Let's talk pumpkinseeds, long ears and hybrids

I seem to have a smorgasboard 50 yds from my front door on the river. Never gave it much thought until joining here and getting netucated. Thanks for this great resource.

Please review the pics of collected and cpr fish and give me your input. Make it easy for the lamen to understand why you came to your id. Ears....opiculars sp?.....they have me confused.

What I thought were bluegill with just a hint of blue and vert banding slowly became more orange with the (insert proper name here) blue streaks. Then I noticed changes in ear shape and color. Can a pumpkinseed or longear be identified by ear, color pattern or some other trait? Here are some examples of the ones I have collected. All from same spot.


What I thought was a bluegill











Caught today..about same size as my tank raised.


Red frindge explaination please?


No red


Beauty of the day and peaked my curiousity...

Beauty in tank
front

Right

Left

Fish in first image are rockbass. Balance are all longear (most adults appear male).

Longear are not a single population / species and even within a given population are quite variable. Some of the variation is do to gender and age, while some is due to injury as evident from last fish pictured.

I have both species in lab, most are lab reared over multiple generations so i know those very well. You can trust me to distinguish the two species as repressented by populations I have to point where I can get sex correct. Once you get away away from my longear stock, my opinion becomes dangerous as characters that distinguish my longear and pumpkinseeds may not hold up for you, especially since your longear are so different. I am confindent all fish you show are not pumpkinseed. You need to acquire some defininant pumpkinseeds and look at teeth in throat. You will see some real differences that will correlate strongly with external appearance. Concentrate on red and yellows of adults, one species will be more yellow except for opercular (ear) tab. A couple of your longear have red on opercular tab but it is more diffuse and covers a larger area than it would on a pumpkinseed of similar size. One species also has green more than blue on flanks.

Thanks CC. Yes, I forgot to single out the rockbass in first pic. Here is a pic of what I refer to as a pumpkinseed. Not a very good pic.




It seems the red on opercular is almost separate and cresent shaped instead of a fringe. I also notice longears seam to have a broader head. Their eye gap and placement seams different also.

More pics from different spot same watershed.

More pics from different spot same watershed.

Wow that sunfish has beautifull colors.

The first one (with the fishing pole) is a hybrid green. The last one appeared to be a bluegill.

So many lovely fishes! Did you keep any from your latest outing?

That Bluegill is interestingly colored, very pale and pink compared to the ones I see here. Greengill hybrid not looking too shabby either. How big were they?