Pumpkinseed

The Pumpkinseed is a small, brightly coloured freshwater sunfish named for its body shape, which resembles a pumpkin seed. It is native to eastern North America but has spread widely, both across the continent and into Europe.

Also known as: pumpkinseed sunfish, seed, punky, yellow sunfish, round sunfish, pumkinseed

The Pumpkinseed is often confused with the similar bluegill, which shares the same black gill cover. The orange-red spot near the edge of that cover, described above, is missing in bluegill and is the clearest way to tell the two apart.

This fish can be orange, green, yellow, or blue, speckled over the sides and back with a yellow-orange breast and belly. Faint greenish or bluish vertical bars cross the sides, most noticeable on females, and orange spots dot the dorsal, anal, and tail fins. Blue lines run across the cheeks, and the black gill cover carries an orange-red spot near its edge. The mouth is small, with the upper jaw stopping below the eye.

The Pumpkinseed lives in warm, calm lakes, ponds, and slow creek pools with plenty of underwater plants and clear water. It is native from New Brunswick south to South Carolina and inland toward Iowa, but has been introduced across much of the rest of North America and into Europe and the UK, where it is now considered invasive.

This is a carnivorous fish that hunts both near the surface and along the bottom, taking insects, small molluscs and crustaceans, worms, tiny fish, and small frogs or tadpoles, and even eating smaller Pumpkinseeds when the chance arises. It also feeds heavily on mosquito larvae and will readily take scraps of human food such as bread.

In late spring or early summer, males sweep out shallow, oval nests on sand or gravel bottoms, roughly twice their own body length, often gathered in loose colonies. Females arrive from deeper water to spawn, and a male may host eggs from more than one female in his nest. The eggs stick to the nest bottom and hatch within days, and the male stays behind afterward to guard the young.

The Pumpkinseed is common and listed as least concern. Its spawning grounds can be damaged by shoreline development and erosion, and because it is sensitive to silt and pollution, its presence is often used as a sign of clean, healthy water.

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  Black Crappie

  Pomoxis nigromaculatus

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  Bluegill

  Lepomis macrochirus

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  Freshwater bass

  bass

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  Green Sunfish

  Lepomis cyanellus

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  Largemouth Bass

  Micropterus nigricans

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  Redbreast Sunfish

  Lepomis auritus