On the last two answers/questions I do not know. Of course there were drab ones this size that I assume were females. I sent two drab and two very colorful ones to my friend the Icthyologist. So I await his response. But to elaborate a bit, some had slightly different ear flaps indicative of young long ears and I was also thinking on the lines of hybrid as one mentioned here but I will let the expert judge that for me. But all fish caught were not above this size. Actually this is the largest of all the ones I caught and I caught a lot of them. Lets say in the thirty to fifty range, Keeping only four.
I believe them to be dollar sunfish. My brother that I was fishing with caught a warmouth in that ditch and it had red spots that were very well defined and very large, evenly displaced on the side and dark red. Was the most beautiful warmouth I have ever seen. I was also catching young green sunfish there also. And I must say for young green sunfish they were the most colorerful I have ever seen at about 2.5 to three inches long. Looks like all three (or four) species I was catching in there were more colorful for their size than any I have ever seen. And I must say I have a very strong likeing for the small greens. I would have to say they are among the top three sunfish that I like best. Dollar, Greens, and Warmouths. I would add this that I am very accustomed to catching central long ears here in Tennessee about the size of this dollar I have photographed here and when you pull these dollars in "the ones I was catching in the ditch in Louisiana" they had the appearance of being much more disk shaped than the young central long ears I catch here in Tennessee and about six times more colorful at the three to four inch range ( again the ones I was catching in Louisiana).
Keep the info comming and I appreciate the conversations that are generated here. But just for fun I will keep the name of my expert secret till I hear from him. He is a NANFA member and of course his masters degree is in icthyology.
Please keep the info comming it is very interesting to hear from you all.
Thanks in Advance,
Daniel
Edited by nativecajun, 03 September 2008 - 09:17 PM.