ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: SOME FISH SUFFER THROUGH IDENTITY CRISIS

Between liberties taken with common names and the often footloose qualities of some fish species, it's sometimes hard for fishermen to know what's showing up on the business end of the line.

What do you think when someone says he caught a "perch?"

The most commonly caught fish in the region that actually falls into the perch family is the sauger, but more likely someone who mentions perch probably makes reference to a green sunfish, the common small inhabitant of ponds, creeks and lakes. He's often called a "green perch" or "pond perch." A real whopper will be about six inches long.

Or maybe someone is talking about a "white perch," which happens to be a common and improper label for the freshwater drum. (There really is a distinct white perch species, but that's a fish of the Eastern coastal states. It is not found here.)

Freshwater drum -- widely distributed and plentiful -- are silvery-sided, leather-lipped bottom feeders that frequently grow to weights of 10 to 20 pounds or more, but cook up with the flavor or an old shoe.

The drum and the green sunfish are greatly dissimilar, but they have something in common: Neither is a perch, but gets called that.

There's a fairly new player in the region for which the perch label is accurate. From who-knows-where there is now a thriving population of yellow perch in Kentucky Lake.

A common fish in the Northern United States and Canada, the yellow perch is a small panfish with yellow-gold body and dark bands along the side. A relative to the sauger and walleye, the yellow perch is a smallish critter, a mature one being only in the range of 8 to 10 inches long. Though small, it's high valued as a food fish.

Biologists doubt that yellow perch will ever flourish to the point of offering a major fishery in this region, but they see no significant negative impacts from its presence, while it offers some occasional diversity in catches.

Sauger, the plentiful native cousin of the yellow perch, falls into another abyss of erroneous name-calling that often confuses area anglers. It's sometimes referred to as a "pike," a short from of the "jack pike" name that's applied in some other regions.

Sauger have teeth like pike, but pike they ain't.

All in the family, there are a few walleyes being caught in the region's river systems, though far less commonly than the very similar sauger. Walleyes are sometimes called "walleyed pike," and there we go with another confusing misnomer.

Then again, the fish that regionally gets dubbed a pike most often isn't a sauger, but isn't a pike, either. It's a chain pickerel.

Chain pickerel -- toothy, torpedo-shaped relatives of northern pike (which are not found here) -- are native to numerous streams and rivers of the region. In recent years, they've experienced a mini-boom in population in Kentucky Lake in response to the spread of aquatic vegetation there.

Chain pickerel commonly grow to lengths of 20 inches and more, though fish that will top three pounds have to be considered pretty large. Big ones offer some sport for anglers, most often being taken incidentally by bass fishermen.

Some Kentucky Lake anglers refer to the local pickerels as "grass pickerel." That's actually another species common to some small creeks. Though chain pickerel like to live in grass beds, real grass pickerel, similar in looks to their chain cousins, are miniatures. That species seldom grows larger than about a foot in length.

Big pickerel occasionally are misidentified as muskellunge, another pike family relative. While they are extremely rare in the region, however, muskellunge have been documented here. A big one showed up in a gill net on Kentucky Lake within the past year.

Appearances can add extra deception to the already-confusing name game. Crappie, for instance, aren't all just crappie. There are two distinct species -- white crappie, which are predominant in the region, and black crappie, which are abundant but less populous than the white variety.

Identity crisis among crappie can occur during the spring when male crappie of both species display spawning colors. Boy crappie, both blacks and whites, develop blackish markings on their sides; girl crappie don't. When some anglers catch what they call a black crappie, it may or may not be. Sometimes they label a white crappie in spawning colors a black crappie.

If in doubt, the best indicator of a crappie's species, incidentally, is to count the sharp spines in the dorsal (top) fin of the fish. A white crappie has six or fewer dorsal spines, whereas a black crappie has seven or more.

fish identities can go even further astray quickly when local anglers converse with fishermen from other areas, for common names of fish often vary considerably from place to place across the country.

A Floridian, for example, might suggest that specks provide the best eating of freshwater fish. Someone from Cajun country might say he prefers fried sax-a-lait. Others might chirp in that they best like white perch or strawberry bass. Someone from this region might make a case for crappie as tops on the table.

One would hope there wouldn't be too much dissent in such a conversation, because all those other fish are crappie, too -- just known under different localized names.

What with all the differing and misapplied names, plus the fact that some species of fish show up where they aren't expected, angler's conversations can be misleading at least.

It wouldn't be fair to say a fisherman doesn't know what he's talking about. It might be, however, that nobody else is quite sure.

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of The Paducah Sun.