Riverine Fish

Ohio is blessed with an abundance of water, but like all developing areas, past and present land use practices affect our water resources.

Land uses that allow soil to runoff into our waterways cause silting of streams and increased turbidity, which can result in a lower quality of water and thus a loss in the diversity of aquatic organisms.

Fish have specific habitat requirements, thus the health of a fish community can tell us a great deal about the quality of the waterway where they reside.

Riverine Fish of Ohio's Scenic Rivers

Warmouth Sunfish (Lepomis gulosus)

warmouth sunfishA species favoring lakes, pools, oxbows, marshes, and streams of low gradients, the Warmouth Sunfish is the most voracious piscivore (fish eater) of all the sunfishes.

They prefer substrates composed of muck and organic debris, and healthy populations of aquatic vegetation that they use as their spawning grounds.

After spawning the male warmouth is extremely aggressive in protecting the nest. When an intruder nears the nest, the male warmouth will puff out its opercles (gill plates), and push small pulses of water at the intruder with its tail. If this fails the warmouth will attempt to nip at the intruder to ward it off.

The original distribution of this species in Ohio has been clouded by stocking programs of this and other species initiated in the 1920s. They were known from glacial lakes in northwest and northeast Ohio and from weedy low gradient streams such as the upper Cuyahoga River in northeast Ohio where moderate to large populations still exist.

The pumpkinseed is a common associate of the warmouth in the northern Ohio lakes and streams.