What Is It

[Rickf]

Caught this fish on Table Rock this morning and I don't know what it is. Looks like a crappie but has a tiny mouth.

[Champ188]

That's a redear sunfish. Some call them shellcrackers.

[Rickf]

Thanks Champ, I've fished Table Rock for fifty plus years and that's a first for me. I have caught shell crackers in Florida in the canals but they didn't look like that. They looked more like a blue gill with a light colored mark across there head.

[Champ188]

Yeah, I lived in Pensacola for 3 years back in the late 80s and caught some of those shellcrackers. They do look different. But that's 101% for sure a good ol' redear bream (sunfish) that you're holding in this picture. My late grandfather caught thousands of them out of Lake Ouachita in west-central Arkansas, including a pair that I now have on my wall at home that weighed 2-0 and 2-1 each. Huge rascals and very nearly state records when they were caught in 1960 (a few months before I was born).

[Flysmallie]

including a pair that I now have on my wall at home that weighed 2-0 and 2-1 each.

Wow!

[Ham]

Alledgedly, Norfork has some of these as well.

[Quillback]

They are out there, but they are sly sons of guns.

[Champ188]

My grandfather caught those two great big ones fishing 35 feet deep along a bluff. They would drop redworms or nightcrawlers straight down to them on their old Abu-Garcia spincast reels.

[aarchdale@coresleep.com]

We see a lot of them diving in Norfork. They get pretty darn big

[96 CHAMP]

Hey champ, what a coincidence that you brought up Pensacola Florida, back when I was a young teenager in the 70's our family went out to Santa Rosa island every year for 2 weeks camping out at fort Pickens and we would fish out where Pensacola bay and the gulf met at night for blues and red fish and we would load up em & also hunting for crabs. Brings back a lot of memories!!