My strangest fish ever

[RUGER]

Granted I don't fish rivers or streams very often and my exact words were "what the heck have I caught?"

I had to text scn and ask him what I had caught.
I was kinda scared to touch it. LOL

Stone Roller is what he said it was.
Dang dinosaur fish if you ask me.

 

[KENBOB10]

We catch em up here. Horny Heads is what we've always called them. Not as many in the Hiwassee river as there used to be. Rockfish have thinned them out.

 

[lothar]

central stoneroller

 

[TheDuke'sBack]

Thats a new one for me, cool catch

 

[catman529]

Breeding male, rollers don't usually look like that. Best bait in the whole river


Sent from the talk of tap

 

[choupique]

Man, scn must need to go back to Tech for a remedial ichthyology refresher...

It's a redtail chub, Nocomis effusus. Stonerollers don't have that red spot behind the eye, have smaller scales, and have already lost their tubercles - they spawn much earlier than the two species of Nocomis chubs in Tennessee do.

 

[catman529]

Man, scn must need to go back to Tech for a remedial ichthyology refresher...

It's a redtail chub, Nocomis effusus. Stonerollers don't have that red spot behind the eye, have smaller scales, and have already lost their tubercles - they spawn much earlier than the two species of Nocomis chubs in Tennessee do.

good point, I thought something didn't look right. I've caught breeding stonerollers in a cast net before and it was somewhere around March not June.


Sent from the talk of tap

 

[DaveB]

Didn't there used to be an artificial bait company called "Creek Chub"?

Didn't know that pic was what they really looked like.

Ah, males pick up stones and roll them away to create a breeding nest. Stone rollers.

 

[scn]

Man, scn must need to go back to Tech for a remedial ichthyology refresher...

It's a redtail chub, Nocomis effusus. Stonerollers don't have that red spot behind the eye, have smaller scales, and have already lost their tubercles - they spawn much earlier than the two species of Nocomis chubs in Tennessee do.

Since it has been forty years since I took Dr. Etnier's class, I'm happy to just get close.

 

[choupique]

That's pretty close! (and sorry to tar you with the Tech brush!)

DaveB, creek chubs are a different fish altogether.

Y'all do know that Etnier's Fishes of Tennessee is available online for free as a PDF now? Heck of a resource.

http://newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/fishes/

 

[RUGER]

To the defense of scn, he may or may not have gotten the picture that showed the red dot.

I don't remember which one I sent him.

 

[moondawg]

I catch a few of them when I go to the Spring River in Arkansas. I've always called them suckerfish.

 

[ROUGH COUNTRY HUNTER]

This is the first one I ever saw