9 replies to this topic

[NotCousteau]

Hi All,

I'm posting this post for someone else from another forum. What are your thoughts on ID? Melanistic? Warmouth?


I caught this fish while fishing today. I'm not sure what kind it is. This pond has thousands of some type of very light colored sunfish and this fish right in the middle of them all. I thought he might be a green sunfish, but I don't think thats it. Maybe some freak genetic mutation? Whatever it is, it's one beautiful fish. Any ideas? BTW It's about 4-5 inches long. The pic with the ziplock is a gallon ziplock for size reference.

I'm almost 100% sure its some form of sunfish. It has the black dot on the side just like the rest of the fish in the pond and was swimming with them all. Here are two other fish I caught in the same group. This dark fish i'm sure is the same kind as these two. It's hard to tell in the pic but its the same type. Unfortunately Arizona does not allow keeping or transporting native fish, so he went back into the pond after a few pics. He wasn't in the shade, there isn't a whole lot of shade in this pond.

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[Isaac Szabo]

Looks like a bluegill to me. I don't know why it's so dark. I don't think I've seen one like that before. The bottom 2 are also bluegill.

[Sean Phillips]

Hmm, maybe a hybrid sunfish? It looks a little bit long to be a lure bluegill and both greens and Warmouth have large bass-like mouths in my experience with them.

[Matt DeLaVega]

Melanistic bluegill?

[Michael Wolfe]

I dont think his mouth is that big... and the caudal peduncle length looks the same on all three fish... and in the second picture he even has the sky blue jaw line... the blue gill...

[Matt DeLaVega]

I have seen some sunfish go nearly that dark when near death. However they were also very listless and certainly would not feed.

[Leo1234]

My large coppernose bluegill has been an black-purple with dark red fins his entire life after he was large enough to have color. (actually, now that I think about it he looks very similar in color to the 1st sunfish on the list.)

[rc6750]

In my experience Bluegill vary widely in coloring - but yes they get very dark

 

[NotCousteau]

In my experience Bluegill vary widely in coloring - but yes they get very dark

 

Wow, that's a cool-looking fish!

Thanks for all of the help, everyone.

[loopsnj64]

It may be an adaptation to heavily planted areas, or just freak melanism