Exactly what kind of fish is this?

[buzzed bait]

As a kid, my dad would call about anything and everything of the sunfish/panfish category a "bream" so i'm fairly uneducated on the exact types....  Can someone educate me on what this guy is?  It was so cool looking, i was ready to build an aquarium for it!!

[nhpleasantlakebass]

pretty fish I think its spawning which is why its so dark..

[Turtle135]

that is a green sunfish I believe, pugnacious little creatures as I have caught them on 10" plastic worms before

http://www.tnfish.org/FishIdentificationID_TWRA/TWRA_Sunfish_Identification_Key.htm

 

[Ratherbfishing]

It is exactly a green sunfish.  As Turtle135 said, they can be very aggressive and I (and a friend) have caught them on a whole myriad of baits (but usually soft plastics).  I've sent more than one into near earth orbit (astronaut training) thinking they were bass.

[buzzed bait]

15 minutes ago, Turtle135 said:

that is a green sunfish I believe, pugnacious little creatures as I have caught them on 10" plastic worms before

http://www.tnfish.org/FishIdentificationID_TWRA/TWRA_Sunfish_Identification_Key.htm

 

ok, that definitely looks like it Turtle, thanks!  He fell victim to the 4" wacky senko and for his size put up a decent fight too!

and holy cow man, the first pumpkinseed in that link is unreal!!!  looks like @00 mod must have caught that one, especially being that the link is for Tennessee!!!!

[IndianaFinesse]

Yep, that is a green sunfish.  They sure are a pretty fish, if not the brightest.

[00 mod]

28 minutes ago, buzzed bait said:

ok, that definitely looks like it Turtle, thanks!  He fell victim to the 4" wacky senko and for his size put up a decent fight too!

and holy cow man, the first pumpkinseed in that link is unreal!!!  looks like @00 mod must have caught that one, especially being that the link is for Tennessee!!!!

I have caught some big ones recently....haha!

Jeff

[Bluebasser86]

That right there is flathead bait is what that is. One of the best fish there is to use for flatheads because they stay alive a long time on a hook, they're easy to catch, and they struggle really hard because they prefer to be under some form of cover.

 

It's a green sunfish, no doubt. They go by many different names, but green sunfish is the only one that's right. 

If you put them in an aquarium, it better have a lid. I've never seen a fish that was as good at jumping out of them as those guys are. I had about 3 dozen of them in a big stock tank to use for bait the next night. I went out to get them about 30 minutes beforehand to load into the boat, I think maybe 8-9 of them were left in the tank, the rest were dead and bloated on the ground all around the tank. Next time I covered it with a big square of plywood, but the corners were still exposed, lost about half of them still. Brought home some stucco wire and covered the whole thing after that. It still had some little gaps where the wire wasn't perfectly flat in some spots and I lost about a half dozen to those tiny little gaps. After I put rocks all the way around the top to seal off the edges, I finally stopped losing fish. 

[soflabasser]

It's definitely a green sunfish.

[Dillo]

they sure are pretty fish, and great fighters! The first fish I caught by myself (no dad to unhook it) was a green sunfish, and I almost had a heart attack watching it smash a spinner from under a rock 

[Bankbeater]

Green sunfish.  They are a blast to catch on UL rigs.

[scaleface]

I was playing around with the Flying Lure along a bluff . I pulled the lure out and it would swim right back into the bluff . It really is an amazing lure . Anyway , those ravenous green sunfish tore that Flying Lure up .