Ditch fish
I’m always looking to add species to the fish page here on the site and I know there are some smaller sunfish species found locally that have eluded me thus far, so I put in a couple hours with the fly rod on a local ditch on Friday afternoon to see what I could find.
The bream beds were thick in one stretch of the creek and I caught quite the variety of sunfish in short time.
Green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Longear sunfish (Lepomis megalotis)
Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
Warmouth (Lepomis gulosus)
Hybrid sunfish?
The ditch was very shallow, but full of life. There were also redear on beds and bass and gar cruising around, none of which I managed to fool with a fly. It’s not the prettiest place in the world to fish and it’s hotter than hell right now, but you can’t beat the diversity of species.
Mountains to Marsh 
Hey man, just a note that the longear is actually one of the really cool subspecies of longears that have been recently identified and may or may not be given their own species or subspecies designation (like when they broke the Northern Sunfish from the Central Longear). That one is the Western Longear Sunfish, notable by its boxy shape/lobed head, less blue marbling than other longears, the more distinct striping than most longears, and the rusty patch that runs above the anal fin from the belly to the lower back. Louisiana is a real melting pot for these fish, where 4 subspecies overlap (Central Longear, Swampland Longear (aka “Starburst” Longear) and the Western Longear are found across the state, ad the White River Longear can be found in the NW corner of the state.
Tight lines – nice blog!
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Thanks for the head’s up, I had no idea there was any research being done to separate longear sunfish, but I could see the justification given the differences in the fish across their entire range. Shoot me a link to whatever data is out there regarding this, I’d love to check it out.
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