Lately I have been having major doubts on my abilities to identify chubs. It all started when I was looking at pictures of chubs online for the "creek chub hybridization" thread and comparing them to my chub in my tank.

At fist I thought my chub was a fallfish as it was very silvery when I first caught it.

Then it developed a light brownish back coloration, a dark and light side stripe, and a very pale black dot on its dorsal fin. This matched what I saw from creek chubs on this forum so assumed creek chub.

The side striped soon faded (the light vanished, the dark is very faint).

But when looking at chub pictures for the hybridization post I noticed pics online of fallfish sometimes have a faint dorsal fin spot like mine does, and creek chubs tend to have a very obvious spot. Also my fish has a very forked tail and i noticed pics of fallfish have very forked tails when compared to creek chubs.

Was I right with my first ID and saying this is a fallfish?

(sorry I have no picture, i don't have a working digital camera with me).

Hard to say for sure without a picture but it sounds like a fallfish to me. The initial "very silvery" is usually a good sign. Fallfish that I see mostly don't have any sign of a dorsal spot, but this may be a drainage thing. Creek chubs tend to be more "rounded" all around, body and fins... at least the ones I am used to seeing. The anterior dorsal scales tend to be smaller, more crowded, and less uniform on the creek chubs than the fallfish. Hard to say for sure... hope this helps.