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Hornyhead
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The hornyhead is found from Pennsylvania to Wyoming and south to Alabama, on both sides of the Alleghanies; everywhere common in the larger streams, seldom ascending small brooks; one of our most widely distributed and best known minnows.
In different parts of its range it is known as the hornyhead, river chub, Indian chub, or jerker.
Wherever it is found at all, every boy who goes a-fishing is familiar with it. As a game-fish it is the most active and vigorous of its tribe. Any sort of hook baited with an angleworm or white grub is a lure the hornyhead can seldom resist, and he bites with a vim and energy worthy of a better fish. The fight he makes, though it would not wholly satisfy the veteran black bass angler, is quite enough to fill the youthful Walton with unbounded joy and pride. But as his experiences widen his chief interest in the horny-head lies in the fact that it is one of the best of live baits for nobler fish. For muskallunge, pickerel, walleyed pike, and black bass of either species, as a live bait it is not surpassed; large individuals for muskallunge and increasingly smaller ones for the others, those for the small-mouthed black bass being not over 3 to 5 inches in length.
A hardy, active minnow, and of an attractive colour, as a live bait it is unsurpassed.
Head 4; depth 4 1/4; D. 8; A. 7; scales 6-41-4, 18 in front of dorsal; teeth 1, 4-4, 1, or 1, 4-4, o, sometimes 4-4. Body stout, little elevated, and not much compressed; head large, broadly rounded above; snout bluntly conical; mouth rather large, subterminal, little oblique, the lower jaw somewhat the shorter; upper lip below level of eye; maxillary not reaching front of eye; barbel well developed; dorsal fin rather posterior, slightly behind insertion of ventrals: caudal broad, little forked; scales large, not crowded anteriorly; lateral line somewhat decurved. Colour, bluish-olive above; sides with bright green and coppery reflections; a curved dusky bar behind opercle; scales above with dark borders; belly pale but not silvery, rosy in males in spring; fins all pale orange, without black spot; males in spring with a crimson spot on each side of head; adults with top of head swollen, forming a sort of crest covered with tubercles; young with a dark caudal spot. Length 6 to 12 inches.