Fish o' the Day - bluegill

How mundane is that? Bluegill? Still, I'm always surprised at the number of people that been familiar with this fish since they were kids, but still know relatively little about it. In fact, a significant percentage don't even know that it's a bluegill.

Round these parts, people regularly go "brim" fishing (actually, they go brim fishin', if you want to know the truth). You might occasionally find someone who spells it "bream" - might even be a little uppity about it. You'll even find quite a few folks who refer to them as perch, although perch are in a completely different family.

Why all the confusion? It's probably attributable to the diversity of the group to which they belong, a little heritage, and a little laziness on the part of the general public. Bluegill are in the Family Centrarchidae, one of 18 centrarchids in Alabama alone. Of those, 11 are considered to be "sunfish" the relatively small, deep-bodied members of the genera Lepomis and Ambloplites. Back in the day, a trip to the creek with your cane pool and a can of worms might yield several species that looked enough alike to be all lumped together as "brim". This term likely owes its origins to a group of European cyprinids belonging to the genus Abramis and known colloquially as bream, to which the sunfish bear a superficial resemblance. It's likely that settlers in the American South simply christened the fish they caught in their streams and rivers with a familiar moniker.

Nominal confusion aside, the bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) is quite a fish. It's the sunfish of choice, the one that is typically stocked in ponds and lakes, and, probably, the first fish caught in the lifetime of most Americans. That's a pretty significant honor, fishly speaking. They're native to most of the eastern U.S., and have been widely transplanted. The common name comes from a characteristic blue edging on the gill rakers. The species epithet, macrochirus, means "large hand", and is probably a reference to their characteristic size. In fact, bluegill anglers often refer to bringing home a string of "hand-sized" fish. They get larger - the world record, taken from an Alabama lake, is close to 5 pounds.

Bluegill have figured heavily in some significant ecological research, including optimal foraging studies examining prey utilization. Small individuals are usually plankton-feeders, filtering small prey from the water using long, delicate gill rakers. As the fish mature, they move to a diet of insects and their larvae. And, of course, they're fond of worms.