And here we have the infamous green sunfish, which I didnt even know I had. The one in the middle is not a green sunfish.
These two fine specimens are females that were full of eggs.
Note how fat.
They were removed and war has been declared.
No sense in letting a good crisis go to waste I always say.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Meet my cat Salem, who just happens to be rather fond of green sunfish.
Free cat food baby.
Now that I know how to identify these bastards, a lot of them are going to be taken out. I'm hoping the LMB and HSB will put a very large dent in them too.
Jason, the two with the heavy GSF characteristics may be hybrids. They look a little too tall in their form and have pretty distinctive vertical bars to be pure GSF. Shorty can tell you for sure. He knows what he is talking about. I'm still just learning. I sometimes get confused when I catch a hybrid and think it is a GSF because of the markings. But when I catch a true pure GSF, there is no mistaking it. The hybrids very often have the green bars on the face, the pinkish orangish translucent margin on the ear tab, the white tips on the lower fins and belly. All the things to make one think GSF, yet their mouth is not quite large enough opening and the lips are stouter more like a BG. The GSF mouth almost looks like a LMB to me.
You may or may not want to get rid of the hybrids. I personally like them. I stocked my main pond with pure BG, but about five in a hundred were actually hybrids. So my supplier had a few hybrids mixed in. I'm guessing on that number by my catch rate of hybrids, but I may be estimating way too high because the hybrids seem to be what bites a hook most aggressive. So I may not have as many as I think, them being just easier to catch. I've moved most of the hybrids caught out of my main pond to my old pond which also has GSF. That is when I ran into the problem of differentiating between hybrids and pure GSF. I think I've finally got a handle on it after destroying a few of the hybrids moved from my main pond.
The hybrids are fast growing and easy to catch. I like them, but you do what you want with them. You, like me, might have a few from your initial stocking from your supplier.
Edit: a GSF mouth when closed will have the rear of the mouth go back all the way to the fishes eye. The mouth open will look HUGE. A pure GSF will have about the same size mouth as a LMB the same length. The hybrids mouth will be big, but not that big.
