warmouth - gender

I have 4 warmouths collected near my home - how/when will I be able to determine thier gender? They all look the same to me other than size.

Thanks
Don

warmouth are rather difficult to sex. Males do tend to get a redish spot at the rear base of the dorsal when ready to breed and they seem to have a indentation on their forhead oposed to females being rather smooth and rounded as you go up their face from snout to forhead but these are all just based off my experience. They are one of the ones I had to rely heavily on keeping them for a while and watching behavior to figure them out. If they get to adult size and you have them at a warm temperature males likely will begin to dig pits for spawnig with their tails and females are much more dosile. I went through about 6 of them this past year trying to get a couple I was confident were females so I can spawn them this comming summer and I got 1 for sure and I think 5 males because they all were trying to build nests. I gave all the guys to a friend to keep for the winter and will get one or two back from him in the spring to go with my female. It took so much work to be sure this one was a female I wanted to take good care of her.

here's my female I have right now caught in ohio
[attachment=3340:female_w...th_by_JZ.jpg]

this is a male in full breeding drab caught in florida
[attachment=3341:Warmouth...06_by_BZ.JPG]

Males do tend to get a redish spot at the rear base of the dorsal when ready to bread...

I was wondering how you cook them. Breaded, I see. But how do you know when the females are ready to be cooked?

(Sorry, I couldn't resist )

ok I fixed it for you ed, I never wood claim dat I no how ta u's proper gramer, just id them der sunies! I do know how to bread them and cook em up though, I eat my fair share of fish and I actually enjoy cooking.