My Fishing Thread

Cool stuff. I like the mirror carp, forsooth.
Looks like you do your saltwater fishing around the Newport area?

I do not believe longears have actually been found in Ma. According to Hartel et al;

"The longear sunfish, lepomis megalotis, has often been reported from Massachusetts, but we have never seen a specimen. These reports are probably the result of misidentifications of adult male redbreast sunfish..."

Greens are rare in Ma. I only ever knew of one population which was breeding for several seasons and subsequentially disappeared from that location. I haven't seen one in years. They frequently turn up at PetSmart in the feeder tank so I'm surprised there aren't more around.
You'll know if you land a green sunfish. They look different enough from what you grew up with that you'd notice. The big ones have big mouths and chase lures like bass.

BTW, those sea bass make cool captives as juvies - so long as kept only with fish too big to swallow.

Cool stuff. I like the mirror carp, forsooth.
Looks like you do your saltwater fishing around the Newport area?

I do not believe longears have actually been found in Ma. According to Hartel et al;

"The longear sunfish, lepomis megalotis, has often been reported from Massachusetts, but we have never seen a specimen. These reports are probably the result of misidentifications of adult male redbreast sunfish..."

Greens are rare in Ma. I only ever knew of one population which was breeding for several seasons and subsequentially disappeared from that location. I haven't seen one in years. They frequently turn up at PetSmart in the feeder tank so I'm surprised there aren't more around.
You'll know if you land a green sunfish. They look different enough from what you grew up with that you'd notice. The big ones have big mouths and chase lures like bass.

BTW, those sea bass make cool captives as juvies - so long as kept only with fish too big to swallow.

nice pic! they look so different as juvies lol. yeah i love the newport area. my wifes mom lives in jamestown on the water so we go out right there.

You shoulda blacked out those tiny strips of background. I recognized those rocks and bridge pilings.

You shoulda blacked out those tiny strips of background. I recognized those rocks and bridge pilings.

hahah nah i dont hide my spots hell ill take you out there lol. thats the newport bridge rt 138...some nice fishing right there,,,,ill be going to dennisport cape in 2 weeks...any good FW spots there to catch some sunfish? or anything else special?

They forage alone and don't really school as adults, so they don't need anything like social skills.

I regulalry see largish shoals of a 1 or 2 dozen pumpkinseeds in a local lake while snorkeling. They are big too, 10-14+ inches usually. Fishing access is very very limited in this location.

Longears are fairly rare in MA, largely displaced in rivers by largemouth bass and bluegills which are both exotics in New England.

I realize that I was garbling a conversation with Karsten Hartel years ago; he did indeed say that he'd never seen longears in Massachusetts, and any speculation is mine. Green sunfish are also an exotic in MA, although I don't think I ever encountered any.

i finally got my inland fishes of mass book....40 bucks

alright so i went out today and yesterday again....


so about 80 suckers in a trout stream...inland fishes book suggests that only commons are roughly where i was. although these didnt look like commons....they looked like hog suckers...although they arent around here...i was trout fishing and caught a fish...i thought it might have been a common shiner but the previous day i caught a common with alot of red and this looked different...ill let you decide....maybe a fallfish? also caught the usually sunfish...blue gill and pumpkinseed...correct? and a brown bullhead. for IDs ima post in the ID section as well for a quicker response.




also is the little fish a brook trout? i caught him while netting a month or so ago.

rest of the pics...

thats a neat looking coloration of the p-seed, maybe a hybrid, i doubt it though. The bottom fish of your 2nd last post is a common shiner (good sized). Looks like you've had a lot of luck sampling and fishing

more pics from my week in cape cod.

feel free to ID my fish

Nice fish! love the flounder. I am really not familiar with your area at all but hers my best guesses.
First fish I can comfortably say is a bayou killifish (fundulus pulvereous). they are actually relatively uncommon.
The other killifish you have is most likely the same thing.
Your eel is an american eel (anguilla rostrata).

Edited by Amazon, 25 July 2009 - 01:25 PM.

i think the killifish is a banded...we only have bandeds and rainwater killis. the flounder was def cool

my first trouts

nice rainbows, w2g

Cool pics from the cape, i wish i was their The day you got the flounder. Can the crab be identified (did you eat the crab). I had a fun time sampling the herring river with you. (I was the one holding the killifish, the eel was in my bucket).

Oh, i caught a fallfish the other day that made the noise you mentioned hearing. I caught bullhead that made noise before too. Since sound travels better through water than air i wonder if fish use these sounds in the wild.

Did you catch all of these Sunfish in the same location? The reason I ask is because if the Pumpkinseeds and the Bluegills are in an isolated habitat together, there might be a slight chance that some interbreeding has occured. Here's what I suspect.

In post #1 the 4th pic is more than likely just a nice female Bluegill. BUT the rest of these might be a type of hybrid. I suspect a Bluegill Pumpkinseed cross of some type. While most all of them look like an average Bluegill in terms of mouth size, body shape, and dorsal spines, they have a very unusual mottling and extremely Green appearance. Many male Bluegill that I've seen that are this size almost have a copper irridescence to them ,and these look to be very Green in their mottling, almost like that of Pumpkinseeds. So with that said, all of the potential Bluegill photos MAY be some kind of BG/P-Seed hybrid, but I am not certain.

Post #2 1st pic female BG if not a hybrid.

Post #8 1st, 2nd pics female BG if not a hybrid. 3rd pic juvenile male. 4th pic Male. 5th & 6th pics male. 9th pics looks to be just a really nice large female Bluegill, but does not appear to have the same characteristics of what could be a hybrid.

Post #9 1st pic Male BG if not a hybrid. 2nd 3rd & 4th pics nice Pumpkinseed.

Post #27 3rd 4th 5th & 6th pics Male BG if not a hybrid.

Post#28 5th pic Male BG if not a hybrid.

Post #29 1st pic Pumpkinseed. 2nd & 3rd pics Brown Bullhead. 4th & 5th pics Pumpkinseed.

Post #36 1st and 2nd pics Yellow Perch.

I hope this helps. I have captively kept Bluegills, as well as Green, and Longears, and these don't look at all like any of the Bluegill/Green Sunfish hybrids that I've seen a lot of ponds stocked with either. I'm guessing that if what you are catching isn't just plain ole' Bluegills, then the Bluegills and Pumpkinseeds are intermingling. I definately don't think any of them were Green Sunfish, Red Ear Sunfish, or Longear Sunfish though. Excellent pics by the way!!! and GREAT JOB too!


Take care,
Ben.