Goldfish, Bullheads, Catfish, etc.

[FishnDave]

Flyfished the nearby public pond on Saturday mid-day, and Sunday late evening for a short trip.  Here's some of the haul....all released.

@Johnsfolly John, the ones above are Black Bullheads.  The two below have some mottling on them...any chance they are Brown Bullheads?  

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

Flyfished the nearby public pond on Saturday mid-day, and Sunday late evening for a short trip.  Here's some of the haul....all released.

@Johnsfolly John, the ones above are Black Bullheads.  The two below have some mottling on them...any chance they are Brown Bullheads?  

Dave they look different, but can you confirm these photos are of the same fish or not? The mottling looks more like a brown bullhead. Here is a quick reference that I found online.

However, the tail doesn't seem to be square like the brown bullheads that I see around here. Also I think that I can count 19 anal fin rays on the left fish. The brown bullhead has 20-24 anal fin rays and the black has 17-22. They also point out a whitish or lighter colored bar on the caudal peduncle of black bullheads, which both of these photos are showing. My inclination is that these are black bullheads, but could be wrong.

[Ham]

John is the Official “Crusher of Dreams”. 

[FishnDave]

@Johnsfolly  Those are 2 different bullheads, both had mottling that none of the others in this pond have had.   Like most fish, once you've definitely caught one and see what it looks like in real life, you are much better at I.D.'ing it in the future.  Pictures of Brown Bullhead online vary quite a bit, from wavy vertical markings to speckles.  I assume just regional variations.   Since you've caught Browns, I certainly appreciate your take on them.   Its possible I've caught browns many years ago, but I don't have any pictures of them to look at.

[FishnDave]

57 minutes ago, Ham said:

John is the Official “Crusher of Dreams”. 

I've had that job.  No worries. Just wondered if it MIGHT be something other than the usual Black Bullheads I typically catch.  Kind of like the Prussian Carp vs bronze Goldfish.  Jury is still out on those as well.  

[Ham]

FWIW, I think it was likely Black Bullheads which i would totally love to catch

[Johnsfolly]

17 hours ago, FishnDave said:

Since you've caught Browns, I certainly appreciate your take on them.   Its possible I've caught browns many years ago, but I don't have any pictures of them to look at.

The distributions on Fishmap.org shows that browns are distributed north (in MN and WI), east of the Mississippi, and on the West coast, but not really in the midwest. There appears that where you are Dave that historically may have had brown bullhead. What I don't see is many collections of brown bullheads in the Midwest as compared to those in the east or west coast where there are hundreds of cited collections points. There are a few collections of brown bullheads in AR back in the 80's in the west SW half of the state. There was one modern collection point (2015) in MO in the Mingo NWR. Now it's possible that there just hasn't been much interest in doing comprehensive surveys for this species. Again as @Ham can attest with a redbreast sunfish that he caught in Toledo Bend, some times you will catch a fish or two outside of those ranges.

[Ham]

I get Lucky sometimes.