Waded a Local Flow Today

[DanMarino]

No smallmouth bass, but caught some nice panfish.
Fun catching fish on a foam bug and wool darter that I tied up myself.
I need to figure out where the smallmouth are. I didn't even spook any today.

[Big Mike]

Beautiful fish.

[EMSer]

Very nice!

[bignose]

Let's see: Sunfish ID

A rock bass (redeye) first fish on the top
A mess of yellow breasted sunfish, they mostly look like males in spawning colors.
A copper nose bluegill ( 4th one down)
A green sunfish ( the little guy with the red edging around his gill flap).

Years ago I tried to raise several of these in a large community tank at a summer camp, but the critters are quite territorial and would beat the hell out of one another.
Much like African Cichlids, pretty but ornery.
The rock bass fight pretty poorly, but the sunnies will give you a good scrap.

[Mark]

Colorful and aggressive.

Good catching, Tom.

Stu, good job with the IDs.

[Slobber Bob]

Great job capturing the color of the fish! Spawning sunfish are pretty fish.

It's been forever since I've caught sunfish, but we used to call the first fish warmouths when I was growing up in Southeast PA. Are warmouths and rock bass the same fish?

[bignose]

According to Wiki they are different species, but are distantly related.
I know that Yellow Breasted Sunfish will hybridize with Bluegills, having done so in a farm pond. Within 2 generations you couldn't tell that they weren't plain old Bluegills. The bright turquoise color faded out and the extended gill flap reverted to a short version like a "normal" Bluegill.

Unknown-7.jpeg
Green Sunfish

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Warmouth

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Rock Bass