Freshwater fish

[LCF]

Mortuus and I did a really fun dive on the remnants of the old I-90 bridge yesterday. We saw quite a lot of fish, actually, although I think there were only two species.

One had a body shape halfway between a perch and a salmon -- a slightly pointed face, not torpedo-shaped but maybe between a third and a half as tall as it was long, and very thin body. The coloring was speckled grey and silver and black, and uniform over the entire body. Some of these were very large, as much as 18" or more in length.

The other looked like a sculpin. These fish were found sitting on structure. They had a face like a padded sculpin, and no cirri. The dorsal fin was in two parts, both rounded, and the second part ran almost all the way back to the tail. The head was relatively broad, with the body becoming slender rapidly behind the gills. Color was granular gray with clusters, very similar to a ling cod. The biggest ones I saw were about six inches long, and many were smaller. We saw them at depths from 25 feet to 75 feet.

Anybody have any idea what they were? None of the references I have at home talk about freshwater fish.

[oldsalt]

Lynne: In flipping through my Freshwater Fishes of Canada, I came up with a couple of possibilities for the sculpins. Both the Coastrange Sculpin (Cottus aleuticus) and the Prickly Sculpin (Cottus asper) match your descriptionI have no clue as far as the other is concerned. I suspect some lake fisherman could tell you right away.
-Curt

[LCF]

Thank you, oldsalt! I'll go look them up.

I figured the other fish were so big that somebody must catch them . . .

[LCF]

Prickly sculpin seems to match the fish I saw best. It's kind of fun to learn that the ID criteria I've learned to recognize sculpins in the Sound generalize to correctly identifying this freshwater fish as a sculpin species.

[Furnari]

I'm down in Oregon, so I'm not too familiar with the fisheries up there. That said- could your bigger fish have been pikeminnows?

[LCF]

The pictures I could find of pikeminnows were too long and slender, I think, with too long a "snout". These fish really looked like perch who had been stretched out a bit.

I need to do this dive again and take photos.

[Marc]

The pictures I could find of pikeminnows were too long and slender, I think, with too long a "snout". These fish really looked like perch who had been stretched out a bit.

I need to do this dive again and take photos.

Small Mouth Bass?

[Dusty2]

The pictures I could find of pikeminnows were too long and slender, I think, with too long a "snout". These fish really looked like perch who had been stretched out a bit.

I need to do this dive again and take photos.

Small Mouth Bass?

That's what I was just thinking. Sounds right. Lynn you ave GOT to get a camera! Bad pictures are better than good descriptions any day.

[LCF]

Small mouthed bass is exactly what they were! Thanks! And it makes sense, too, because I kept thinking that they were so big, somebody must catch them for eating.

I have a camera. I just decided not to bring it on this dive, because I've been so scattered over everything else that is happening in my life, I thought task-loading with a camera wasn't a good idea.