juvenile dollar vs longear

Anyone have any good field characteristics to tell the two species apart? I know the differences in pectoral ray counts, cheek scale rows, and opercal flap flecks, but hard to use in the field on juvies. I normally use the habitat they were collected in the make an educated guess, but I would rather use some physical characteristic.

Thanks

Just how small do you want to be able to tell them apart?

as small as I can

You had to make this hard....


At about silver dollar size. Dollars generally have tiny blue spangles scatterd all over the body evenly. Longears this size will have a more chain/net like pattern of blue vermiculations. This should hold true in your area. Different races of dollars and longears are all a bit different when small, but generally all I have seen are similar enough. The main differences are seen when they are big ( between races, not dollars and longears to me those differences are evident)

Tiny ones, about an inch. They both have banding on them. Dollars have thin blue iridescent bands between the dusky ones. Longears the blue and dusky bands are about the same width. This is tough, because the fish have to be colored up pretty well ( just caught over darker bottoms) and looked at in the hand or a small clear container in bright light. Sometimes baby longears this size look more speckled, which can help. So many variables, especially between locations.

In tiny Flordia dollars, the blue banding is really wide. They look a whole lot like bluegills the same size.

Then if you get much smaller than an inch, they just have some sort of faint dusky bands if any pattern at all, and look just like bluegill, orangespotted and redbreast young. Just as tiny pumpkinseeds and warmouth are tough to sort out, unless you pick at their tiny mouths and see how big they are in relation to the rest of the fish.

Another thing, which again is all relative. Small dollars dorsal fins seem to hump up more, giving them a more rounded appearance. The difference is slight, but after a while of looking at enough of them, it starts to stand out. Again, this all depends, just depends. Some might get better food in one place, and appear more rounded than those from the next spot.

Going by habitat, its a start. But I have seen dollars in clear streams, and longears in muddy backwaters. From Tennessee to Lousiana, so not a localized thing with them being in areas they are not supposed to prefer.

I hope this was some help. If you like, I have some small dollars I can take pictures of , possibly, and post.

Thanks for the info, I would like to some some pic of small dollars. I have been catching a lot of small longear or dollars in a small, almost stagnet ditch connected to a bayou. Its full of nice dark leaf litter, so they are colored up nicely. I will check them out and maybe snap a few pics next time out. I have never seen adults of either species in the area and I have spent lots of time dipnetting / hook and line / and gillnetting that area.

Here are my arkansas strain dollars!





Hmmm....lemme see if I can get some better pics for ya. Maybe some that will actually help you lol.

Chad

Here are my arkansas strain dollars!

Hmmm....lemme see if I can get some better pics for ya. Maybe some that will actually help you lol.

Chad

Thanks, they look good. I can see the nice blue flecks really well on the first one.

I'm not doubting the ID but those sure look like my juvenile longears. I'm saying that I'd have a hard time distinguishing the two without a whole lot of practice at that small of a size.

I'm not doubting the ID but those sure look like my juvenile longears. I'm saying that I'd have a hard time distinguishing the two without a whole lot of practice at that small of a size.

I'm not doubting the ID, either. They came from Dustin. I got some too at about the same time. Very nice.

It does seem that juvenile sunfish all look alike. From what I've seen so far, the greens are the first ones to make their identity known. That white fringe shows up early. I had a bunch of juveniles recently that, when it became apparent that they were greens or bluegills, became pickerel or perch food. I've got a few more that I'm watching to see what they "become" when they get old enough to distinguish.

Oh yeah! Get some pictures of your bayou fish. It will be fun to try to guess what thay are. Choupique will probably pick them out right away. So I will have to be contrarian and say he's got it wrong. Actually, I agree with his comment that dollars are higher (deeper) bodied than longears. This is true in adults too. longears are more elongated with a relatively larger, deeper head. Seems like I've also noticed some difference in the blue marks around the opercular spot. Not on the spot, but forward, top and bottom of it.

If you turn out to have longears, I'll be interested to see some adults. I caught some really nice ones in Louisiana once that I gave away. Always wanted to get more of those. Where in the state is your site?

I'm about 45min to an hour southwest of New Orleans.

Some Lepomis from the bayou

[quote name='dredcon' date='Dec 22 2006, 09:03 PM' post='6307']
I'm about 45min to an hour southwest of New Orleans.

Some Lepomis from the bayou


Wow, you really are on the bayou! Thanks for the pics. Nice! The ones I got were well north of New Orleans. Well inland. They were in a little, slow creek/ditch next to our motel. I spent hours down there catching all kinds of stuff. It was cold and rainy. I can't imagine what that guy sleeping under the bridge thought of me. There were some cool crawdads there, shadow bass, dollars, miniatus and chubsuckers. The young longears had a cool neon sheen to them. Need to get back there some time.

Yea I think that longears may be more colorful than the juvi dollars. The one you posted dredcon is that a juvi longear?

Chad

The ID is up for debate. It came the fastet flowing water in the area, which is still slow.

Dollars from around here are pretty distinct since there really isn't anything else that looks like them. The only thing they look similar to as juvies are redbreast. Thanksfully, there there no longears here to cloud things.

These little dollars and longears are really very difficult to distinguish. There are an excellent few pages in the book Fishes of Tennesee that have photos and distinguishing makes of all the juvenile sunfishes in the state, which is most of the species on the continent. If you do much fish collecting, you really must have this book. It's a beauty and well worth the price. Since Tennesee has more species than any other state, their book covers most of what you will see elsewhere. Though the surrounding states do have their own endemics and others with smaller distributions.