Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Large Bluegill

Hello everyone. I'm trying to post some pictures of a large BG. Can anyone tell me if this is a hybrid or not. I don't really have any reason to suspect that it is but it looks kind of different. It was caught by by cousins husband down in Vincennes Indiana. It weighed 1lb. 13oz. and was 13.5 inches long. Thanks, Joe Street.

That is a purebred female redear sunfish, my friend. And a beauty at that!

If it hasn't already been consumed, I'd seriously consider having Cecil Baird create a mount. He could probably even consider doing a replica mount. This fish is certainly worthy.

Would be glad to do it but here's something else to consider. Your relative meets the minium weight and length requrements for both kept and catch and release for my private pond record fish site here:

http://www.ligtel.com/~jjbaird/pprf/pprf.htm

If you can provide what is required in the rules he's all set! It's free but sorry no prizes except recognition and his pic on the website. Taxidermist are not known to be that well off.

Would love to have his pic with the fish on the website!

That is the slimmest of orange-edged opercule tabs, gentlemen, but the Redear "mottling" on the side had me thinking RES in agreement with Bruce.

Theo,

That slim margin is because it's a female. The males have the wider brighter red/orange margin. I've mounted a lot of them. Wish I had a dollar for everyone that was called a bluegill. I'd be able to retire by now!

Funny I don't see much of that mottling up here in the redears. I wish I could find a customer's pic. If I do I'll post it.

REDEAR SUNFISH MALE (with mottling)

Yep! Now there's a male!

Here are a couple from a prior Bruce post along with BG

Here's a northeastern Indiana female redear from a natural lake. Notice how bland it looks in comparison to the previous pics. This seems to be the way they look up here from the natural lakes unless I'm not getting them at peak spawning time.

Anymore, when I tell people what's stocked in my pond, if they ask "What's a Redear?" I just say it's a kind of BG.

Two more pics of RES.

Well they are closely related.

I see a good number of bluegill/redear hybrids up this way too from some of the natural lakes.

Notice how all of these purebred redears have that little downturn to their mouth in relation to a bluegill? Probably a nice apparatus for gathering snails.

Last 4th of July at Texoma, we went to the bait house and talked to this guy that ran it. He told us an easy way to tell the difference. He said. "there are 3 types of sunfish up here, the little ones(he measured his finger length)are brim. Bluegill and chinkypin are bigger."

Elementary, my dear Watson.

:D I wanna catch a BIG chinkypin!

He's about as swift as the German sales lady in the Four Seasons store back on the Army post I lived at back when I was a kid. She told me buy the "bik" lures for the "bik moud" bass and the little lures for the "smallmoud" bass. She was actually right but I don't think she knew it. She also didn't know the place I fished had no smallmouth bass.