Northern strain????

Comment

Comment by Chris Salmon on November 2, 2011 at 6:52am

has that white/yellow on the tail

Comment by LedHed on October 25, 2011 at 8:47pm

I can't say for sure but they sure are fun to catch.

The lake was stocked with both - but we catch a lot more Coppernose.

Comment by Walt Foreman on October 25, 2011 at 6:35pm

But it is a front view, so perhaps I'm seeing it wrong?

Comment by Walt Foreman on October 25, 2011 at 6:33pm

It looks pretty straight coppernose to me...Just my take on it.  I've caught hundreds of pound-class northern-strain, and every one of them had a much more elongated, flatter if you will, head than the female coppernose have, this one included in my eyes.  My first suspicion that somehow some coppernose had been stocked into a 300-acre TWRA lake near me came when I caught a small female, about six inches, two summers ago that was unusually tall - that was the sole characteristic that made me think coppernose.  Then I was down there this summer and they had a new photo of an eleven-inch male coppernose someone had caught this spring.  There was no doubt the fish was a coppernose - it had the copper band across the nose, purple on the gill plate, etc.  And a poster on a Tennessee fishing forum posted photos a couple months ago of half a dozen bluegill he thought had unusual coloring, and they were young coppernose.  Turns out, according to a TWRA guy I ran into at the lake, that somehow they ended up stocking some bluegill from a hatchery truck; he hadn't been aware they were coppernose.

 

All that just to say, it looks way too tall to be northern (in my humble).

Comment by LedHed on October 25, 2011 at 5:53pm

JG - never tyed a jig that got hammeed so hard. Not sure if it is the season or what but we get a lot of gut hooks now. Have to go barbless.

 

Thnx for the insight Walt. How about a nothern cross with a coppernose?

Comment by Walt Foreman on October 25, 2011 at 3:33pm

Also, if you look at the lower lobe of the tail you can still see a little of that telltail white fringing, which of course does not occur on northern-strain.

Comment by Walt Foreman on October 25, 2011 at 3:32pm

Looks too tall to be northern.  I had never seen females that tall before I caught coppernose. 

Comment by Jim Gronaw on October 24, 2011 at 5:37pm

I got some on the red auto yesterday at a local lake...fought hard for ten fish over 8 inches, most were small.

Comment by Jeff Soto on October 23, 2011 at 1:04pm

Nice!  Hey what's the water temp now?