Home › Volumes › Fishes › The Basses, Crappies and Sunfishes.
Shell Cracker
Images coming soon.
The habitat of this fish extends from Virginia to Florida in all suitable lowland waters. It is particularly abundant in Florida in which State it seems to be pretty generally distributed. It reaches a length of nearly a foot and is one of the largest and most important sunfishes in the South. Its habits are much the same as those of the bluegill which it also resembles as a food and game-fish. In Florida it is the sunfish which is most frequently taken on the hook, the long cane pole being the rod in most popular use.
Body robust, compressed, elevated, the snout rather produced; maxillary reaching orbit; preopercle slightly toothed; dorsal fin high, the spines about as high as the soft rays, the longest half head; pectoral fin very long, as long as head; gillrakers moderate, obtuse, strongly toothed; opercular flap short, broad, with a broad orange margin below and behind; no palatine teeth; lower pharyngeals broad, the teeth large, with subspherical crowns. Colour, dusky olive, silvery below; throat yellow; fins dark, with yellowish rays; no black spot on dorsal or anal.
Eupomotis longimanus is known only from the St. Johns River, Florida, and is of doubtful validity.