I am prety sure there are only two recognized forms, the FloridaLepomis macrochirus mystacalis and northern bluegillLepomis macrochirus macrochirus. I'm not sure where the dividing line would be but my guess is it is somewhere in Georgia and may go westward toward the Mississippi river through Alabama and Mississippi but this is just a guess. Does anyone know if there is any paper or book that documents the range of the two subspecies?
Anyways here is a couple pics of the florida subspecies...
the main differences I saw were the bars are more distinct and maybe fewer of them on the florida, also they have redish unpaired fins with a light whiteish outline to them.
I have collected in past for bluegill in the area between the Mobile and the Suwannee rivers. Northern bluegill native to Mobile with coppernose (range includes but not restricted to Florida) stocked on top based on animals we have in trial now (sad to see that because northern their look different from notherns of upper Mississippi River drainage). Going east, centered on
lower Apalachicola drainage you get into the unrecognized handpaint bluegill while upstream either same taxon changes naturally to something else or stocking has disrupted what occured previously. Going further east you get into the coppernose blugill of the Suwannee river system.
The bluegill at start of thread does not look typical of any bluegill I have collected from feild. Head shape mentioned previously is odd. Owing to location of capture and my limited knowledge of stocking efforts, the fish in hand is in my opinion likely to be a composite of nothern and coppernose bluegills. As we are getting into third generation of trials involving crosses of different bluegill stocks, we are starting to see stuff that looks quite different from anything we saw in populations where we collected original stocks. Bluegill shown maybe result of similar but less controlled natural experiment.
I need glasses so excuse spelling.