How to Identify all Sunfish Species in the United States
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- čas přidán 5. 07. 2024
- An in-depth "how to" video details how to properly identify all sunfish species in the lepomis genus that are found in the United States. Over 60 pictures make identification of the various sunfish species extremely easy.
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Caught a real pretty green sunfish out of a local creek today. almost has a baby bass type look with its elongated body and big mouth. Thanks for making this video!
Thank you.
really wish I could shake your hand and thank you for an amazing video will be watching this one time and time again appreciate people like you who make great informative content
Thank you for the kind words.
I got a tiny little pumpkin seed from a little stream
Nice. They're beautiful.
Nice
Nice
Im jealous
Like ina tank?
Caught my first redear sunfish today and a YT search brought me here. Very informative but also overwhelming because I didn't know there were so many sunfish species. Now I am inspired to try to catch every one...
Glad I was able to help. There certainly are plenty of different sunfish out there. Good luck with catching them all.
My favorite has always been the redbreast. The pumpkinseed is also quite beautiful.
Nice.
WOW!!! So many Sunfish 🐟🐡🐠.. Thankyou for sharing! 😊
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.
My favorite sunfish is the one on the end of my line. I'm really not that particular most of them are very pretty. You also introduced me to several species I have never seen or even heard of. Thanks.
Nice. Thank you.
My favorite is the Red Ear Sunfish! Love them "Shellcrackers"! Would love to see more information on them! Size, distribution, breeding habits, coloration in both sexes, food preferences etc...
They may not be the prettiest of them all but man they have some fight in them for their size. I can always tell when I have a shell cracker on.
@@pnwlife8593 that’s what we call them down here south of the mason dixon. They eat snells and other shell fish and crack the shells in their mouths. Ie SHELLCRACKER! They’re a fun little fish to catch.
Thanks for the info...Lets eat!!!!
A pan fish is a pan fish is a pan fish...Eat',em up!!!
My mom was a child of the great depression.If they had dinner, They caught it.
That's why I hated going fishing with her...If it was big enough to be hooked,it was good eating!
Two inches long and it's a keeper... Loved My Mother 😪💔
I like catching green sunnies the best. Seems like they put up a better fight than the others with the added advantage of being able to lip them.
They are super aggressive as well. I dont think they got the memo that they are a small fish lol
The prettiest freshwater fish I ever reeled in was a Pumpkinseed Sunfish from Natural Bridge State Park in Kentucky and, yes, I shared a photo of it with Kentucky Afield years ago.
Yeah pumpkinseeds are beautiful.
This is the video I watched a while back and I’ve been trying to find it forever! Glad to watch it again!
Thank you.
Thanks, great video! I used to keep small sunfish in aquariums, they are fantastic specimens to watch and, as you point out, many are lovely!
I've always wanted to do this. Couple sunfish and couple small bullheads together in an aquarium.
Thank you for this video, very helpful for my daughter and I.
Glad I was able to help. Thanks for watching.
My favorite is the Green Sunfish! Orange is my favorite color and the orange-tipped fins and tail are so cool!
Not my favorite, but they certainly do have some nice colors on them. Thanks for sharing.
Well made video, quite informative, great photo references. This is great, thank you. Love the male and female bluegills, their colors are beautiful.
Thanks for watching. Glad you liked it.
I had no clue there were so many sunfish species. I caught a few sunfish and wanted to ID them and this video helped. Caught 2 Redspotted Sunfish at my local state park. Cute lil things !
Nice. Congrats. That's a species I have yet to catch.
What a GREAT video!!!! Here in Louisiana we call the Red-ear sunfish, a Chinquapin. The Green and Warmouth sunfish, we call them Goggle-eye!
Again, Great informative video!!!👍🏼🐠
Thank you.
I'm still amazed at 44 years old how beautiful some of the pumpkin seeds are.
Better than any fish at the pet store.
@@TheFishingNomad for sure
Very informative.
Also, made me hungry for some fried Bluegills.
Thank you. All these fish are definitely good eating.
Awesome video man! Just subbed to the channel, you have some great videos!
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ty for the video I fought a Pumpkin Seed yesterday but I didn’t know what it was.
Excellent video. Thank you for this info. Truly enlightening 👍🏻
Thank you.
Thanks. Nice info. Good delivery 😊.
Thank you.
I'm fifty and I've been fishing since I was 7 and still can't believe the different types and variants of sunnys
There are certainly a lot of them.
Just caught the coolest green sunfish I’ve ever seen. The fins were very vibrant red!
Nice.
I love bluegill and crappie so much . Easily two of my favorites for eating
Nice.
There you go!
Great video. Stumbled into my recommendations for some reason. Love all the views and comments, happy fishing everyone!
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thx for your professional video. I’m trying to find one on how to identify different sunfishes and finally find yours :)
Thanks for the kind words. Glad it was able to help.
Great content! I’d love to see more videos of this type
Thank you. I've got some idea for similar ones and will make them eventually.
Thank you for this, I’m doing a native fish tank this summer and needed the help.
Glad I was able to help.
Really good job man! I enjoyed it
Thanks a lot. And thanks for the pictures.
Great video, thank you for uploading!
Thanks for watching.
Very interesting video! I live just north of Minnesota (yes there is a north of Minnesota lol) and we have 4 species of Lepomis available here and I've caught them all. Bluegill, pumpkinseed, green sunfish and northern sunfish (Lepomis peltastes, a smaller relative of the longear). I need to travel to find more and I will. I am all about multispecies and a soft core lifelister. Cheers and thank you for the video.
Edit: glad you included the northern sunfish. It's one of the most confusing sunfish for beginners. Most dont know about it.
I've been bass fishing for years but today I caught my first sunfish. I thought there were bluegill in my pond, but the turquoise lines threw me off. You should talk about cross-breeds/hybrids. Thanks for the awesome video!
Thanks for the feedback. I do plan on doing a hybrid sunfish video, but it's such a broad topic I'm trying to figure out how to best present it.
@Raleigh Denton Yes, definitely. It turns out the fish I caught was a pumpkinseed, and there is actually a pretty big population of them in my pond.
No offense but that's hard to believe. Most people catch a small sunfish as their first fish and even when bass fishing you can catch one when not trying to. I believe you but that sounds crazy
@@matthewhunt6834 yeah I caught one yesterday dont those pumpkinseeds put up a foght
Lol in my pond the ratio is every three sunfish one bass
Thanks. You did a great job there.
Thank you. Means a lot.
Not bad. Really good, actually. One of the best sunfish summaries I've ever seen. Should include the four species of Ambloplites though - (Rock Bass, Ozark Bass, Shadow Bass, and Roanoke Bass) because those are often confused with Warmouth and Green Sunfish.
You're right. I wanted to make a Part 2 of this video and include the sunfish species that are not in the lepomis genus. Maybe I'll get around to it one of these days.
Thank you, great and informative video.
Thank you.
My dad calls all types of sunfish "perch," and though I learned as a kid that perch are very different from sunfish, I had no idea of the numerous species. Any type of mostly-green sunfish was called a bluegill, and anything that was orange and electric blue was called a pumpkinseed. I'm now pretty sure that most of the "bluegill" I caught were in fact green sunfish.
Longear sunfish, I agree, are the best looking ones, and as a kid I had one in an aquarium. At other times, I also had bluegill, lots of tadpoles, what were probably dollar sunfish, lots of mosquitofish (mostly as food), some baby largemouth bass, and one dragonfly larva that ate one of the baby bass.
Thanks for the video.
They are often called "perch" or "sun perch" in southern states, I learned that in Oklahoma! Up north (MN, IL) we have "yellow perch," related to walleye, and "white perch," another species altogether. They all taste great!!
@@CStack2Ci My dad's from Oklahoma, actually.
@@AisuruMirai Cool! I lived in Tulsa OK and used to net tiny sun perch for aquariums from local ponds! It was a great hobby!
Funny, because I grew up not knowing what a Perch was! I did for sure know about bluegills, theyre the little buggers that take your bait when bass fishing hehe. Im sure ive confused a crappie or long ear for being a bluegill.
@@0326Hambone Great post!! It is fun to look these fish up, they are important members of our freshwater community. Yellow perch are a lynchpin of the fisheries of the Great Lakes and one of the best-eating fish out there! I love all of the panfish, for fishing & eating! My late father-in-law taught me how to clean them quickly & efficiently, no bones!
great video. have caught some nice warmouth while fishing spinnerbaits for reservoir largemouth. also some chunky redbreasts fishing 5" senkos for river smallmouth.
Nice.
This is a great video. Thanks.
Thanks for watching.
EPF, is my go to for sunfish identification but what ai will say your video is way more detailed. Awesome work
Thank you.
good information thanks for sharing 👍✌️
Thank you.
Very well done. Thank you.
Thank you. Glad it helped.
The pumpkin seed was the first fish I caught and cooked. They're really tasty in my opinion.
I used to eat them all the time when I lived in New Hampshire. Can't really tell the difference between them and the other sunfish when it comes to taste, but they do taste good. Thanks for watching.
Red ear is my favorite
Just plain old black crappie and green sunfish are pretty good aswell.
i like perch best but pumpkin seeds are pretty good too
I've never eaten a sunfish yet. My childhood fish was the yellow perch but sunfish will be the fish I start my daughter off catching. Great fish for kids!
good information thanks for your expertise! Pumpkin Seed my fav!
Thank you. Pumpkinseeds are toward the top of my list as well.
Thank you so much ! Very helpful information keeping this for future Reference..
Thank you.
@@TheFishingNomad Thanks for sharing..
I always thought that they were all BlueGills but variations of BlueGill. Thank you for your expertise, enjoyed the whole video.
Thank you for watching. Glad I could help.
Very helpful. Thanks!
Thank you for the support. Glad it was helpful.
Cool stuff man!
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Good job man love the vids
Thank you! Appreciate it.
Great info man 👍
Thank you. Glad you liked it.
I love pumpkinseeds. Beautiful fish.
Yeah they're one of my favorites too.
Green Sunfish also tend to have larger mouths than other sunfish
Mostly true. Warmouth also have a very large mouth. I think they're even bigger than green sunfish.
Great video.
Thank you.
I like the orange tipped pec fins on the greens
Thank you
You're welcome.
So I have 4 pet green sunfish. Never knew this, thanks.
South Alabamian here. I frequently fish one of our local city parks. It's been the victim of mismanagement for a few years. The pond's whole ecology is severely out-o-whack. But there are still some good fish in it. One of the park rangers always comes and hangs out a bit while I'm fishing and we shoot the breeze. He's a cool guy. He's a recent transplant from Minnesota. That's a far cry from Alabama.
Anyway he was watching me catch Sunfish the other day. This pond has quite the variety. He was asking me "What's this kind? What's that kind"?
I would invariably say "Oh it's just a Bream".
He said that in Minnesota they call that one a so and so Sunfish and that other one a so and so Sunfish...
I told him that he was absolutely right. They were Sunfish. But that here in Alabama we commonly just use the word "Bream" to encompass the entire family of Sunfish species and subspecies. Even the State Fisheries Dept. refers to this entire family of fish as "Bream". Heck, even this specific pond has four signs posted with the daily creel limits. The very top line says BREAM - LIMIT 10.
He of course thinks we're stupid Rednecks. But that's just the way it is here.
For some situations, it's fine to just clump them all in together like calling them all "bream". For other situations though you need to be able to differentiate between them. I like how they're all different and unique so I like differentiating them any time I can.
I don't particularly like Lepomids, or Centrarchids for that matter, but the Warmouth is interesting, and learning the IDs is a good challenge. Thank you for putting out this helpful video.
Thank you so much I really appreciate it
Thank you. Glad it helped.
My favorite is Pumpkinseed. They are just absolutely beautiful 😍
They really are. Thanks for the comment.
Well done!
Thanks.
Loved this vid, my favorite type of fish is panfish. And my favorite panfish is the warmouth, love the fight they put up. I also love the way green sunnies look, wit those cool blue lines. Im sas he called them ugly, i think their pretty.
Glad you liked it. Thanks for watching.
Thanks.
Thank you.
I have lived in S.FL my whole life and been fishing all the golf courses, banks,canals, lakes, etc...and the last 10 years or so I can find bream or sunfish anywhere ..its really sad. All we see are Myan Ciclids and Green Tilipia . I have an awesome pond behind my house with lost of peacocks, bass, snakeheads,etc., but all the bass are very very thin. I've been on a mission to find bream to reintroduce into my pond but I just cant locate them. I use to catch them by hand when they were young by using rice to bait them close to shore then snatch em up lol. AHHHH the good ol days
Unfortunately that's southern Florida these days, and to a certain extent central Florida as well. I don't think introducing the sunfish would do much for your pond. They'd get out competed and preyed upon heavily by all those other species you mentioned. You'd have to eradicate those and then somehow stop them from coming back.
You can’t say that the green sunfish is ugly, The second picture of the species looks so cool
I can say it because it's my opinion. Thanks for stopping by.
Warmouths - large almost Rockbass like mouths and with red eyes like a rock bass too.
As for many of the other subspecies I never realized there were so many.
Thanks for the info.
Well done!
Thanks for the comment. Warmouths don't always have red eyes though.
@@TheFishingNomad as I noticed in your tutorial.
AND I was surprised to find out green blue gills have the large square mouths . We called those warmouths too..
Great presentation! I have several sunfish in my aquarium. Now I know what species they are.
Nice. Hopefully one day I can get an aquarium and put some sunfish in there too.
Great video Pumpkinseed and Redears is the nice ones to me but the Longear is the prettiest of them all I do agree.
I really like pumpkinseeds as well, but nothing beats a longear.
Thanks for the info,I didn't realize there was so many different species,I definitely have been missidentifying the northern,I thought they were just off colored due to the dark muddy color of my lake
I like the orange spotted sunfish
Me too. They've got some nice colors on them.
Redear, Bluegill , and Pumpkin Seed are my fave I guess. They all are fun to catch no doubt.
Thanks for watching. They are all pretty awesome.
Thank that’s good information
Thanks. Glad you liked it.
Fantastic vid mane
Thank you.
Good scoop
Thanks.
WOW!
Good video my favorite is Bluegill.
That's a classic. Solid choice.
I think its worth it to point out that warmouth (in my opinion) have a bigger mouth then most panfish. You can lip a small warmouth when caught very easily unlike most panfish. I've always wondered if they weren't mixed with smallmouth bass due to their bigger mouth and longer build. I've also only caught them in the same systems where smallmouth lived.
Thanks needed this
Glad it helped.
Green Sunfish hit poppers, dry flies, wooly buggers, wet flies, nymphs, grasshopper, ant, & spider, imitations.
Tube jigs, curly tail grubs, inline spinners, minnows, crickets, leeches, crawfish, etc.
In shallow clear water @ spawning sites the males have a more intense yellow in their fins as they guard their nests.Colorful and inquisitive aquarium fish with equal sized and tempered fish.
It always blows my mind when i get a sunfish on a popper. The bait is twice the size of their mouth and they still smash it. Irritable bastards lol.
Green sunfish dont realize they are small. They do have the attitude of a big fish lol
Good info
Thank you.
Could’ve put flirt sunfish in this one too. Also rock bass, ozark bass, and shadow bass often get misidentified as warmouth often. Pretty solid video though. More people need to know this stuff before they try to help ID fish on Facebook groups.
Thank you. The reason I didn't include those is because this video was strictly meant to be about the lepomis genus. I agree that species that are mostly misidentified as each other are probably the warmouth, green sunfish, and rock bass. However they're in three different genuses so they didn't fit the theme of this video. In the future I plan on doing a lot more fish ID videos like this where I'd discuss many more of the misidentified species. Thanks for the feedback.
The Fishing Nomad rock bass is in that genus
@@misconceptions5613 huh? Rock bass are in a different genus than warmouth and green sunfish.
Redbreast Sunfish are beautiful. So are Bluegill and Pumpkinseed.
Yeah I really like redbreasts and pumpkinseeds as well.
Thanks for sharing this information I was able to identify 7 species of sunfish. I have not caught a warmouth up in northern part of New York. I sure would like to and I am a panfish person who enjoys the fight of fish. If you could break down the pickerel Pike and Muskie the same way that would be so helpful as they are different species amongst themselves as well. Good video thanks
Have you ever fished in NYC? I caught my first ever bluegills in Central Park. Bluegill are rare where I live believe it or not (just north of Minnesota)
Sure have, prospect Park, Central Park. I've also fished in the state extra State Park greenwood lake Haven up in Orange county and Oswego New York so I've done a lot of freshwater fishing I enjoy tremendously
Thank you for the video. Very informative. I think the pumpkin Seed sunfish is the nicest looking one. I have to admit that they all have very interesting colors and look. So varied. Have you tasted them all? I personally never tasted any fish that I caught I simply release them back as the water where I fish is very polluted.
Thank you. Off the top of my head the only lepomis species fish I've eaten have been bluegills and pumpkinseeds. Both tasted great.
great vid
Thanks.
Thanks for this excellent video ,,I have heard the green and the bluegill may crossbreed producing hybrid bluegills,,can't remember but is it the ma or the pa that determines if the offspring will be sterile and grow big and faster. Maybe others crossbreed?
Bluegill are also really thin from side to side. You get an 11 inch bluegill and it looks huge but has less meat on it than a 9 inch redear or pumpkinseed.
I haven't really noticed that, but I think you're right. Good point if you're fishing for food.
@@TheFishingNomad I've seen it consistently with bluegill vs. pumpkinseeds in Michigan and bluegill vs. redears in Florida, so I assume it's universal. The hybrids also seem to be reasonably chunky.
Awesome man, you should do all the other black bass species next like shadow bass and rock bass, all the obscure ones
Thank you. I've got a couple more ideas for fish ID videos and that is one of them. One day.
@@TheFishingNomad the video was very cool and informative. It's hard to tell with hand drawn ID images
Rock bass are actually not related to the black basses (largemouth, etc.) They are their own genus
@@KermitTheGamer21 the Black Basses are sunfish also just that they can weigh over ten pounds. Stripers,yellow white basses are true and temperate basses. Including the white perch which isn't a perch but a bass.
@@tehutimes1 I know, I never said anything about anything but the rock basses though. While both rock bass and black bass are under the Centrarchid (sunfish) family group, rock bass belong to the Ambloplite genus (which includes the rock bass, shadow bass, roanoke bass, and ozark bass). Black basses belong to the Micropterus genus, and include largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, spotted bass, Florida bass, and a number of smaller localized species like coosa bass which are similar to smallmouth.
This video here was only made about the Lepomis genus, which only includes the smaller fish that are commonly labeled as "sunfish" like bluegill.
nice
Thanks.
The most obvious thing that stands out with the warmouth is the large mouth.
Great video! I usually call any panfish I catch a sun fish. Thanks for the info!
True. They do have larger mouths. Thanks for the comment.
Hey my bro, do you have any recommendations on places in the South to get warmouth to stock your pond? Seems everyone got to catch them wild and relocate? Appreciate your videos!!!
This place specializes in selling North American native fish for the aquarium trade, but they also do sell fish for pond stocking. I'm sure the cost per fish will be lower if you buy a couple hundred warmouth instead of buying just one.
www.aquaculturestore.com/Sunfish/
YES!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!! I GOT IT DOWN!!!!!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for watching. Glad you liked it.
I just came across this video. Thanks for the very informative video. I knew about 80% of them but a few were new to me as well. I haven't caught a War Mouth yet, but I hear they put up a good fight. Do you know if this fish is in the southeastern US?
It is in the southeastern US. I don't know the exact range off the top of my head, but I've caught them in Florida before.
besides the longeared sunfish. my favorite is the "Black Banded Sunfish" which wasnt mentioned in the video. i use to catch them in northern illinois/wisconsin border area. but havent seen any in years. they have a silver whiteish color with black bands thru body.
Blackbanded sunfish are cool. I haven't caught one yet and they're the only Enneacanthus species not on my lifelist. However because they're an Enneacanthus species and not a Lepomis species, they were left out of this video.
ohh. i see i didnt knotice was different species. when pulling up list on google of diffent types of north american sunfish they all come up together on list. i did see that the blackbanded sunfish is on the endangered list in most areas and i believe its one of the 4 protected sunfish as well.
@@todaysfishingadventure They're not federally protected, but they might be protected in your state.
GREAT VIDEO ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THE GILL'S HOW MANY SPEICIES AND ALL.
Thank you.
Trapped some sunfish for my new aquarium today. Im certain one is a bluegill, wasnt certain about the other 2 they almost looked like crappie but the fins didnt look like crappie. Pretty sure they are redears because i can barely see a red spot on the gill plate they are small about 2 inches. Thanks for making this video. I'm going to keep trying to catch some longears.
Could be. Take a look at fliers (Centrarchus macropterus). Whenever someone thinks they've caught a weird crappie or a crappie sunfish hybrid it is usually one of these.
I'll take a giant aquarium, and one of each of those. They are very pretty.
I'm right there with you.
I think I have some northern sunfish in a creek on my property in Florida, favorite fish I have had in my tank for sure! Also a lot more of a silver/brown fish with vertical striped and a red tinted tail any idea on that one?
Anything is possible, but I'd bet my life savings that they're not northern sunfish. Can you DM me a picture on Instagram at TheFishingNomad_CZcams? From the description my best guess is that it's a coppernose bluegill.