Question about a fish...

[SAtightlines]

I was making some casts on a local state park pond and I caught a silver fish with orange lower body fins.... It was basically the size of a herring.
I'm thinking it was a full grown shiner? Anyone?
Sean

[bonefishdick]

Your basic Red Fin Shiner !

[G-Man]

I may be wrong on this but ....
I thought Red fin shiner only gets like 4 inches long... small thing.

The fish you're describing I thought was called a Whitefish.
That's what I used to call em anyways.
Very spooky school fish seen among the sunnies ... get up to like 12 inches and .. love worms. :cool:

[Bob Parsons]

I used to catch fish like that in a pond known for good bass. In fact one even had a notch on its back behind the dorsal fin where the hook had ripped out when it was small and used as bait. My vote : shiner

[SteepBank]

yep Shina...

[leftys big fish]

I thought it could be a dace because of the color you described on the fins. I ran into a similar situation a few years ago fishing some rivers out in western ma. I kept catching these shiner like fish in trout streams when the temps were too hot for the trout. Someone at a local fly shop identified it as a dace, so i had just been calling it that since. But i have only seen them in streams and rivers. Never in ponds. Not a bad fish as far as fighting goes in some of the bigger ones

[Slappy]

I thought Red fin shiner only gets like 4 inches long... small thing.

:

Red fin shiners get up to at least 2 lbs and spawn this time of year. Find a school and you can have very active fishing on the fly or spin.

[G-Man]

Well you gents got me doing some research ... and after further investigation I agree with you. The fish I have seen and caught in these part is an adult Shiner not a lake whitefish.

There's loads of kinds of shiners like all other fish it seems. From what I read the Golden Shiner is what's used for bait and grow very rapidly up to 12". The adults have orange\red bottom fins. Everything I read about real "Red Fin Shiners" tho ... they're twinks. Still, I'm sure we're talking the same fish.

Makes sense too, given the number of live shiners tossed in after an outing.

Well Sean ... you got enough info here to google up some images.
Tell us what you caught, eh? :cool:

[SAtightlines]

Yea, it was a golden shiner. This makes sense because I've seen people using shiners here for years. I caught it w/ a streamer and like someone previously said, it did give a surprising fight considering its size and the fact that it is a shiner. I wish I had known that it was shiner I would be willing to bet it had a notch behind its dorsal fin.
Verdict: The mystery fish is a full grown golden shiner

[Peter Jacobson]

Sounds more like a fallfish, which is also a member of the minnow family - check out the picture. We used to use them for pike and pickerel bait when we were kids. People would laugh at our 8-10 inch bait and softball-sized bobbers, but they stopped laughing when they saw the fish we caught with them.

http://www.thejump.net/id/fallfish.htm

[e-sea-e]

Sounds more like a fallfish, which is also a member of the minnow family - check out the picture. We used to use them for pike and pickerel bait when we were kids. People would laugh at our 8-10 inch bait and softball-sized bobbers, but they stopped laughing when they saw the fish we caught with them.

http://www.thejump.net/id/fallfish.htm

we used to use 8-12 inch yellow perch for bait rather than shiners, and got the same reaction, again, untill people saw the results.

[SAtightlines]

It wasn't a weakfish, although strikingly similar. It was the golden shiner.