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.

[Adough]

Dunno, a good place to start would be here

http://www.tnfish.org/PhotoGalleryFi...otoGallery.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?



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:



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):



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:



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:



If so......run




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.



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?



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:



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.