Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Help with bullhead identification.

Looking for other input on bullhead identification. They were advertised as brown bullhead from where I bought them, but I believe they are black. None of the ones I have caught have over 21 rays, however all of the smaller bullheads have slight barbs on spines, I do not really feel any barbs on the larger ones. The ones with the whiter belly do seem to have more rays, but still not more than 21. They all look very similar other than some having a slightly whiter belly. All were stocked into a small wildlife pond in May as 3" fingerlings, some are already 9" and large enough to fry while others are only 5". Pond was very rich with feed from, tadpoles, frogs, aquatic insects, minnows, etc.

Dave, the folks who run this forum indicate that software that runs this forum and handles the uploaded pictures is not working. We had a similar issue a few months back that took about a month to fix. Now it isn't working. I imagine someone from the PondBoss team must be working on it?

16 people tried to download your first picture but no one could open it.

I could try to explain how to embed your picture into your post but if the attached pictures are 'empty' or not visible then I'm not sure if the trick to embed them inline with your message will work either.

It is possible to find a 3rd party picture hosting site and then do some additional gymnastics to try to create an external link and then bring that link back to your message... but my experience is those sites tend to shut down or take your pictures hostage unless you pay which wrecks your pictures for all the future folks who want to go back and look at them. I did use photobucket as a hosting site for a while but it now has my pictures and has blurred them for me until i pay them.

Hopefully the folks who know how to do these things will fix the picture upload bug or continue to ask the bulletin board software IT team that hosts this forum to help fix it.

I'd love to see your pictures!

Use imgur.

Bump for working pictures.

I guessing Brown Bullheads.

Glad you got the pictures to work!

-Brown: Dark chin barbels, no cresent - often "mottled" in color, 19-24 anal fin rays
-Black: Dark chin barbels, yellow "cresent" at caudal fin, 16-20 anal fin rays

I count 17 anal fin rays. Strongly suggests black bullhead rays (17-21). My text says weak serrations or sometimes absent on back edge of pectoral spine again suggesting black bullhead. My MI fish key says adults can have a whitish bar a the the caudal fin base. Picture 2 has a light colored vertical bar at the base of the caudal fin. US record for black bullhead is 7.3lbs and brown bullhead record is 7.0 lbs.

Offering this as a question.

I used to bullhead fish with my grandfather and one of his old buddies in an awesome pond. We caught all three of the bullhead species. The yellow bullheads were obvious.

The coloring of the other bullheads WAS NOT binary, but showed a fairly broad range. The old buddy told me (8-10 y.o.) that the black bullheads had jet black whiskers and the brown bullheads had dark whiskers.

As we compared them on that basis, the shapes of the fish seemed to split fairly well into two distinct categories. (I am assuming black bullheads and brown bullheads.)

I DO NOT know if that is a valid indicator to distinguish between black and brown bullheads. Further, I don't know if he knew the other indicators such as anal rays, etc. and was just dumbing it down for a kid - but his identifications were accurate?

If anyone does know, then I would appreciate a comment. My recollection from childhood is that it was fairly easy to see a distinct color difference on the whiskers, especially if you started the day holding a black in one hand and a brown in the other.

Thanks for the responses, perhaps as they get bigger it will become more obvious. In the spring I will catch some more and do a more thorough inspection.

Dave,

Are you leaning towards black bullheads for now?

If so, does that change your management plans relative to the browns you thought you were getting?

Dave, I/we are interested in the growth rates of the bullheads you now have. Please keep us in the information loop about your bullheads. Bullheads growing to 5+lbs are very BIG bullheads. Because bullheads or tolerant of lower water quality, they could be a useful stocker fish for food and sport in ponds with periodic low DO sags.

Yes leaning towards black bullhead as well. Do not think it will change my management strategy, but still in development. I really have not found much information that distinguishes between the differences other than mention of distinguishing features and preferred spawning habitat, which leads me to believe that the black bullhead maybe more tolerant of swampy/mucky waters.

We call those,pollywags or yellow cats, or just mud cats in east Texas. They do not get very big and are considered to a lot of us as a "trash" fish? We have what we call a bullhead blue cat but looks NOTHING like these. Just my observations.