ID this Sunfish...Possible Hybrid?

[MonsterCichlids75]

Hey everyone, was down at the river today and caught this fish... The 3 most common sunfish that are in this river and bluegills, p.seeds, and red breasted sunfish. This one just doesnt seem to have a tall enough body to be a bluegill and its coloration and patter doesnt seem ot match up to a pure bluegill either. The shape of the "ear" seems similar to a red breasted sunfish...could this possibly be a bluegill x red breast hybrid?

 

[ShadowBass]

That is an odd little guy.

Looks like a rebreast x something, but I don't think bluegill. More like redbreast x pseed, from the pattern.

 

[MonsterCichlids75]

interesting thank you, yeah youre right p.seed makes more sense than bluegill. the only thing that looks like a bluegill that pseeds dont have is that light blue coloration on the bottom on the gill covers

 

[ShadowBass]

Yeah. Hybrids can end up with traits that don't seem to match either species.

Pumpkinseeds do have those blue squiggly lines up the side of the face, and it looks kind of like those only more muddled from being mixed with other genetics. (Yeah crappy way to explain it, I just couldn't think of better terms lol)

 

[MN_Rebel]

I hate to ID the hybrids......you can't even guess what pure species were involving. It looks like redbreast sunfish hybrid because of the large mouth.

 

[ShadowBass]

I dunno. The pumpkinseed DNA looks very prevalent to me. If it weren't for a few odd traits like the face pattern, and the length and slant of the ear, and the bands being slightly off, I might think it was a pure pumpkinseed. Doesn't look much different than the ones I catch in Ohio. They don't even all have a red spot on the ear.

One of the big giveaways, is like you said, size of the mouth.

 

[MN_Rebel]

I almost want to say Bluegill x Pumpkinseed or even an odd pure Pumpkinseed if it wasn't for that mouth.

 

[MonsterCichlids75]

yeah you guys said it...ID'ing hybrids gets really really tricky. I see what you mean by the muddled squiggle patterns of a p.seed, but like you guys said that mouth is a giveaway. I was so curious about this guy that i took him home and very slowly acclimated him to my native sunfish tank. In the tank i have a male P.Seed and a few Male Red breasts. After looking at this hybrid in the tank next to the other fish, i've found that its mouth looks extremely like the mouths of the red breasted sunfish (exact same shape and structure, just a tad bit smaller.) So i think we can say almost for sure that this fish does have red breasted sunfish in its genes. Its dorsal and anal fins look very similar to the P.seed i have

 

[ShadowBass]

I thought pure pumpkinseed at first too, until I looked longer and weird stuff kept jumping out.

 

[WahooWillie]

I've seen plenty of what people here call strawberry bream (redbreast X bluegill), and this one doesn't fit the bill. Looks mostly redbreast, but barring and spots look pumpkinseed-ish. I'd say it's a safe bet is a redbreast X pseed.