So Green Sunfish eat rocks ????

[fishinwrench]

A couple of neighborhood boys got sent up here for me to teach them how to fillet fish, and they had a bucket with a dozen or so big fat green sunnies.   I did two then coached them both through a couple.   Their stomachs were lumpy and felt hard, so I assumed crawdads.

Nope almost all of them had stomachs full of tiny Pebbles and rocks up to the size of a dime.   This was news to me !   

Anyone know if this is common green sunny behavior?  If so, why?

[dan hufferd]

I googed it and you are not the only one to see this. No explanation was given, but they are spawning right now, maybe bed maintenance or buoyancy. I have never heard of it before. Did they have eggs? I am thinking they were all males??? 

[fishinwrench]

No eggs, so I assume they were indeed males.  Pretty big males at that.  

I never cared much for greenies so I had never cleaned a mess of them before.  These were 10-11 inchers and I gotta say that the fillets were decent.  Nice and thick, and the meat looked better than gill fillets do.  None of those weird black strings that you don't know what are... but eat them anyway.

[kjackson]

Very small pebbles could be caddis larvae case materials. That's common enough in trout in streams, but as for sunfish...

[dan hufferd]

Sounds like some good eating, most of the weird stuff cooks out

[motroutbum]

Those little black strings are/were blood vessels.

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, motroutbum said:

Those little black strings are/were blood vessels.

Any idea why other fish fillets lack them?

[Old plug]

It is really easy to understand Wrench. That hoard of crawfish invading from the bank a month or so back scared them pretty bad and the poor things were atarving.

[motroutbum]

Not sure why others do or don't, but just about every fish I have filleted has had them  They may be more pronounced in some fish than others, but all fish have them in their flilets.  They are more noticeable after they are cooked. That is if we are talking about the same thing.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

Wonder if the rocks are used to break up the food similar to how birds do.  Not sure why just green sunfish would need the assistance of the rocks.