Strange Looking Redbreast Sunfish

[Festus_Haggen]

Has anyone ever caught redbreast sunfish? The creek I live on is full of them, sometimes up to 9-1/2" even though it's a small body of water about 20' wide and 6' deep.

I don't have a photo, but the other day I caught something that looked like a cross between a redeye (rock bass) and a redbreast. Now redbreasts have a larger mouth than a bluegill and are much more colorful, but their mouth isn't as big as a redeyes. Would it be possible for a redbreast and a redeye to mate and hatch?

The photo on the left is an artists version of the redbreast, the photo on the right is the creek in my backyard.

[ga.crappie&breamguy]

i have caught plenty of redbreast but nothing like you have described. but i would love to fish that creek.its to bad we dont have transporters like they do on star trek.

[mytwins1999]

Could it be a Pumkinseed ?We have a lot of them in the creeks here in southern IN.

[limbhook]

That is what i would call that a punkinseed but i ain't never seen any of them get to be that big 91/2" that is a very big punkinseed.

[chaunc]

We get them up at Lake erie while icefishing that size. Dont know about open water there tho. Some really pretty colors on those fish.

[SteveJ]

Looks like one of these to me: Freshwater Fish Facts - Alabama Longear

[Festus_Haggen]

The fish is a redbreast, they are easily confused with the longear sunfish. I don't think I've seen a longear in my creek, but it's possible maybe downstream a few miles there could be longears. And it can't be a pumpkinseed, their body is much wider proportionally than the redbreast. There's a creek on the other side of the mountain from me called Crooked Fork Creek that contains (or used to) pumpkinseeds. I've never seen a pumpkinseed over 6".

Most people call this redbreast sunfish either redbellies or sungrannies. The female has a yellow belly, they're easily identified. Would like to figure out how this one I caught the other day had such a big mouth. It wasn't a purebred rock bass or redbreast, never seen anything like it in my life.

[Psmith]

We used to call them sun pearch, or red breasted sunpearch. They seemed to fight harder than a regular bream. The ones we used to catch in Alabama had a lot of blue specks in them too.

[Festus_Haggen]

Yes, they are much more aggressive than other bream. You don't see them in the lakes very often, they like streams. Maybe the fresh running water puts more pep into them. The only thing I don't like about them is if you fish live bait for them, you'll gut hook a bunch of them because they have larger mouths. I like to use roostertails and Rebel crankbaits, Rebel makes the crawfish crankbait that looks like a crawfish running backwards. Rebel also makes the grasshopper crankbait that's effective on them. They'll hit microspoons or just about anything thrown at them if they're in the mood. I've even caught them on 6" plastic worms.

[Festus_Haggen]

i have caught plenty of redbreast but nothing like you have described. but i would love to fish that creek.its to bad we dont have transporters like they do on star trek.

Here's some more photos of the creek a couple miles downstream. It's 8-10 deep here, water is clear (after the monsoons, hopefully) and loaded with redbreasts, redeyes, suckers, bluegill, bullhead catfish, and small bass. I have heard of a smallmouth 4 lbs. caught out of here, and have seen largemouths swimming in there at least that big. Getting one to hit is like trying to catch a 14 lb. largemouth out of a lake! About 5 or 6 miles downstream it eventually becomes part of Watts Bar Lake. This is about as far upriver that a fish can swim from up the lake.