Strange fish on the Harpeth

[antilibrarian]

I was playing hooky form work yesterday and decided to wade the Harpeth at Highway 100.

I cast into a shaded inlet between several good pieces of cover and was rewarded with a bite!

When I finally got the big beastie to me I had a flashback to my recent Florida vacation. I would swear that I was looking at a pompano. The fish I caught was maybe 10 inches long, silver with red at the gills and yellowish orange at the tail and on the belly. Had that same disc type build as a pompano too. It definately was not any big version of panfish I have caught before. There were no stripes or markings that were visible in the silver sides other than the colors.

Any ideas?

And FWIW, I am strictly catch and release unless I have someone who has told me they want my catch so I put the fish back.

:confused:

[Adough]

Dunno, a good place to start would be here

http://www.tnfish.org/PhotoGalleryFish_TWRA/FishPhotoGallery_TWRA/TWRAFishPhotoGallery.htm



Perhaps a fish from someones koi pond?

[bd-]

Identifying fish from an online description without a photo is always tough. I can't think of anything offhand in the Harpeth that makes me think of a pompano.

My best guess is a quillback carpsucker. They are definitely in the Harpeth, and it's extremely rare that they take artificial lures, so they wouldn't be something most anglers have seen - though I've caught a couple here and there on flies while fly fishing for carp, mostly in the Caney and Smith Fork Creek.

It doesn't look a LOT like a pompano, but the high back and pointy fin could look a little bit reminiscent of one if you stretch your imagination, I guess.

Is this your fish?

http://ohiodnr.com/Portals/9/Images/fishing/fish/Quillback%20Carpsucker%20by%20BZ.jpg

bd

[thehick176]

It sounds like you just described a Piranha. It seems to far fetched to be true but they have been found and caught in our local lakes before. Just a thought.

[bd-]

By the way, other possibilities might be a freshwater drum:

http://www.tnfish.org/PhotoGalleryFish_TWRA/FishPhotoGallery_TWRA/images/FreshwaterDrumTellicoNegus_jpg.jpg

Or a large gizzard shad (it would be really weird for one to bite an artificial lure, but I've caught a couple on extremely small flies):

http://www.tnfish.org/PhotoGalleryFish_TWRA/FishPhotoGallery_TWRA/images/GizzardShadDouglasNegus_jpg.jpg

Or maybe even a mooneye. I've never heard of mooneye being in the Harpeth, but there are a few in the Cumberland, so maybe:

http://gallery.nanfa.org/d/22962-4/Hiodon+tergisus++Mooneye+2000.jpg

All these fish do have the attribute of being silver like a pompano, but honestly I think they look even less like a pompano than a quillback does.

bd

[Travis C.]

Did it look anything like this:

http://www.larsenoutdoors.com/assets/images/autogen/a_6Payara.jpg

If so......run

:D


With the colors on there not just silver kind of sounds like a little drum since it hit lures.

[antilibrarian]

Thanks guys.

But none of these are even close. The fish from someone's aquarium may be the best answer. I realize this would have been easier but I was wading without my waders so had nowhere to carry my phone to take a picture. :(

And there were no teeth like that picture from Travis. I would have had to cut that feller loose!

Ah well. Maybe I can get a couple of hours of fishing in on Friday morning before it gets too hot.

Thanks all!

[catfishtn]

maybe this?

[antilibrarian]

Nope, not silvery enough and not disc shaped enough. I really thought I had a pompano.

[Mike Anderson]

Well I've heard that recently there are alot of needlefish migrating as far as the Cumberland from the Gulf but they don't look like the fish you described... No telling.

[bd-]

Even when wet wading, I wear a fishing vest and I keep my phone in a ziploc bag in one of the pockets to keep it safely dry even if it gets dropped in the water.

I have a friend who slipped on a rock while wet wading and shattered an ankle, and it was a 3 mile crawl back to his car with no phone.

There are a lot of bad things that can happen on a wading trip. In this age of small, easy to carry cell phones, it's wise to put one in a plastic bag and carry it for safety purposes. Even if you're far out and don't have enough signal to place a call, you can usually get out a text message unless you are so far away from civilization that you don't have any signal whatsoever.

bd

[antilibrarian]

point taken.

[bd-]

Plus you could go back and catch that fish again and take a picture so we could figure out what it was. :)

I just can't think of any freshwater fish that looks anything much like a pompano. If it wasn't a baby quillback, I'm stumped.

Maybe a flier? They look kind of like a cross between a bluegill and a crappie, but they can be pretty silver sometimes, especially in murky water.

http://www.crappie.com/crappie/attachments/tennessee/28607d1242702678-weird-fish-caught-watershed-flier.jpg

A ten inch flier would be a genuine monster though. Probably a state record.

bd

[bd-]

By the way, just for reference, let's make sure we're talking about the same fish. We agree that this is what a pompano looks like, right?

http://www.ricksstrangeworld.com/pompano1.jpg

To me, the only thing that comes close in freshwater around here would be a gizzard shad or maybe a baby quillback. I guess it's possible someone put an aquarium fish in the river but that seems like long-shot odds.

A threadfin shad looks remotely similar:

http://calfish.ucdavis.edu/files/79593display.jpg

It even has the yellow fins sometimes. However, threadfin rarely get over 4 inches long, and never up to 10 inches.

bd

[MikeW]

Maybe a Red Bellied Pacu? People have dumped them in local lakes before when they get too big for an aquarium. Can`t post a pic from my phone and the home computer isn`t cooperating but you can do a search and find pics pretty easy.

[bd-]

Here's a pacu:

http://www.thejump.net/id/more-fish/pacu-clear.jpg

Often the smaller ones will be silver instead of slate gray, very much like a "silver dollar fish" that you can buy at the pet store. They still really don't look much like pompano though.

Also note that they are in the pirhana family, and they have teeth:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGC/StaticFiles/Images/Show/42xx/425x/4255_vampire-fish-02_04700300.JPG

The teeth are not as sharp as a pirhana's but they are often capable of biting through light line.

All in all, I think it's a real long shot that it's an aquarium fish. I mean it's possible, but just awfully unlikely. I think it's more likely that we've got a regular native species that was either not looked at very clearly, or maybe even a little deformed or something, and now hard to identify without a photo. That's usually the case.

bd

[antilibrarian]

BD, that is the fish although this image shows the colors better.
http://www.dimensionsguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Size-of-a-Pompano.jpg
Since I work for the Nashville Public Library in one of the branches, Friday is my day off. I am thinking I may just need to go back and see if I have any luck catching the nassty little beastie again.

[bd-]

Yup, you can't quit until you get him, or else this is going to drive me crazy. I hate unsolved mysteries!!!

bd