"daveneely, no offense but how sure are of this ID? Since you brought up Warmouth I'm doing comparisons between them and GSF. Can you offer any major differences?"
daveneely said:
"No offense taken, but I'm quite sure on this ID.
While there's some variation across the range (and especially across different size classes) of green sunfish, in the southeastern US they'll nearly always have a large black spot at the insertion of both the dorsal and anal fins, and usually a yellowish or white margin on all median fins. Rather than the dark-striped cheek of a warmouth (often with three dark brown lines radiating posteriorly from the eye), greens will have bluish wavy streaks under the eye and onto the cheek. If you're still not sure, crank the mouth open and look at the tongue; warmouth have a patch of teeth on the anterior part of the tongue, that greens lack. You could also count the number of scales along the lateral line (36-44 in warmouth, 43-52 in greens), etc., etc...
