Probably a green sunfish. They will be more shaped like a largemouth bass and actually have the same mouth gape inch for inch in fish length but they only get up to about 8-9" normally. They can get a little bigger but most ponds they are over crowded and stunt so never get to full potential. They will have a bigger mouth than a bluegill and will be wider in body but not as tall. Distinct green bars behind the mouth. Very aggressive and caught easily on hook and line. A little finer texture meat than a bluegill and the scales are finer also making getting the fillet off the skin a little more tricky. We end up filleting a couple greensunfish in each batch of blugill we process. Green sunfish are known by many different names at different areas of the country. Here they are always called "perch" but they are not a perch at all but a sunfish instead.

There are lots of different sunfish. Bluegill and green sunfish being the most common but redear sunfish, pumpkinseed (in your area), longear and a bunch of others. They can also hybridize naturally between different sunfish species but it is the exception rather than the rule, usually happening if there are limited partners available of one of the species or very turbid water where the fish have trouble ID'ing each other. I happen to have a small 1/10th acre sediment pond that feeds into my main pond where I get a lot of naturally produced hybrids (mostly green sunfish x bluegill or redear hybrids) because of the seasonal turbid water. Always easy to tell a hybrid from a pure bluegill as the blue gill will have no margin around the opercular tab (ear tab). A bluegill will have a solid black opercular tab. It will also not have any reddish/yellowish margin around any of its fins where a hybrid usually will. The exception on the fins of bluegill is that coppernose bluegill (a southern fish) can have a whitish tipping of the tail and other fins. I have some coppernose in my ponds as well as native northern bluegill.

More than you ever wanted to know about sunfish!

First picture is a hybrid sunfish, 1.2#, a cross between a green sunfish and a redear sunfish. The second picture is of a redear sunfish, probably around 3/4# but did not weigh it. Third picture is of a smallmouth bass, caught on the same outing. They all came out of a one acre pond I built three years ago and dedicated it to stocking only redear sunfish and smallmouth bass. I accidentally got a few hybrids mixed in when I stocked the redear sunfish from one of my other ponds.They are a little harder to identify when they are only a couple inches long when I stocked them, thus the mistakes.

John

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