Fish ID (Bad Drawing)

[CrankFate]

I saw these fish today wiggling themselves around grapefruit sized riprap. They were about 4 inches long, pretty wide and looked something like a cross between a pleco and goby, very pretty looking black and white striping. They were clinging to the rocks almost like a pleco, moving around by wiggling their body side to side near the center. I’ve never seen anything like it, I’m wondering if they came from someone’s fish tank. Sorry about my drawing. Those are not legs at the sides, there were 4 distinctive fins at the sides. This is about what they looked like, but more butterfly looking in real life. They did not have a tall dorsal fin.

[TnRiver46]

Maybe sculpin but they only have two wide fins like that not 4. Salamander, newt? 
 

forgot to ask size, I’ve see some things like northern hogsucker where you might be able to see 2 sets of fins like that 

[CountryboyinDC]

I would think that was a hellbender, but I've never seen one with white stripes.  They are a type of salamander you don't see much anymore.

[CrankFate]

I looked through pictures of every fish I could find. Nothing. It has to be a pleco population that changed a little in the wild. Now I’m wondering if plecos can cross breed. It’s a place where people are known to toss fish tank fish. They were a little more like this shape than a regular zebra pleco. But the four fins were separate. I had amber glasses on an the water is greenish, so they might’ve been yellowish or brownish and yellow.

 

 

[bulldog1935]

We have a freshwater blenny, that's similar to a sculpin, but definitely blenny family.  

I tie this whistler fly to imitate them.  

 

bottom-bounced, it gets pretty good results

[CrankFate]

13 hours ago, bulldog1935 said:

We have a freshwater blenny, that's similar to a sculpin, but definitely blenny family.  

I tie this whistler fly to imitate them.  

 

bottom-bounced, it gets pretty good results

Hard to tell, could be a blenny or something like that, but they looked like they had 4 fins like a pleco. They were on the same kind of rocks in your picture. I actually took this picture to show the bass fry that are already swimming around from the spawn this spring, but they don’t show up in the picture.

[mrpao]

I'm assuming that you are in Florida.

Because Florida is the only place I know of that has plecos.

Have you looked up Chinese algae eater?

They will cling to rocks and have stripes but they are more minnow like in shape

[bulldog1935]

The San Antonio River is choked with plecos, especially Calaveras and Braunig lakes.  

The Zoo drains San Pedro springs, which are the headwaters of the river - they intentionally placed both plecos and tilapia into the drainage back in the 1920's, to decorate the canals in the zoo pathways.  

It was a curiosity then to schtupp with the ecosystem, plus they had Egypt fever over King Tut discovery (Nile perch).  Nearby New Braunfels thought it was so cool they put tilapia into the Comal River springs, as well.  

Florida's excuse for exotics is aquarium industry breeding ponds, which get washed into the canals every hurricane.  

[CrankFate]

12 hours ago, mrpao said:

I'm assuming that you are in Florida.

Because Florida is the only place I know of that has plecos.

Have you looked up Chinese algae eater?

They will cling to rocks and have stripes but they are more minnow like in shape

I’m in NY, which should kill plecos by December. The fish I saw looked something like this pic but with shorter dorsal fins, rounder side fins and more stripes. Shorter looking bodies, too. They were fast, so it was hard to get a good look. According to the internet they can also crossbreed with other plecos. Which I’m assuming could happen if a bunch of people tossed different ones. There are manmade things in this water that affect temperature. This lake never gets ice. No matter how cold it gets outside. I see that the bass are already post spawn now and spawning now, too. Which is way too early, by months. There is a filter system, with some sort of large moving blades somewhere in the water that actually pulled a kid that was swimming there under causing him to drown some years back. Swimming was always prohibited because of that. Fishing was for a long time, too. I still fished there when I was a younger, with a hand line to not be seen.

[jimmyjoe]

On 4/24/2021 at 9:46 PM, bulldog1935 said:

We have a freshwater blenny, that's similar to a sculpin, but definitely blenny family.  

I tie this whistler fly to imitate them.  

 

bottom-bounced, it gets pretty good results

 

   I swear, between you and @Ski, I'm getting a complex!   ?            jj

[bulldog1935]

@jimmyjoe That endemic Guadalupe bass hen would have been the state record, except 15 years ago, there were no catch and release records.  Because of genetic pollution by introduced smallmouth, applying for a record would have required killing her for a liver biopsy.  I released her instead.  

BTW, that photo is the screen saver on my computer.  

Caught her at a bat cave vent where an aquifer takes flow from the river.  This is the only bass species that can retreat into the aquifers to survive our droughts, and she got to that size eating baby bats that fell in.  

When I filmed an episode of KT Diaries on our endemic bass, True Texas Bass, I caught a 15" fish and explained to KT this is an endemic bass lunker, and would be the biggest fish we'd see that day.  

We made up for it the next day, sight-fishing 5-lb largemouth in private water on Hondo Creek - got all the big fish film he needed in 90 minutes.  They even got film of bass picking up bottom-bounced flies off the flagstone.  

 

btw, geography-wise, I still think our OP is seeing sculpin.  There are many species in the big family with very strange anatomy

[CrankFate]

21 hours ago, bulldog1935 said:

btw, geography-wise, I still think our OP is seeing sculpin.  There are many species in the big family with very strange anatomy

it’s possible, but it looked like 4 side fins. And there aren’t supposed to be any sculpins here. It was also distinctively striped. It wasn’t blotches.

[Darth-Baiter]

some Goby?

 

and that pic looked like "frank and beans" at a quick glance.  

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, CrankFate said:

it’s possible, but it looked like 4 side fins. And there aren’t supposed to be any sculpins here. It was also distinctively striped. It wasn’t blotches.

Sounds like banded sculpin 

 

goby is very similar shape but I know nothing about them