Shiner ID, 2017 version

[Fossil Fish]

These little buggers give me problems every year. Yesterday, on our way home from a long weekend camping trip at Oastler Lake (Parry Sound area), my son and I stopped at a spot I was at last year , hoping to catch logperch and northern sunfish. Neither of those species were anywhere to be found and it was a lot weedier than I remember it, but what we did see, beside bluegill and pumpkinseeds, were small shiners. I quickly put on the micro hook and caught one almost instantly. I just wrote it off as an emerald shiner, so I let the boy have a go at micro-fishing. He caught several, I caught a few more then we left. Fortunately I took a few pics, because when I zoomed in, I can only see 7 or 8 anal fin rays. I'm thinking what we caught were mimic shiners based on ray count, the "mouse-track" pattern I think I can see along the lateral line and the anterior lateral line scales being very tall compared to wide. What's throwing me off is that I think I can see a large spot at the base of the tail, suggesting spottail shiner, but that spot is much larger than other pics of spottails I've seen. Anyone else care to weigh in on this. I have a few other pics, but all are quite similar.    

[garfisher]

(07-03-2017 01:25 PM)Fossil Fish Wrote:  These little buggers give me problems every year. Yesterday, on our way home from a long weekend camping trip at Oastler Lake (Parry Sound area), my son and I stopped at a spot I was at last year , hoping to catch logperch and northern sunfish. Neither of those species were anywhere to be found and it was a lot weedier than I remember it, but what we did see, beside bluegill and pumpkinseeds, were small shiners. I quickly put on the micro hook and caught one almost instantly. I just wrote it off as an emerald shiner, so I let the boy have a go at micro-fishing. He caught several, I caught a few more then we left. Fortunately I took a few pics, because when I zoomed in, I can only see 7 or 8 anal fin rays. I'm thinking what we caught were mimic shiners based on ray count, the "mouse-track" pattern I think I can see along the lateral line and the anterior lateral line scales being very tall compared to wide. What's throwing me off is that I think I can see a large spot at the base of the tail, suggesting spottail shiner, but that spot is much larger than other pics of spottails I've seen. Anyone else care to weigh in on this. I have a few other pics, but all are quite similar.

Mimic Shiners do have a bit of a "caudal spot", which really is their faint lateral stripe widening into a triangular shaped blotch of sorts. Looking at the anus for pigment would be the next step to separating them from Spottail, I'm pretty sure you do have a Mimic Shiner there though.