What do the species guys think of this one?

[Ham]

I might have seen one before. Bull Shoals. Mid Lake. November 2016

[tjm]

When I do a web search for "green sunfish" it seems to me that most of the images found include those vertical bars or stripes, although often fainter-

USGS-

Wikipedia-

Texas Parks-

Don't several of the "sunfish" species  exhibit this vertical marking? bluegill? red ear? etc?

 

[rps]

10 hours ago, tjm said:

When I do a web search for "green sunfish" it seems to me that most of the images found include those vertical bars or stripes, although often fainter-

USGS-

Wikipedia-

Texas Parks-

Don't several of the "sunfish" species  exhibit this vertical marking? bluegill? red ear? etc?

 

smallmouth bass

[Al Agnew]

11 hours ago, rps said:

smallmouth bass

You're kidding, right?

[rps]

1 hour ago, Al Agnew said:

You're kidding, right?

 

[BilletHead]

11 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

You're kidding, right?

            I think he was referring to the barring on the sunfish. 

[tjm]

 I just don't  think the stripes are unusual or particularly aberrant, what I see as unusual is the pale "background" color; it would be hard to think of that fish as a "black perch", or really even as "green". 

But, I'm not much of a species ID guy and often call them all "fish". And for me to have said definitely what the fish pictured is, I would have wanted to see the fins. And most likely an ID chart. So,  my post above was as much a query as not.

[Al Agnew]

8 hours ago, tjm said:

 I just don't  think the stripes are unusual or particularly aberrant, what I see as unusual is the pale "background" color; it would be hard to think of that fish as a "black perch", or really even as "green". 

But, I'm not much of a species ID guy and often call them all "fish". And for me to have said definitely what the fish pictured is, I would have wanted to see the fins. And most likely an ID chart. So,  my post above was as much a query as not.

The stripes usually show up more prominently during spawning season, and it's a little late for that.  I agree the background color is somewhat lighter than normal.

Maybe it's because I'm a fish artist, or maybe just because I've seen so many of them and knew what I was looking at, but I can tell pretty much all the common fish in the Ozarks at a glance.  But the toughest ones to ID are the hybrid sunfish, and several different sunfish, including green sunfish, hybridize readily with others.

[tjm]

I've seen a lot of what I thought were hybrids and I've also seen a lot of color variance in the same species in the same stretch of stream. And I've caught some species that I was pretty sure of my ID, but that aren't supposed to be here. Sunfish are sunfish. Google eye are google eye, etc. 

[dan hufferd]

On 9/20/2024 at 9:10 PM, Ham said:

I might have seen one before. Bull Shoals. Mid Lake. November 2016

When I see this I think about fish tacos