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!
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
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.
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...
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.
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...
@@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.
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.
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 😪💔
Where I live blue gill's are dominant to me a really thick large blue gill filleted is the best tasting fish I have ever eaten. I like most fish but like these the best.👍😁👍
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!!
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.
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!
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
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!!!👍🏼🐠
Thanks for sharing!! I didn’t realize their were so many !! Great tips .!! Yeah I like the long ear sunfish color display and design the best. I was born & raised in Southbury CT and caught several different species and I’m 54 years young going on 55 !! Never decided to investigate as to how many different sunfish species their are until doing a google search. When I was 8 yo was the first time I had gone fishing in Lake Lillinonah in Southbury Connecticut. I need to watch your video again to see all the species and see exactly which species I recall viewing.
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.
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!
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.
@@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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Do they all taste the same? Lol I've just started to dry and get dedicated into fishing after 34 years. Bluegill are my favorite common freshwater fish and panfish in general are my favorite freshwater family of any type of fish. This video has informed me with more than I've been able to find in weeks.
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
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.
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.
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!
@@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..
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.
@@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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Nicely done! My favorite is orangespotted, Lepomis humilis, especially for aquarium keeping. Not too big, not nearly as aggressive as the others. I also like the warmouth and dollar. Dollar for its size and colors, but little beats! Great for African cichlid tanks! Can definitely hold their own. Warmouth, L. gulosus, because of their behavior, most ambush predators aren't very aggressive until you're in their sghts as a meal! I'm with you, also, can't stand greenies. Excellent indicators of poor water quality, invasive af!
Their presence doesn't have to indicate poor water quality, but if they are thriving and little else is doing well other than equally hardy Carp and Catfish such as Bullheads it's a good bet that not much else can survive there.
I’m the type I enjoy catching all fish and bluegill and green sunfish are my favorite since they’re abundant around me and they get big. I’ve caught 2 green Sunfish the size of my hand one was 14 oz and the other was 13 oz.
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?
I've kept all types of fish in aquariums since I was a kid. Including many varieties of sunfish. It seamed to me by behavior and temperament, they were quite like cichlids found in the amazon.
@@TheFishingNomad It's been a black eye to all responsible fish keepers how some fish and reptile owners irresponsibly and carelessly turned their overgrown unwanted pets loose in Florida, with no thought or care of the effect to native species. I remember in the 1970's walking along a canal in Plantation Florida and seeing a large pair of Oscars swimming at the surface with several hundred young all around & behind them. I was told then it had been common for years to catch them while fishing.
@@mjnc3672 Yup. That war has been lost decades ago. If you go to the FWC website you can see the dates when all the non-natives were first spotted in Florida. Many of the cichlids were first spotted between the 50s and 80s. New species are still being found reproducing pretty regularly.
You missed one. I caught a light green (closer to a light olive green) sunfish with a large, vivid yellow chest in front of the first set of fins. The first set of fins are also a translucent yellow. The top and tail fins are like a very translucent olive green. The bottom fins are a translucent gray. Also the black dot is small like most of the sunfish but it's more square. It also has faint olive green vertical stripes but doesn't have any dots or any other stripes on it. I caught it in Lake Havasu.
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!
No mention of the Rock bass? Green sunfish Rock bass and warmouth all have similar shape and large mouth. All three commonly confused for each other. Also the war mouth has a dark line that runs horizontally through the eye to the ear. One more above that and two below it. Otherwise a good preasaentation. I have seen many others try to explain this so far you have done the best job. I am amazed that so few fisherman bother to learn the different species. I would like to know why you left out the Rock bass.
I caught something similar in the North Pacolet river in the foothills on the NC/SC Stateline area. It has a very dark base color.....but has a beautiful light blue checkered vertical bar pattern on most of its body. It has the big mouth with the broken light blue bars running toward the ears and has pink tipped lower fins. It is more long like a warmouth, but it has yellow eyes like a green sunfish. Most of the warmouths I've caught had red eyes. I honestly don't know what it is. I sent several pictures to the Clemson extension office, but they have failed to give me an answer. It was my understanding that warmouths don't hybridized like other sunfish because lack of a certain chromosome, but hey.....this is 2021.....I don't doubt anything is possible after what 2020 brought us!👍
@@TheFishingNomad I stand corrected then. That is what I was told by another angler as we were catching them out of the same pond. Thanks for the info.
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.
I got a tiny little pumpkin seed from a little stream
Nice. They're beautiful.
Nice
Nice
Im jealous
Like ina tank?
My favorite has always been the redbreast. The pumpkinseed is also quite beautiful.
Nice.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Just caught the coolest green sunfish I’ve ever seen. The fins were very vibrant red!
Nice.
WOW!!! So many Sunfish 🐟🐡🐠.. Thankyou for sharing! 😊
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😪💔
Where I live blue gill's are dominant to me a really thick large blue gill filleted is the best tasting fish I have ever eaten. I like most fish but like these the best.👍😁👍
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!
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.
Great video. Stumbled into my recommendations for some reason. Love all the views and comments, happy fishing everyone!
Thank you. Appreciate it.
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.
great video. have caught some nice warmouth while fishing spinnerbaits for reservoir largemouth. also some chunky redbreasts fishing 5" senkos for river smallmouth.
Nice.
I love bluegill and crappie so much . Easily two of my favorites for eating
Nice.
There you go!
Ty for the video I fought a Pumpkin Seed yesterday but I didn’t know what it was.
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'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
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.
Thanks for sharing!! I didn’t realize their were so many !! Great tips .!! Yeah I like the long ear sunfish color display and design the best. I was born & raised in Southbury CT and caught several different species and I’m 54 years young going on 55 !! Never decided to investigate as to how many different sunfish species their are until doing a google search. When I was 8 yo was the first time I had gone fishing in Lake Lillinonah in Southbury Connecticut. I need to watch your video again to see all the species and see exactly which species I recall viewing.
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!
EPF, is my go to for sunfish identification but what ai will say your video is way more detailed. Awesome work
Thank you.
Very informative.
Also, made me hungry for some fried Bluegills.
Thank you. All these fish are definitely good eating.
I like the orange tipped pec fins on the greens
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.
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.
Thank you for this, I’m doing a native fish tank this summer and needed the help.
Glad I was able to help.
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.
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.
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.
My favorite is Pumpkinseed. They are just absolutely beautiful 😍
They really are. Thanks for the comment.
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.
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.
Thanks. Nice info. Good delivery 😊.
Thank you.
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 love pumpkinseeds. Beautiful fish.
Yeah they're one of my favorites too.
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.
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.
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.
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
GREAT VIDEO ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THE GILL'S HOW MANY SPEICIES AND ALL.
Thank you.
Do they all taste the same? Lol I've just started to dry and get dedicated into fishing after 34 years.
Bluegill are my favorite common freshwater fish and panfish in general are my favorite freshwater family of any type of fish.
This video has informed me with more than I've been able to find in weeks.
Thanks for the kind words. Glad I was able to help.
@@TheFishingNomad Yes, sir!!
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
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
Excellent video. Thank you for this info. Truly enlightening 👍🏻
Thank you.
Awesome video man! Just subbed to the channel, you have some great videos!
Thank you. Appreciate it.
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
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.
So I have 4 pet green sunfish. Never knew this, thanks.
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.
good information thanks for sharing 👍✌️
Thank you.
I remember catching the green sun fish my dad called them rock bass not sure why. Bluegill and Redear are the 2 I caught the most of.
For some reason a lot of people call them rock bass. Doesn't make sense to me either.
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 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.
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..
Redbreast Sunfish are beautiful. So are Bluegill and Pumpkinseed.
Yeah I really like redbreasts and pumpkinseeds as well.
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.
Nicely done! My favorite is orangespotted, Lepomis humilis, especially for aquarium keeping. Not too big, not nearly as aggressive as the others. I also like the warmouth and dollar. Dollar for its size and colors, but little beats! Great for African cichlid tanks! Can definitely hold their own. Warmouth, L. gulosus, because of their behavior, most ambush predators aren't very aggressive until you're in their sghts as a meal! I'm with you, also, can't stand greenies. Excellent indicators of poor water quality, invasive af!
The orangespotted is one of my favorites as well. I have a soft spot for the smaller fish. They're so much cuter.
Hey just wondering how a green sunfish indicates poor water quality?
@@eduardohidalgo9802 they're a super hardy fish. They can survive in water conditions that other fish can't.
Their presence doesn't have to indicate poor water quality, but if they are thriving and little else is doing well other than equally hardy Carp and Catfish such as Bullheads it's a good bet that not much else can survive there.
Thank you
You're welcome.
I’m the type I enjoy catching all fish and bluegill and green sunfish are my favorite since they’re abundant around me and they get big. I’ve caught 2 green Sunfish the size of my hand one was 14 oz and the other was 13 oz.
Great video, thank you for uploading!
Thanks for watching.
Good video my favorite is Bluegill.
That's a classic. Solid choice.
This is a great video. Thanks.
Thanks for watching.
I own a pumpkin seed sunfish as a pet have him in my 75 gallon tank one of the prettiest and coolest fish I own he has a Vry unique diamond pattern
Nice. They are a beautiful fish.
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.
I've kept all types of fish in aquariums since I was a kid. Including many varieties of sunfish. It seamed to me by behavior and temperament, they were quite like cichlids found in the amazon.
These guys are sure holding their own with all the nonnative cichlids down here in South Florida.
@@TheFishingNomad It's been a black eye to all responsible fish keepers how some fish and reptile owners irresponsibly and carelessly turned their overgrown unwanted pets loose in Florida, with no thought or care of the effect to native species. I remember in the 1970's walking along a canal in Plantation Florida and seeing a large pair of Oscars swimming at the surface with several hundred young all around & behind them. I was told then it had been common for years to catch them while fishing.
@@mjnc3672 Yup. That war has been lost decades ago. If you go to the FWC website you can see the dates when all the non-natives were first spotted in Florida. Many of the cichlids were first spotted between the 50s and 80s. New species are still being found reproducing pretty regularly.
I like the orange spotted sunfish
Me too. They've got some nice colors on them.
Thanks.
Thank you.
You missed one. I caught a light green (closer to a light olive green) sunfish with a large, vivid yellow chest in front of the first set of fins. The first set of fins are also a translucent yellow. The top and tail fins are like a very translucent olive green. The bottom fins are a translucent gray. Also the black dot is small like most of the sunfish but it's more square. It also has faint olive green vertical stripes but doesn't have any dots or any other stripes on it. I caught it in Lake Havasu.
I didn't. But if you want to DM me a picture on Instagram I could tell you what it is. @thefishingnomad_youtube
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.
Very well done. Thank you.
Thank you. Glad it helped.
Thank you so much I really appreciate it
Thank you. Glad it helped.
Very helpful. Thanks!
Thank you for the support. Glad it was helpful.
I'll take a giant aquarium, and one of each of those. They are very pretty.
I'm right there with you.
My favorite one to catch is a big old warmouth
Definitely a cool fish.
I caught a bass with those turquoise streaks along its face before. Is that some type of hybrid? Never seen another one since then
Definitely not a bass x sunfish hybrid. Do you have a picture?
@@TheFishingNomad unfortunately no, ill try to go back to the spot and catch him again though for sure so i can take one haha
I catch a lot of sunnies. So many different kinds.
Yup. 12 in this genus. So far I've caught 8 of them. Hopefully I can catch the rest soon.
Thanks. You did a great job there.
Thank you. Means a lot.
In my area, warmouth are called 'goggle eye'...
I agree, the longear is the most beautiful species.
Thanks for watching.
No mention of the Rock bass? Green sunfish Rock bass and warmouth all have similar shape and large mouth. All three commonly confused for each other. Also the war mouth has a dark line that runs horizontally through the eye to the ear. One more above that and two below it. Otherwise a good preasaentation. I have seen many others try to explain this so far you have done the best job. I am amazed that so few fisherman bother to learn the different species. I would like to know why you left out the Rock bass.
I left out rock bass because this video was about the sunfish in the lepomis genus. The rock bass isn't in the lepomis genus.
I have what appears to be a Warmouth/Green Sunfish hybrid.
Totally possible. If you want you can post a picture to the NANFA facebook group. Lots of knowledgeable people there that could confirm it.
I caught something similar in the North Pacolet river in the foothills on the NC/SC Stateline area. It has a very dark base color.....but has a beautiful light blue checkered vertical bar pattern on most of its body. It has the big mouth with the broken light blue bars running toward the ears and has pink tipped lower fins. It is more long like a warmouth, but it has yellow eyes like a green sunfish. Most of the warmouths I've caught had red eyes. I honestly don't know what it is. I sent several pictures to the Clemson extension office, but they have failed to give me an answer. It was my understanding that warmouths don't hybridized like other sunfish because lack of a certain chromosome, but hey.....this is 2021.....I don't doubt anything is possible after what 2020 brought us!👍
One thing I would say is many sunfish species have these bars. They show up often when the fish are stressed or are showing dominance
True. I just felt they were and are more pronounced on bluegills than any other species.
If I recall correctly, the Warmouth is also called a Rock Bass being that their mouths look very bass like. Good eatin' too!
Not sure why anyone would call them rock bass when rock bass is already the name of a different species, but okay.
@@TheFishingNomad I stand corrected then. That is what I was told by another angler as we were catching them out of the same pond. Thanks for the info.
My favorite fish species
Which one?
@@TheFishingNomad the pumpkin seed.
@@topsiekretts1250 Nice. That's one of my favorites too.
Great video.
Thank you.