Always take pictures of your fish (or you'll miss the 1% mark)

[MuskieBait]

Three weeks ago I was fishing in Illinois looking for new species to our lifelist. We came across some logperch that, although at the time we did not realize it was a unique species, it as just fun to catch. When we finally caught some, Ben said they might be a subspecies.

It turns out that these logperch were actually recognized as a separate species (depends on who you ask...but I go by FishBase, and it is also in the Peterson's guide). The orange margin on the first dorsal fin gave them away as the Ozark Logperch (Percina fulvitaenia).



Although they are somewhat out of the recognized ranged, in the same stream we also caught Bleeding Shiner which was also out of recognized range (Bleeding Shiner's range overlap with Ozark Logperch). We suspect that the sampling report did not adequately sampled the stream population and it was missing some areas holding some species, the Ozark Logperch and the Bleeding Shiner being two of these species.

If I had not taken a picture of this logperch (even though I had already caught a Logperch (Percina caprodes) on my record), I would have completely missed a species.

For those new anglers who are not familiar with fish ID, this is another example why you should always quickly take a picture or two of any uncertain catches (and then promptly release the fish since you are not certain which species it is, thus you do not know what the regulation is pertaining to this unknown species). It helps for identification of the fish at home.

Counting the Ozark Logperch meant I had officially caught 325 species of fish, approximately 1% of all fish species recognized on FishBase.

Now onto the next 1%.