It looks exactly like all of the Northern Longears from here in ohio and nothing like the pumpkinseeds we catch here.Plus the fish in the pictures lacks any indication of verticlal bars that Pumpkinseeds have.
longear or pumpkinseed?
- Thread starter AMcCaleb
- Start date
Even without the red spot they don't look anything like pumpkinseeds. Also now looking at the OP location Southern Illinois where Pumpkinseeds are foundin only a handful of places. So the chances of it being a Pumpkinseed are slim.
I catch lots of longears and have kept several.
Here's one with red border
Here's one with no red border
This one you can faintly make out the vertical bars. The ones in my tank all have vertical bars. Especially when the light hits them right
I think the males have bigger rounded opicualars and the females are more narrow and curve up but I might be wrong.
All the above were caught right in front of my house within 30 minutes last year.
I have 2 big males I caught a few weeks ago in my tank. The third one was almost as big but ear was shaped different. They were caught just up river from the house.
Here is what I thought was a pumkinseed. It was caught from a reservoir of the same water shed. Crappy pic but I remember the markings were different. These are all from the West Fork White river watershed.
When I catch them in my traps the yoy look like blue gill with vertical barring.
Here's one with red border
Here's one with no red border
This one you can faintly make out the vertical bars. The ones in my tank all have vertical bars. Especially when the light hits them right
I think the males have bigger rounded opicualars and the females are more narrow and curve up but I might be wrong.
All the above were caught right in front of my house within 30 minutes last year.
I have 2 big males I caught a few weeks ago in my tank. The third one was almost as big but ear was shaped different. They were caught just up river from the house.
Here is what I thought was a pumkinseed. It was caught from a reservoir of the same water shed. Crappy pic but I remember the markings were different. These are all from the West Fork White river watershed.
When I catch them in my traps the yoy look like blue gill with vertical barring.
Take a look at Rairdog's pictures, that should give you a reason why longears and pumpkinseeds comes in different regional variation and that we cannot rule that fish as not pumpkinseed out. I do not go to the colors (orange and blue) to just ID the sunfish.
Well, I'm keeping several of them and as they grow I'll monitor their development and let you all know how they turn out. I'm calling them longears because that's what they resemble the most, plus the place where I got them isn't known for having any pumpkinseeds but is fairly well known for longears. Rairdog those are some awesome fish. Do you have a YouTube channel to show off your tank?
Looking at Rairdog photos I would call all of them Longears except the third pic and the last pick. The third pick looks as if it could be a hybrid and the last pic is a Pumpkinseed. As for AMcCalebs photo, I'm ruling it as a Longear for more reason than just color. As it is lacking two characteristics (the red spot,and vertical bars) and because of it's location. I understand that there are variations within in a species depending on location.
This is why I hate Id'ing some Lepomis ....In Missouri, we have a couple subspecies of Longears and in some areas lepomis hybrids are found, I found what I believed to be a Green/Longear Hybrid in a creek of the James river here in Missouri....very hard to Id since the James also has Bluegill in it.
