Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Intense colored bluegills in winter

I found this picture on an ice fishing website I frequent. Bluegills in my region are not this bright in the winter. My guess is this bluegill came from a body of water where the diet is high in carotene i.e. zooplankton, invertebrates etc.?

I believe this photo was taken in Massachusetts. As I kid I used to fish a lake there that had incredibly large size zooplankton that were active in winter. You could visually see them in your ice fishing hole. The trout stomachs were packed with them.

Thoughts?

It looks like that BG was painted. Impressive colors.

Wow. Such red where I'm used to seeing orange.

yeah, my gills are always washed out in a pale purple hue in the winter. Very nice!!

Salmonid

Bluegill ? Looks like something else to me. Could be due to pic quality on this pc.

Naah that's a bluegill. No trim on the tab etc. Our northern bluegills are gaudy.

What do you suspect, redbreast? If so I would think the ear tab would be much different.

Can't tell on this pc . Looks like the mouth goes way back beyond the eye and body looks to long not round shaped. I would guess not even a sunfish. That is why I asked.

Eric,

Our northern gills can be really slow growing and skinny due to infertile lakes and the long winters. Notice how elongated this one is from the same thread:



I see elongated bluegills a lot in local lakes but in fertile ponds that aren't over populated that is not the case.

I think it is your PC. On my PC the mouth does not extend past the eye. I see how the dark line, which many have on the lower jaw, could be mistaken for the mouth viewing a bad picture.

What I was seeing in the first pic was the brown stripe under its mouth and thinking that was its mouth. Its not so that clears things up for me.

The vertical bars that you see are they only with the coppernose bluegill in your area? The native bluegill in my pond dont seem to have the vertical bars.

No CNBG up there James - it’s too cold. All BG/CNBG have the potential for vert bars. In some cases (see coloration threads) they are not visible all the time.

Cecil - Were there any pictures of female BG from that location?

No just those two pics Bill. Someone thought the second one was a pumpkinseed because the breast was so bright. Duh!

Cecil cool info on why the colors. We see a wide variaition on colors not explained simply by cnbg vs straight bg and male vs female.

Diet, bottom composition, water color and clarity all have a pretty big influence on color of fish. I say bottom compositon because bottoms with darker colors tend to cause more vivid colors. Bottom compostion can also contribute to water color / stain thus influencing color of fish.

The red/orange in the first bluegill reminds me of my brook trout when I fed them an enhanced diet to bring out the red colors. Granted spawning was a factor but without this enhancement they were no where near as bright.