# Green sunfish or warmouth?



## Star1pup

Just read an article about catching green sunfish and they sure looked like what we here call warmouth. Any sure way to tell which is which?


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## pseckman

Seems like the green sunfish have bluish green stripes or markings on their sides and from the head, war mouth have more brown or tan color stripes in my experience. Both species do have a very large mouth for their body size. This is a great reference for them. http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/species-and-habitats/species-guide-index/fish


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## BuckeyeFishin07

Warmouth also have a tooth patch on their tongue if I remember correctly, where the green sunfish doesn't


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## Shad Rap

Lots of people confuse the two...


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## Star1pup

Thanks for the help. I guess we all are a bit confused. ;-)


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## riverKing

The joke is is that warmouth are the least common Sunfish species in the state of Ohio behind a subspecies of long Eared Sunfish recently reclassified as Northern sunfish. I very rarely ever see actual warmouth and when you do they are almost always alone, they do not school like other Sunfish species. I would venture to guess that over 95% of the pictures of quote Warmoth I see people post are Miss identified. Green sunfish however are extremely common. You likely have seen so many people call green sunfish warmouth that you did not realize they were a different species. I always suggest people get a copy of fishes of Ohio, it's rather an expensive and a very good resource for Anglers who want to be able to identify the species of fish they catch.


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## Star1pup

riverKing said:


> The joke is is that warmouth are the least common Sunfish species in the state of Ohio behind a subspecies of long Eared Sunfish recently reclassified as Northern sunfish. I very rarely ever see actual warmouth and when you do they are almost always alone, they do not school like other Sunfish species. I would venture to guess that over 95% of the pictures of quote Warmoth I see people post are Miss identified. Green sunfish however are extremely common. You likely have seen so many people call green sunfish warmouth that you did not realize they were a different species. I always suggest people get a copy of fishes of Ohio, it's rather an expensive and a very good resource for Anglers who want to be able to identify the species of fish they catch.


Do you mean extensive instead of expensive, or is there a more complete book out there. I think you're right about most of what we catch are green sunfish, but these here seem larger. I did electro fishing with ODNR one time and was told the green sunfish stay very small.


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## riverKing

Sorry voice text problems, it is inexpensive, $25 I think. 
It is also probably the best single resource for an angler that is looking to learn, bonus the way it was written you dont need a fisheries degree to understand the information.


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