hey guys. went collecting again this halloween saturday with my club. we spent a total of about 6 hours...and we caught a good catch accordingly...

everyone always asks if i saw a gator when i go dipnetting...this was the first time I actually saw one, but it was nothing more than a baby:


caught a largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) with our tiny 3ft cast net!



this is where the bass was caught...poor place for anything else, all we caught was that bass!


as always bluefin killifish were present:


i caught this guy with the cast net...i was told it was a Blue Tilapia, yet it looks like the baby spotted tilapia we catch everywhere?


this is the regular baby tilapia we catch...which I've been always told is spotted tilapia...


can you guys differentiate those two? are they the same fish? (i think so...) and which of the two types are they?

a club member caught a beautifully-colored chrysotus:


as usual I caught only ONE crayfish:


another regular...swamp darter:


a couple of flag fish...haven't caught any fully grown adults yet...
http://www.keepitfis...eyus27/flag.jpg

i know some people have been wanting pictures of this little girl...least killifish (h. formosa):
http://www.keepitfis...s27/formosa.jpg

a new species for me...i believe this is fundulus lineolatus?
http://www.keepitfis...27/fundulus.jpg

the staple fish...always caught but never had taken a decent picture of them...gambusia affinis:
http://www.keepitfis...27/gambusia.jpg

also caught some black and white variety but no good pictures of them.

along snake road we caught a hoplo, didnt manage a better picture than this sorry:
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/hoplo.jpg

this beautifully colored mayan cichlid was caught by cast net. he must have been about 5 inches:
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/mayan.jpg

another regular...the molly...either i never catch sailfins or i can't tell them apart if i do...this is the regular variety i guess?
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/molly.jpg

another new species for me, one of the fish caught by seine, a nice 5-6 inch butterfly peacock (cichla ocellaris). unfortunately being a game fish it can't be kept at this size so we released it.
http://www.keepitfis...s27/peacock.jpg

a couple of plants were also collected along the way:
http://www.keepitfis...us27/plant1.jpg
http://www.keepitfis...us27/plant2.jpg

caught another big pleco using the cast net:
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/pleco.jpg

it's fishy love!
http://www.keepitfis...dolfo_pleco.jpg

trying out the seine:
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/seine.jpg

yet another new species (Whooo!)...this I believe we agreed was an ironcolor shiner (Notropis chalybaeus):
http://www.keepitfis...us27/shiner.jpg

a new species of snake for us...sadly it was dead by the time we saw it:
http://www.keepitfis...yus27/snake.jpg

now on to the sunfish

i'm always lost with these guys so help me out with the IDs?

i'm tempted to say these two are bluegills?
http://www.keepitfis...s27/sunfish.jpg
http://www.keepitfis...27/sunfish2.jpg

these next two are warmouths?
http://www.keepitfis...27/sunfish3.jpg
this guy had the most coloration i've yet seen on a sunfish...he already had the ear-like design and the spotting that you see in online pictures of adult sunfish...caught with the seine
http://www.keepitfis...27/sunfish4.jpg

and i think this large guy was a spotted sunfish (l. punctatus)?
http://www.keepitfis...27/sunfish5.jpg

overall a very fun day and from my perspective, having caught 4 new species (to me) and photographed 6 new species for my project, i was stoked

comments, identification help and/or corrections, questions, and anything else you have to add is welcome and appreciated!

now on to the sunfish

i'm always lost with these guys so help me out with the IDs?

i'm tempted to say these two are bluegills?

I think you are right.

these next two are warmouths?

I think the first one is another bluegill, and the second one is maybe a dollar or longear (I'm not really familiar with either of those two species and I know you've got a lot more sunfish species in Florida than I have up here. It reminds me a little of a pumpkinseed but I think then he should have a little orange fleck in that opercular tab, plus I don't think you have them there.

and i think this large guy was a spotted sunfish (l. punctatus)?

I don't really know spotteds either so I'll agree until someone with more experience says otherwise.

Awesome stuff down there, yall made a haul. Your snake is either a yellow or everglades ratsnake depending on where in Florida you where.

Looks like a creek chubsucker and not an iron color shiner to me. Note the lack of lateral line, direction of mouth, and location where black lateral stripe goes around the snout.

i just looked up creek chubsucker and this fish is not a creek chubsucker. the fish had a dark line running through the body, top half was dark orange and bottom was silver. face was pointy. from what i saw the chubsucker has a more round face, is thicker bodied, has no line through the body and is all one color? anyways i'm pretty sure of the id as we found it in a book of local fish, as well as being a fish with a native range in florida...

unless you really dont think it is?

That is most definitely a juvenile chubsucker. The killie is not F. lineolatus, but possibly F. pulvereus (which I have never seen in the wild).

Definitely a chubsucker. You guys have lake down there though, not creek.

Great pics! I always have trouble with juvenile chubsuckers too. I find the far rearward position of the anal fin (a characteristic of suckers in general) is helpful to distinguish them from minnows.

Those are some nicely colored Gambusia. I don't think I've seen any with such prominent markings in the caudal fin or such a nice irridescence to them.

As far as I know the sailfin molly is the only molly in FL (though I wouldn't be surprised to find out others had been introduced). Females don't have high fins, and males have variable fin size.

I think Fritz is right with the Fundulus pulvereus ID of that killifish. The ones I've seen on Dauphin Island, AL, have that spotting pattern dorsally with very thin vertical bars.

Why would that killie not be F. confluentus?

From the picture I couldn't tell you for sure, they're pretty similar species.

i'm more confused now...

there seems to be very little information and a lot of misinformation regarding the three mentioned killie species...F. confluentus and F. lineolatus seem to me the most likely of the three as they are known to be across the state, whereas F. pulvereus seems to be found mostly west of alabama?

no matter how much i look at pictures online the "shiner" we caught doesnt look like a chubsucker of any kind as it was very streamlined, pointy head and not chubby as most pictures of chubsuckers i found look like. the fish looked like a much larger bluefin killifish with different coloration...

there's got to be a better way to identify these two fish?


regarding the gambusia, that picture was taken under direct sunlight on super macro mode, no flash. i guess when the sun hits them they get that nice iridescence? more research online suggests the species is Gambusia holbrooki (Eastern Mosquitofish) rather than Gambusia affinis (Western Mosquitofish).

regarding the mollies, all the ones we've caught have looked the same so far, i just didnt know whether or not they were "sailfin" if their fins weren't exceptionally long. it appears that they are indeed sailfins though.


thanks for the help so far and if you guys could help me get a definitive ID on those troublesome two I would really appreciate it!

Edited by trojannemo, 03 November 2009 - 08:28 PM.

The chubsucker pictures you are seeing online are probably of older individuals. They can look considerably different as they age. Unfortunately "picture booking" is not a reliable method of identification in most cases, though it can help you get close.

As I mentioned, the position of the anal fin is characteristic of suckers. It is well back on the fish, almost touching the caudal fin; all minnows have the anal fin placed further forward. The chubsuckers' missing lateral line that Matt mentioned is also an important character; some minnows have an incomplete lateral line, but none (at least to my knowledge) lack it altogether. If you are still unsure, count fin rays. Chubsuckers have 18 caudal fin rays (19 in native minnows) and 9-12 dorsal fin rays (9 or fewer in native minnows).

unfortunately we released the fish and none of the pictures have the fins extended, as most fish clamp up when held outside of the water.
i'll take your word on it being a chubsucker (who names these fish?!), but which kind?

what about the fundulus? and while we're at it, do we have a positive ID on the pleco?

It's a sucker that looks like a chub! I reckon it's a lake chubsucker. The other species don't get into the peninsula. Your other fish are beyond my ken.

Farmertodd showed me a trick for in-hand or in-net photos. Dunk the fish into the water repeatedly; eventually it will come up with fins extended and leave them that way. This seems to work best with darters, sunfish, and other perciforms, but I've had some luck with minnows as well.

The "minnow" is without a doubt a lake chubsucker. I wish I could tell you how I know. I learned how to ID fish from the master of "It just looks different". He knows who he is. The mouth is underslung and pursed looking. The stripe on the side is just different from the shiners as are the scales in appearance. The killie is either a pulvereus or a confluentus and my bet would be strongly for confluentus. The marsh killie is abundant throughout FL. The bayou killie is typically found on the gulf coast west of AL but there are instances of intergradation it appears. The killie is definitely not a lined topminnow as they look very different and as soon as you catch one you will immediately recognize that it is different from this fish.

After reading about the distributions of F. confluentus and pulvereus, I change my opinion and agree with Dustin that it's a confluentus. I've attached a photo of F. lineolatus to show you how they look different from what you've collected.

The Master

Edited by fritz, 04 November 2009 - 09:15 AM.

thanks for the picture...googling f. lineolatus you dont get that picture!

F. confluentus it is

After reading about the distributions of F. confluentus and pulvereus, I change my opinion and agree with Dustin that it's a confluentus. I've attached a photo of F. lineolatus to show you how they look different from what you've collected.

The Master

The most recent look at the relationship between the two species was in 1986, I think, which put pulvereus as a purely western Gulf species, and everything around to the east as far as Georgia as confluentus. It's one of those questions of how do you define species within a series of continuous populations. So I guess we're actually lumping here, putting all of the Atlantic Florida populations together as confluentus. I couldn't argue yea or nay on that off the top of my head.

Others have listed the differences between chubsuckers and shiners. Here is one of Dustin's photos of an ironcolor shiner which hopefully will help you see the difference between your chubsucker (chubby body, large scales, position of anal fin, etc) and the shiner.

Edited by fritz, 04 November 2009 - 10:53 AM.