esshup, thanks for interjecting some actual expert information into the thread.
Any idea why there are no PSS suppliers in the Midcontinent and South? I just looked up the geographic distribution, and their natural range is from the states surrounding the Great Lakes down to South Carolina. Would they be a good fish in the Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas arc of ponds, or is it too warm? (It would be nice to have a sunfish in the RES niche that is easier to catch. I think they also eat snails?)
I thought we caught a few in a reservoir in SE Kansas when I was a kid. Seems odd since that is not in their range and no one supplies them in the area. Is it more likely we mis-identified a different type of sunfish? Pulling up the watershed fish map suggests that we were probably catching Orange-Spotted Sunfish, but my memory better matches the images of Pumpkinseeds - and that is how they identified in our fish picture book.
