UTERFresh water fish species: all 58
58 species — inshore, surf, reef, offshore, sharks, fresh water, and the bait. What each one is, what it eats, how to fish it, the live bait for it, what it's worth in the book, and the rule — with the date the rule was checked.
The points scale
rarity and size; bait scores nothingA catch scores the fish's base points times how many, up to double again for a trophy-size fish photographed on a ruler, plus ten for a photo and fifty for the first of a species in your book.
Inshore
4 fish
White perch
The Chesapeake's pan fish: a little cousin of the striper in every tidal river and creek, running up to spawn in March and schooling on the points and oyster bars all summer.
Sockeye (red) salmon
The red: a plankton-eater that rarely bites a lure in the ocean, then pours into Alaska's river mouths by the million in July.
Steelhead
The sea-run rainbow trout: chrome-bright from the ocean, running the coastal rivers from California to Alaska in winter (and some in summer).
White sturgeon
A living dinosaur — North America's largest freshwater fish, feeding in San Francisco Bay and the Columbia estuary.
Offshore
2 fish
Chinook (king) salmon
The king: the biggest Pacific salmon, black-gummed, spotted on both tail lobes, feeding on herring and anchovy in the ocean from Monterey to Kodiak before it runs home to its river.
Coho (silver) salmon
The silver: an acrobat that hits fast-trolled lures near the surface all summer and floods the bays and river mouths in the fall from Oregon to Kodiak.
Fresh water
52 fish
Largemouth bass
Florida's fish in fresh water: the Florida-strain largemouth that grows to fourteen pounds in the lakes and the phosphate pits, and the reason Okeechobee and the Kissimmee chain are famous.
Peacock bass
The butterfly peacock: a South American brawler stocked in the Miami canals in the '80s, gold and black-barred, that hits a jerkbait like a train and jumps.
Bluegill
The bream: the fish every Florida kid catches first, on a cane pole and a cricket, and the fish the grandparents fry on a Saturday.
Redear sunfish (shellcracker)
The bluegill's bigger, red-eared cousin that eats snails off the bottom and grows to two pounds in the lakes of Central Florida.
Black crappie (speck)
The speckled perch: the winter fish of the big lakes — Okeechobee, Kissimmee, the St.
Channel catfish
The everyday catfish of the rivers and lakes, spotted and forked-tailed, on the bottom at night on anything that smells.
Blue catfish
The big river catfish of the Panhandle — the Escambia, the Apalachicola, the Choctawhatchee — fifty pounds and more in the deep bends.
Flathead catfish
The predator catfish: yellow-brown, flat-headed, sixty pounds in the log jams of the Panhandle rivers, and it only eats live fish.
Striped bass
The striper of the St.
Bowfin (mudfish)
The mudfish: a living fossil with a long dorsal fin and a mouthful of teeth in every swamp and slough, that hits a bass lure like a bull and fights dirty.
Florida gar
The armored, needle-nosed fish rolling at the surface of every canal and lake, that bites everything and hooks nothing — a rope lure that tangles in its teeth is the trick.
Bullseye snakehead
The invader of the Broward canals: a mottled, air-breathing predator with a bullseye on the tail that explodes on a frog in the weeds.
Chain pickerel
Florida's little pike: a chain-patterned, duckbilled ambusher in the weedy lakes and rivers of North and Central Florida, that hits a spinnerbait from nowhere.
Suwannee bass
Florida's own bass: a small, blue-bellied bass found only in the Suwannee, Santa Fe, Ochlockonee and Wacissa rivers, on the rocky shoals and the spring runs.
Shoal bass
The river bass of the Apalachicola and the Chipola in the Panhandle, a bronze fighter of the rocky shoals and the current that hits a topwater like a smallmouth.
Hybrid striped bass (sunshine)
The hatchery hybrid of striped and white bass, stocked in the big lakes and rivers, schooling in the open water and under the bridges at dawn, and a hard fight on light tackle..
Warmouth
The big-mouthed, mottled sunfish of the swampy edges and the stumps, that eats a bass lure meant for something bigger.
Redbreast sunfish
The river bream of the Panhandle and North Florida rivers — the Suwannee, the Ochlockonee — orange-bellied and hard-fighting on a fly rod or a cane pole along the sand bars..
Spotted sunfish (stumpknocker)
The stumpknocker: a small, dark, dotted sunfish in every Florida creek and river, tight to the wood, that hits a bug as it lands.
White catfish
The catfish of the lakes and the brackish rivers of Florida — the St.
Brown bullhead
The mudcat: the small, mottled, square-tailed catfish of every pond and canal, that takes a worm on the bottom at night and is better eating than its home suggests..
American shad
The poor man's tarpon of the St.
Mayan cichlid
The orange-and-barred cichlid of the South Florida canals and the Everglades, an invader that fights like a bluegill twice its size and eats well.
Oscar
The aquarium fish gone wild: a thick, dark cichlid with an eyespot on the tail in the Everglades canals, that hits a beetle spin like a bass and is surprisingly good to eat..
Clown knifefish
The strangest fish in Florida: a three-foot, silver, knife-shaped Asian invader with spots along its belly, in the lakes of Palm Beach County, that takes a live shiner at night.
Blue tilapia
The invader in every Florida pond, lake and canal: a big, blue-gray, vegetarian cichlid that ignores lures and fills a cast net or a bowfishing arrow.
Smallmouth bass
The bronzeback: a bronze, red-eyed, tail-walking bass of clear rocky water — the rivers of the Ozarks and Appalachia, the TVA lakes, the Great Lakes shoals.
Spotted bass (Kentucky bass)
The spot: the bass of the deep, clear Southern reservoirs and the Ohio basin rivers — rows of dark spots below the lateral line, a tooth patch on the tongue, and a habit of schooling deeper than its cousins.
Guadalupe bass
The state fish of Texas: a small, green, spotted black bass found nowhere else on earth but the clear spring-fed rivers of the Hill Country — the Llano, the Pedernales, the Blanco, the San Marcos.
Redeye bass
The little bass of the Southern Appalachian creeks — bronze, red-eyed, white-edged on the tail — in the clear, cool streams of the Coosa and Savannah basins.
Yellow perch
The ringed perch: gold with dark saddles, schooled by the thousand over the weed flats and the mud of the northern lakes and the Great Lakes, and the fish behind half the ice shanties and fish fries of the Midwest.
Walleye
The marble-eyed perch of the North: a night feeder with glassy eyes that see in the dark, schooled on the rock reefs and the river runs from Lake Erie to the Missouri reservoirs and south in the TVA mountain lakes.
Sauger
The walleye's smaller, blotchier river cousin, built for the big, muddy, moving water of the Tennessee, the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri — and the fish that keeps the tailwaters busy all winter..
Northern pike
The water wolf: a long, green, duck-billed ambusher of the northern weed beds, with a mouth full of teeth and a habit of hitting anything that moves.
Muskellunge (muskie)
The fish of ten thousand casts: the biggest of the pike family, fifty inches of barred or spotted fury in the clear lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Lake St.
White bass
The sand bass: a silver, striped, shad-chasing schooler that runs up the rivers by the thousand every spring to spawn — the Texas rivers in February, the Wolf in May — and boils on the surface of the big lakes all summer.
Rainbow trout
The trout everybody knows: pink-striped, spotted, jumping, stocked in every cold river, tailwater and city pond in the country and wild in the West and Alaska.
Brown trout
The wary one: a butter-yellow, red-spotted European trout gone native in the limestone creeks, the Rocky Mountain rivers and the Ozark tailwaters, where it grows to thirty pounds on sculpins and small trout.
Brook trout
The brookie: the native char of the Appalachians and the North Woods, olive-wormed, red-spotted and orange-bellied, in the coldest, cleanest headwaters there are.
Cutthroat trout
The native trout of the Rockies and the Great Basin, slashed red under the jaw: Yellowstone and Snake River fine-spotted cutts that rise to anything, westslopes in Montana's mountain rivers, and Pyramid Lake's giant Lahontans..
Lake trout (mackinaw, togue)
The char of the deep, cold lakes — Superior, the Finger Lakes, Flathead, Flaming Gorge, Tahoe, the Alaska interior — grey and cream-spotted, slow-growing and long-lived.
Kokanee salmon
The landlocked sockeye of the western reservoirs — silver, schooling, soft-mouthed plankton eaters that turn red and hump-backed when they run the tributaries in fall.
Arctic grayling
The sailfin of the North: a silver-violet, purple-spotted fish with a dorsal fin like a flag, rising to dry flies in Alaska's clear creeks and in a few high lakes of the Rockies.
Landlocked Atlantic salmon
The landlocked Atlantic of Maine's big lakes — Sebago, West Grand, Moosehead — and New Hampshire, Vermont and New York: a leaping, smelt-eating salmon that follows the ice-out smelt run into the river mouths.
Burbot (eelpout, ling, cusk)
The only freshwater cod: a slimy, eel-tailed, chin-barbeled night fish that spawns in writhing balls under the ice in February.
Freshwater drum (sheepshead)
The grunting silver drum of the big rivers and Lake Erie — a hard-pulling, mussel-crunching fish the Midwest calls sheepshead, and the bonus fish on every walleye trip..
Common carp
The golden ghost of the flats: introduced everywhere, scorned by most, and one of the hardest-pulling fish in fresh water.
Longnose gar
The needle-nosed gar of the eastern and central rivers — an armored, prehistoric, surface-rolling predator that hangs motionless in the summer sun and is nearly impossible to hook..
Alligator gar
The giant of the Gulf rivers: eight feet and two hundred pounds of double-toothed, armored fish in the Trinity, the Atchafalaya and the Red.
Paddlefish (spoonbill)
The spoonbill: a plankton-straining, paddle-snouted relic of the Missouri and Mississippi basins that never bites — it is snagged, in short spring seasons, when it runs upriver to spawn below the dams.
Lake sturgeon
The ancient sturgeon of the Great Lakes basin and the North — a century old, a hundred pounds and more — protected nearly everywhere, but speared through the ice on Lake Winnebago in February and caught-and-released on the Rainy River in spring..
Northern snakehead
The invader of the Potomac: a long, blotched, air-breathing predator from Asia now established in the tidal Potomac, the Chesapeake tributaries and around Philadelphia.