Pumpkinseed?

[Mitch f]

10 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

When I was a kid my buddies and I would do overnight fishing trips on upper Big River, hoping to catch catfish, even though upper Big is not much of a catfish river.  We generally caught about 50 bullheads for every channel of flathead we caught; in fact, most nights if we caught one channel cat it was a better than average night.  

A friend has a lake that's over 100 acres and 70 feet deep at the dam, that his family (who owned a heavy construction company) built on a small wet weather creek.  You wouldn't have thought there were any fish in this creek, which was mostly dry except for occasional pools that were not much bigger than a bathtub.  They stocked it with the usual, including channel catfish.  A few years passed, and they had MDC come out and electroshock the lake to see what they needed to do to better manage it.  Nobody fished for catfish in the lake, and the owners just fed the channel cats around the dock all the time.  I was there when the MDC people came to shock it and helped them do it.  What they shocked up more than anything else were bullheads.  By the thousands.  Nobody had a clue they were there, nor how they got there.

 

We had a farm in Paragould Arkansas, my parents home town...About 100 acres. We had a little muddy farm pond in the section where my dad raised cattle. This little muddy pond was full of small bull head yellow catfish, probably never caught anything over a pound. But the pond was full of cottonmouths. One of his cows got bit by one (so he told us) and he made it his mission to kill all those cottonmouths. These things were huge and fat, and would sun themselves in the muddy outskirts of the pond. I bet we killed dozens of them over the years, in the name of being safe to us and the cattle.

[tjm]

It occurs to me that a bullhead and a horned pout may not be exactly the same. The 15 years I lived and fished in southern New England all the good hornpout waters I encountered were also good trout waters. I don't recall ever catching them in warm ponds that I fished for lmb and chain pickerel.  I know I never caught any in any warm streams.  And I cleaned a ton of hornpout in those years because they were one of my ma in law's favorite fish.  Trout eat baby hornpout like hogs eat corn, in one spring fed lake all the trout would move to the only cove shallow enough for the hornpout to bed  and for a couple weeks fishing got real tough. 

[Johnsfolly]

Everything that I have seen is that the horned pout is a brown bullhead, Amerius nebulosus.

[tjm]

Yeah That's what I've always read. Maybe there's as much difference in bullheads as there is between channel cats and flatheads.  I was just reading all the mud pond stories and got to thinking back where when fishing with worms it was 50/50 hornpout or trout.  I'm kinda ignorant of ichthyology, I called long ears punkinseeds all my life til internet came here. But I do know that you can't catch many flatheads on stink bait made for channels.

Also if I search 'kivver' it will show only pumpkinseed, and I saw more blue gill and redbreast called kivver than I did pumpkinseed, not even sure they had pumpkinseed, because the fish that color were all dinky like a longear.

[FishnDave]

On 7/31/2019 at 12:42 AM, MoCarp said:

Can’t remember the artist name but did art plates for in fisherman mag....great work has a nice book

Larry Tople, perhaps?  He has done In-Fisherman magazine covers and calendars.

Larry and Al Agnew are the top 2 names in fish art, IMO! 

Nobody has mentioned Paddlefish (as in Iowa) vs Spoonbill (as in Oklahoma)!

I do my best up here in Iowa to try and help folks give the correct identification of their fish catches.  We all started somewhere....At one time I wasn't even sure I knew the difference between a Rock Bass and a Green Sunfish.  Until I finally actually caught a Rock Bass and realized what the differences were.

I know freshwater gamefish, but there are still some freshwater fish I need help with....especially minnow species.  Like Striped Shiner vs Common Shiner...I still can't tell the difference.  Other species also have very minor morphological differences (I'm not usually willing to count fin rays and such)...like Golden Redhorse Sucker vs Silver Redhorse Sucker...and Smallmouth Buffalo and Black Buffalo.  I can generally spot hybrid sunfish vs purebred species.  Brown Bullhead vs Black Bullhead isn't always easy either.

I used Fishes of Missouri for Icthyology class in college.  Loaned it to another student the next year, who never returned it.  I bought another copy that I still have.

 

[Johnsfolly]

2 hours ago, FishnDave said:

I know freshwater gamefish, but there are still some freshwater fish I need help with....especially minnow species.  Like Striped Shiner vs Common Shiner...I still can't tell the difference.  Other species also have very minor morphological differences (I'm not usually willing to count fin rays and such)...like Golden Redhorse Sucker vs Silver Redhorse Sucker...and Smallmouth Buffalo and Black Buffalo.  I can generally spot hybrid sunfish vs purebred species.  Brown Bullhead vs Black Bullhead isn't always easy either.

I used Fishes of Missouri for Icthyology class in college.  Loaned it to another student the next year, who never returned it.  I bought another copy that I still have.

FishnDave - Come over to the dark side  and count some lateral line scales and fin rays!

[FishnDave]

16 hours ago, Johnsfolly said:

FishnDave - Come over to the dark side  and count some lateral line scales and fin rays!

And tooth patches! 😜

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

And tooth patches! 😜

That's right!

Hey if you do catch some oddballs I have no issue in looking them over for you. Just need good photos that show the fins, lateral scales, etc. Won't be able to photo tooth patches. for minnows, I would prefer that they be photographed from the side and in water. That way they extend their fins. From those photos I can try to give you an id. If not I am in contact with the gentleman that is currently revising the "Fishes of Missouri". If he is not swamped, I can usually get confirmation from him as well. Maybe if I get back up into Iowa, you might know a spot or two to catch orangespotted sunfish. I haven't had much luck with that species in Missouri and they are not native to Maryland.

[FishnDave]

3 hours ago, Johnsfolly said:

That's right!

Hey if you do catch some oddballs I have no issue in looking them over for you. Just need good photos that show the fins, lateral scales, etc. Won't be able to photo tooth patches. for minnows, I would prefer that they be photographed from the side and in water. That way they extend their fins. From those photos I can try to give you an id. If not I am in contact with the gentleman that is currently revising the "Fishes of Missouri". If he is not swamped, I can usually get confirmation from him as well. Maybe if I get back up into Iowa, you might know a spot or two to catch orangespotted sunfish. I haven't had much luck with that species in Missouri and they are not native to Maryland.

That's great that Fishes of Missouri is getting  updated!

Orangespotted Sunfish are a rarity in Central Iowa.  The DNR has (had?) stream sampling data from around the state.  In one year, they might find good numbers of Orangespotted Sunfish in a certain location, and then they aren't there in subsequent years. They never seem to stay in an area.  I've personally caught them (once) in Blue Heron Lake in West Des Moines.  A friend caught a large one (maybe 6" long) at Grays Lake in Des Moines.  Both of those lakes occasionally get flooded by the adjacent Raccoon River.  The trick may be to simply fish something small enough for them.

There is a small pond between the office buildings where I work.  With the company's permission, I purchased some Orangespotted Sunfish to stock into the pond.  They have survived the past 2 winters, but I've never been able to catch them (only tried once).  This year we stocked some Redear Sunfish into the pond as well, because there is a strong snail population.

If I catch something I can't ID, I may take you up on your offer of help.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

That's great that Fishes of Missouri is getting  updated!

Orangespotted Sunfish are a rarity in Central Iowa.  The DNR has (had?) stream sampling data from around the state.  In one year, they might find good numbers of Orangespotted Sunfish in a certain location, and then they aren't there in subsequent years. They never seem to stay in an area.  I've personally caught them (once) in Blue Heron Lake in West Des Moines.  A friend caught a large one (maybe 6" long) at Grays Lake in Des Moines.  Both of those lakes occasionally get flooded by the adjacent Raccoon River.  The trick may be to simply fish something small enough for them.

There is a small pond between the office buildings where I work.  With the company's permission, I purchased some Orangespotted Sunfish to stock into the pond.  They have survived the past 2 winters, but I've never been able to catch them (only tried once).  This year we stocked some Redear Sunfish into the pond as well, because there is a strong snail population.

If I catch something I can't ID, I may take you up on your offer of help.

Kind of hard to nail it down.  Maybe as John said,  next time put it in a tank so the fins are extended.    We may be able to identify it then.  Preliminary results are Southern Hog Sucker.