Help with Fish ID: Panfish with red fins?

[roxyhunter]

Hi everyone - I'm new to fly fishing and am quickly becoming addicted. I grew up occasionally spin fishing for bluegill, trout and bass. I never had much direction so my interest petered out at a young age. Last year I started fishing trout streams with my spinning gear but wasn't having much fun.

Two weeks ago I picked out a fly fishing setup. It's been awesome. My casting is poor but good enough to pick off bluegills on the Wissahickon. This weekend I tried to expand my horizons during a trip to central PA. It was a humbling experience trying to fish a lake in the morning and Yellow Creek in the afternoon. Neither were particularly successful but I learned a lot.

Sorry for the long preamble... this evening I fished the area where the Perkiomen Creek flows from the Schuylkill. I heard the bass fishing is great in the area. I don't really know what I'm doing so targeted the edges of the river grass. The water was about a foot deep, clear and many crayfish on the bed.

I used a grasshopper looking fly with good success around the river grass and fallen logs. At first I caught bluegill but then I hit a school of fish that I don't think I've seen before. They were longer than a bluegill, didn't have the blue gill marking but did have very distinctive red fins on the underside of the body. They were small ranging from finger to palm sized. Could these have been juvenile perch? Next time I'll have a camera along.

Also, any advice for bass fishing in that area would be much appreciated. This is a fantastic site

 

[Swattie87]

Your mystery fish could be a Redfin Pickeral...that explains the small size and the red fins on the underside of the body. Common in the Delaware watershed too, and pickeral/the pike family in general seem to gravitate toward weed edges. That's where I catch all my Chain Pickeral in central PA streams.

Redfin page on the PFBC site...is this your fish?
http://www.fish.state.pa.us/pafish/fishhtms/chap11pikes.htm#redfnpk

The only other common PA warmwater fish in your area that I can think of that could also be a suspect is a Redbreast Sunfish. They sometimes have red in their back and tail fins, but not so much on the fins on the underside of the body. They more or less resemble a Bluegill though.

Outside chance it was yellow perch as you mentioned too, but I would think that is less likely than the first two given where you caught it. They do sometimes have a deep orange that borders on red in their fins too, but are fairly rare in streams.

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You're on the right track to find some bass. They're in the same water you're already fishing. The great thing about warmwater streams in my opinion is the variety of the fish they hold, most of which are eager to eat just about anything you put in front of them.

 

[roxyhunter]

Thank you for that - I think that is the fish. The ones I was catching had very distinctive red along the edges of their fins. I never would have thought it was a pickerel. I was mistakenly under the impressions those are brackish/saltwater fish

 

[Swattie87]

Sure thing. Pretty cool fish...I always like catching Pickeral. Something about the teeth, even on the little ones, gets your heart going.

 

[Fishidiot]

Roxy,
Welcome to Paff - glad you're enjoying the site.