Even with an abundance of Mother's Day weekend festivities, my loving wife and mother of our boys saw fit to grant me a respite and let me get on the water a little bit this weekend. I was able to hit a local HOA pond down the street and caught quite a few pretty fish. There weren't any monsters caught, but some very pretty fish and something particularly unusual.
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| A bluegill with strange coloring or a hybrid? |
The fish in the above picture was a beauty and almost reached the 9 inch mark. Around my parts, that's a pretty big bluegill! However, to make things more interesting, the color is very unique. you might notice a lack of bars, orange throat patch, and yellow markings. For those reasons, I don't think this is a standard, run of the mill, bluegill. After posting this picture on Instagram, I got some feedback from
Feather-Craft Fly Fishing in St. Louis and they are of the belief that it is a green sunfish/bluegill hybrid. For what it is worth, I have caught bass, bluegill, crappie, green sunfish, and redear sunfish out of this pond in the past so I guess there could have been some crossing of genetics. If this is truly a hybrid, my next question is whether this is a hybrid that was stocked on purpose by the HOA or is a naturally occurring hybrid?
My question will probably never be answered, but this is a prime example of why fishing is so much fun! You never know what you are going to catch, and just like science has shown us, as soon as you think you have things figured out, you find something that you don't expect. Also, as soon as you have one of your questions answered, more questions arise to take their place. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated and feel free to leave a comment below or email me at
showmeflyguy@gmail.com. If you have caught fish like this before or know anything about the species, I would love to hear from you and learn something in the process. Have a great week!
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| Green sunfish |
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| Green sunfish |
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| Molted insect |
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| The last thing a frog sees. |
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| #catchandrelease |
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