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Red-spotted Sunfish
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This small, highly-coloured sunfish is found from Ohio and Kentucky west to the Dakotas and south to Texas; locally abundant, especially in sandy streams in the lower Missouri basin. It reaches only about 4 inches in length and, though it will take a hook readily, it is of little importance as a game-fish.
Body oblong, profile not steep; scales large; spines rather high; mucous pores on head very large; opercular flap rather long, broad, and with a very broad red margin which entirely surrounds the black; longest dorsal spine not quite half head; pectoral a little shorter than head; gillrakers rather long and well developed. Colour, bluish, with conspicuous greenish spots and mottlings posteriorly; side with many conspicuous round, salmon-red spots; usually a faint black spot on last rays of dorsal; belly and lower fins red.
Lepomis haplognathus is a rare species known only from Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The species is interesting chiefly in that it is the most southern sunfish known.
In the Ohio Valley, and southwestward to Kentucky and Arkansas, is another small sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) reaching a length of 4 or 5 inches. It is related to the bluegill, from which it differs in having no black spot on dorsal or anal fin, in the short opercular flap, and in having chain-like crossbands on the side. It is a rare species.