in that pond they would come out very lacking in color when the water was turbid. When the water was more clear they would have much more coloration.

If you want to try an experiment, find a clean black 5 gallon bucket. When you are fishing fill it a little over half with pond water. Then when you catch a BG instead of returning it to the pond put it in the bucket for several minutes. Then retrieve it and note the color difference from when you first caught it. The difference can be striking.

The color of bucket you use makes a difference. When I was transferring lots of BG from my main pond to my old pond to get BG going there because of the GSF infestation, I found the fish to be much calmer if I kept them in a black bucket while they were waiting to be transferred to the old pond. A white bucket was the worst as it seemed like the fish noticed any of my movements and thrashed around a lot more than when I stored them in a black bucket. So in the back of my 4 wheeler I always carry a black bucket in case I want to hold fish for a while.

Put a BG in a black bucket for a while, note the color as it comes out, then in a white bucket and their colors will change because of the amount of light entering the bucket. It is a quite interesting thing to try.

I see various fish changing their chromatophores (coloration) all the time in real time while scuba diving in the ocean. They do it in mating, sometimes as other fish or divers approach, as they swim past different parts of the reef, lots of different situations. Some can go from almost black to almost white (grouper good example) and some all the colors of the rainbow (file fish, trumpet fish, etc.), depending on the species.

Last edited by snrub; 04/30/17 01:29 PM.

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I have carried many BG up to the house alive in buckets and have noticed that they often very quickly change color. I've never used a black bucket.


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