Minnow Identification

[erikwells]

I have been trapping minnow in my pond and I have a species of minnow that I and several of my fishing buddies cannot identify. They are about 2-6 inches long, brown in color, vertical lines different shades of brown, big mouth, pointy tail and orange fins. I actually caught a minnow like this before fishing a small slough like lake a few years back. Any ideas?

[Duffman]

Central Mudminnow would be my guess. Do a web search and see if that's what it is.

[Bob_D]

Here is a good reference site for you.

EFISH

[Dennis Steele]

I am with Duffman on that one.

Sure sounds like a mudminnow.

I get a few of them when I seine the creeks around my place for chubs. Never tried one for bait.

[MJCatfish]

I trapped some minnows with the exact same description. Kind of looked like a cross between a walleye and a perch. Someone told me they were sand perch. Sand perch as I know them, are saltwater fish. I don't believe these are fish; I believe these are minnows of some sort. They might be some sort of a dace, I'd guess.

MJ

[MJCatfish]

I've caught mud minnows also, but the ones I had in mind were not mud minnows. They had pointed fins. They were not soft-rayed like the mud-minnow.

MJ

[Dennis Steele]

After I posted I thought that the pointy tail was not quite right for a mudminnow.

So I looked up a few.

There are a couple varieties of Stone Rollers and they are pretty common. I think they are mostly a stream minnow.

Lots of different Darters in the streams around the state. Maybee something like this?

This one is the Mudminnow.

Any of these resemble what you caught??

[Dennis Steele]

Here is a link to native minnows in Minnesota.

http://www.gen.umn.edu/research/fish/fishes/natural_history.html

[erikwells]

Dennis, number three is the winner. That's my minnow. I have some that are about 6 inches long. I just throw them back in the pond and my son loves to catch and release them as well. Are they good for bait or are they going to be for my sons C & R practice? Thanks again it was killing me.

[MJCatfish]

I found the beast, thanks to Dennis. I looked at a few sites before I looked at Dennis's link.

This is known as a logperch.

MJ