Hi Guys, Great thread! It's been years since I've even caught a sunfish of any type. I used to, but we don't have them here in the mountains. I get to Michigan every few years and we actually target the Bluegills, but end up with other species....... May this year.....

Jay Edwards

thread drift, sorry.. just to get some more pictures on here ;-)
the South African equivalent of sunfish is the large and varied assortment of cichlids/tilapia.
from my childhood, vlei kurper:



too small for eating but prolific and will take flies, lures and bait, excellent small-boy fish. Bluegill-equivalent, basically.

Canary kurper, generally regarded as a pest, but it was always better than getting skunked.



the real quarry was usually the blue kurper, now also available in your supermarket as tilapia.. mostly 1-2lbs, 3lbs a big one. Here's a huge one from a private farm pond. In a public fishing area this would have been eaten long before this size..

Most local fishers don't know all the correct names for all the species, another example is referring to all sunfish other than black bass as "perch" and warmouth/rock bass as "black perch". In southern New England all sunfish might be called "kiver" or "roach" and crappie are called "calico bass".

Got in quite an argument with a buddy about longears and seeds.A lake in so illinois has a wonderful panfish population.Crappies are the the most abundant these days with some big ones caught daily.Have been going to this lake every april for 15 years.There are tons of longears,called a longear because of the long dark flap on the gill plate and their colors are over the top.My friend kept calling them seeds.Then we started catching seeds and he called them red ears.Then we caught some actual redears.He called them southern bluegills.At least he called the big fat northern strain bluegills,bluegills.

Another from the Southern Ohio East fork tail water.


Difference seen in an example from a Plano Texas suburban waterway.


When I moved to Texas seemed like folks used the name brim for all panfish, bluegill, longears, and similar fish. Took me awhile to figure out that a perch was referring to what i knew as bluegill. I thought folks were talking about yellow perch.

Sunfish were put on earth so little children could learn to fish. Thank goodness they also learn to share with us big kids.

Hit another part if the upper trinity watershed around Farmers Branch Tx.



Went to another section and the bite stopped. Wonder why....





Then this non-brim eyed the fly...

I've caught lots of longears here in Oklahoma, along with bluegills, redears, and green sunfish, but I was fishing the San Gabriel in Georgetown, TX last September when I caught my first red breast. My first thought was "this is what should have been called longear".

Larry

Eric, sorry your bream fishing (way I learned to spell it as a kid) was interrupted by an interloper. Airrite 10 pc. 3 wt.? Must've been fun. (Not that it wasn't fun on the bream.)

Eric,
I suppose that "non-brim" felt pretty good on that Airrite. But then just about everything feels pretty good on those rods.

Larry

Hope this works

I agree,sometimes it is hard to find a pure strain n bluegill around here.Between stocking by the DNR or other gov bodies and by well meaning anglers.I believe i caught a green redear hybrid last year.I fish a place that has 6 or 7 old quarries and the I&M canal located within a park.I can cross a gravel road and catch completely different isolated strains and cross bred sunfish.

Bulldog,


From a small creek that drains into Town Lake- downtown ATX
Photo doesn't do it justice- super colored up, esp the blues.