Bluegill and LMB in Japan

[JBplusThuy]

Ran across this photo album on Google Plus, shows some nice bluegill and LMB caught in the Hiroshima area:

https://plus.google.com/photos/102509885580321866165/albums/5702860...

[Leo Nguyen]

You and Dick are right. Dick indicated the color schemes wouldn't match the SMB. Like all of us got thrown off with gills' ability to change colors, shapes, and size, my brain kicked into a fantasy that the SMB would be doing the same thing. I ignored the color scheme, and went straight for the unique mouth identification instead. Day dreaming in a dreary office I guess.

[dick tabbert]

Was in Viet Nam in 1969 and 1970. There was a small lake outside of Na Trang in the hills. That's where I saw the Bluegills and they were gill I had a mask on and seen them clear in that crystal clear lake. Don't know the name of the lake been so long I forgot.

[JBplusThuy]

Interesting. Last summer my brother in law caught a bunch of small fish at a pay-to-fish place in Saigon. At first I thought they were bluegill with really small ear tabs, then I said to myself "Nah, these must be young tilapia, which are, after all, native to SE Asia." Maybe I was wrong and they were bluegill after all :-)

Nha Trang is beautiful, we took a weekend trip there in the early 2000s. Haven't been to any lakes around there, but we did go to a place outside of Nha Trang that has a beautiful waterfall and pools. I'm told it was a VC stronghold during the war. I'll put a photo of the place in my profile pics.

[dick tabbert]

I'll check it out thanks.

[David, aka, "McScruff"]

In an episode of "River Monsters," Jeremy Wade was in Japan and caught a nice catfish, while fishing a topwater frog in the rain. It was kinda strange.

It has become something of a fishing sore spot in Japan, this introduction of bluegill and bass into their native waters. I know sportfishing is popular there, and I'd think they'd welcome prolific species like the sunfishes. You just never know.

[JBplusThuy]

I saw that not long ago on Netflix, he was fishing in Biwa-ko. Yeah, I thought it was kind of odd to catch a catfish on a topwater frog :-) Those giant river salamanders were impressive, I'd never heard of them when I lived there.