is there a way to age fish/longear sunfish?

I have often wondered if there was a general rule to age fish.
can some tell maybe just how old this fish may have been?
sunfish are my species of choice. some sunfish posted here have a pointed long looking face
others seem more full all most round body plus face as a whole.
here is a pic of one male longear i use to have. not sure if it was a LMM or a LMP
From the posts I have read here
plus others helping me along the way
it may have been a LMP longear sunfish

I have often wondered if there was a general rule to age fish.
can some tell maybe just how old this fish may have been?
sunfish are my species of choice. some sunfish posted here have a pointed long looking face
others seem more full all most round body plus face as a whole.
here is a pic of one male longear i use to have. not sure if it was a LMM or a LMP
From the posts I have read here
plus others helping me along the way
it may have been a LMP longear sunfish

You probably won't want to do this with your pet fish, but the only way I know of to accurately determine the age of a fish is by scale ring counts. That is remove a few scales and examine them microscopically. They will have rings on them much like the rings on a tree. Like a tree each ring represents a year. The reason I say remove a few scales is that fish will regrow lost scales and it is possible to remove a regrown scale and underestimate the age of the fish since you are really determining the age of the scale.
There are just too many factors affecting a fish's growth to determine age by size alone. The various shapes (within the same species) I believe are at least partly a result of how well a fish is fed. If I remember correctly a healthy fish getting lots of high quality food will get that round face shape sometimes even developing a bit of a hump just above the head.

You probably won't want to do this with your pet fish, but the only way I know of to accurately determine the age of a fish is by scale ring counts. That is remove a few scales and examine them microscopically. They will have rings on them much like the rings on a tree. Like a tree each ring represents a year. The reason I say remove a few scales is that fish will regrow lost scales and it is possible to remove a regrown scale and underestimate the age of the fish since you are really determining the age of the scale.
There are just too many factors affecting a fish's growth to determine age by size alone. The various shapes (within the same species) I believe are at least partly a result of how well a fish is fed. If I remember correctly a healthy fish getting lots of high quality food will get that round face shape sometimes even developing a bit of a hump just above the head.

This is way past my area of fish. smilingfrog, thanks but I'm not there as of now.PLUS THAT FISH IS GONE.
may we pick this up some other time?

you can also age them by countin the rings on the otoliths (earbones).

you definitley want to do this after the fish is dead, because you have to cut the fish's head open to extract the otolith.

but to get the otoliths, you need to cut the head off the fish, behind the pectoral fins. then place the fish on the table on the cut end, so the nose is pointing up and its nice and sturdy, and then take a knife and cut in a straight line starting right above the eyes, and going all the way down, so you cut the top of the skull off.

then just fish around in the skull with tweezers until you find the otoliths. they're little flat, disc shaped pieces of bone on the insides of the skull that come right out with tweezers.

then when you look at them under a microscope, you can count the rings, each ring being 1 year.

the bluegill we aged in my natural resources management class was 8" long and 4 years old.

For some real fun you can age a very young sunfish to the nearest day that it swam out of its father's nest. Otoliths grow with a 24-hour cyclicity, so it's reading a pattern of alternating dark and light bands. This was the core of my graduate research with bluegills and p-seeds. It's almost easy at 400 magnification after gently sanding the otolith down to its nucleus.

Otolith fun fact of the day: Indians used Gaspergou otoliths as lucky stones and jewelry. They are impressive "pearls." Also great for aging fish! Unfortunately (especially for pet fish), it's a little intrusive to get to them.

you can also age them by countin the rings on the otoliths (earbones).

Ahh yes, I'd forgotten about those. More accurate too, as the fish isn't going to loose one of those and regrow it.

You can also take a cross section of a spine. I think this is mostly used for catfish, but I have seen it used for bowfin before as well.