What the heck is this?

[ShadowBass]

Hello everyone, I just ran accross this website not long ago, and I thought maybe some of you could help me identify this fish.

We weren't even aware we'd netted this one, we were actually searching for other fish and he must have been caught in the net too. At first I thought he was a bluegill, but after watching him for awhile his fins don't look right and he seems shaped different.
He's only just over a centimeter long, so I admit he could be anything, but thus far no one has been able to tell exactly what he is. This is the best picture I could get of him since he's so small.

 

[meepster]

it looks like it has the characteristic "hard then soft rays" in the dorsal fin like all sunfishes (in the lepomis genus) (except for green terror cichlids who also have the characteristic dorsal fin but are cichlids rather than sunfish)

 

[ShadowBass]

Yeah, I'm pretty positive it is an actual sunfish, I just can't seem to figure out which one.

I've shown the pic to a few people and searched through tons of pictures, but none of them seem to match and no one knows what he is, I guess because he's so little. He needs to grow into those huge eyes, lol.

 

[Chad55]

Really hard to tell at this size but I would say Lepomis macrochirus or bluegill. It has the "striping" like one but the shape is throwing me off a bit. It looks really wierd shaped...could be the angle or something. Anyways you are going to have to let it grow to know for sure anyways. Most sunfish look almost exactly the same at this size.

Chad

 

[ShadowBass]

Really hard to tell at this size but I would say Lepomis macrochirus or bluegill. It has the "striping" like one but the shape is throwing me off a bit. It looks really wierd shaped...could be the angle or something. Anyways you are going to have to let it grow to know for sure anyways. Most sunfish look almost exactly the same at this size.

Chad

Yeah, the shape is what was throwing me off too, and the back fins looked wrong, however like you said the stripes make me think bluegill.
I think he may have changed shape though since when we first put him in I could swear he was definately a bluegill, then several days later I wasn't so sure.
I guess he just looks funny because he's growing.
I also think there's a possibility he's a green sunfish because they're extremely prevalent around here, but he doesn't match them exactly either.
Guess I'll just have to wait and see how he grows.
Thanks.

Here's another pic anyway, you can kind of see the stripe pattern better:

 

[Chad55]

Yea the pic deffinatly looks like a bluegill. Mine had a similar body shape when they were smaller now that I think about it. As do my dollars that are just a bit bigger than that but the color is deffinatly bluegill on those. Doesn't look like a green to me. They usually have a white edging on thier fins.

Chad

 

[Bizzaro]

I might be off but my first guess was a shad.

 

[Chad55]

I might be off but my first guess was a shad.

Yea I think you might be a bit off...I can garuntee it is atleast in the lepomis family.

Chad

 

[ShadowBass]

I might be off but my first guess was a shad.

Most definately NOT a shad, lol.
Example of a shad:

 

[mssassysan2000]

Maybe a baby LMB or some kind of bass.