Hey guys I'm from out west in Saskatchewan. I'm going to be visiting the Toronto/ London area all the way down to the Windsor area for 2 weeks in the summer time. I'd love to see some new species of fish from the typical pike walleye we have out here. I love fishing and viewing fish. I'd love to see some Sunfish, as-well as colorful darters and minnows chubs etc. Can anyone point me to a couple good places to fish and net fish??. I'd love to find a place to catch some Orange spotted sunfish and Longears. Thanks so much.

While I've never sampled any of the streams around Windsor, the area around Windsor I believe is your only opprutunity to get Orangespotteds within Ontario (or in Canada I believe). I have caught one or two Longear Sunfish while angling on Georgian Bay (around 1.5 hours north of Toronto), I can give you the spot and what I used, however I'm not sure whether you would want to venture up there based on maybe catching one or two. They are rare to catch in the province, and do look somewhat similar to Pumpkinseeds. Luckily in around Toronto has some of the highest diversity in fish species for Ontario, which there are many creeks which have a variety of cyprinids/darters (including Rainbow Darters), as well as the Grass Pickerel. I believe the member DarkMousy is familliar with some streams around the Toronto area, hopefully he sees this thread and can help point you in the right direction.

Awesome thanks so much for the reply, I will for-sure have a look at some of the creeks around Toronto. I've scouted out a few locations through google maps i'd like to fish at and net . It would be such a nice change to see some diversity in fish species, since where i am from the only native (as-well as introduced) sunfish we have are Rock Bass and they are only isolated to a few lakes and rivers in the south eastern part of SK.

Ok, where to start...

Rainbow darter: best place for them I've found in the GTA that's not private property would be the more northern stretches of the Rouge river. The small tribs that run north of Toogood pond (berczy creek) usually has juveniles during the summer months. A better place for them would be bronte creek in Burlington, about 40 minutes drive west from Toronto.

Mottled Sculpin: The rouge river headwaters has these but I'm not sure of any public access points - I've found them on private property while doing volunteer work for the ministry. Apparently bruce creek @ Bruce's mill conservation area has them and rainbow darters as well but I have only sampled amphibians there. It is a part of the northern rouge river though so I don't see why they wouldn't be there.

I'll add some more stuff when I get home from work - typing on my phone gets tiring lol.