<p><a href="http://www.roughfish.com/batch-image-set-single-viewer/101977">http://www.roughfish.com/batch-image-set-single-viewer/101977</a></p>
<p>Caught in the fresh water portion of the Mullica River in Southern New Jersey. I know the river has an abundant white catfish population, and previously thought these smaller brown cats were just the juvenile or alternate coloration of the white cat. They seem to have a pretty high variability in color and pattern. However, after some new information, I think this might be a brown bullhead.</p>
<p>Any bullhead experts that can help me out? If this is anything other than a white cat, it would be very exciting for me. I've read that white cats have all white barbels on the underside, but I'm not sure if that's a surefire identifier, or if that can have variability as well.</p>
<p>Thanks for you time,</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>SleepySheep</p>
Brown bulldog for sure my man
I thought so! Looking back through all the pictures of catfish I've caught, I think part of the confusion was that some of these brown bullheads are almost as slate gray as the white cats (eg http://www.roughfish.com/sites/default/files/20200329_192204.jpg), and some white cats have similar mottling to browns. Not to mention they both have tails that are rounded with slight indentation, although the white cats definitely have deeper indentations. The differences are pretty obvious now that I know better.
Thanks so much!
I agree with Jackson, that's a brown bullhead for sure.
Once you see it you can't unsee it. The tricky part is seeing it the first time.
Beacuse the chin barbels are much way too dark to be a brown, imo. The tail would have to be slightly more forked in be a white cat IMO as well. Obviously not yellow either due to nearly black bottom barbels, too large for stonecat/tadpole madtom, and NJ is outside of the range for all other southern bullheads.
I spent half my money on fishing, gambling, alcohol, women and billiards. The other half I wasted.
Black Bullheads are rare to absent along the Atlantic coastal drainage
I think there are a couple points of evidence in favor of it being brown over black. Firstly, the pine barrens are right in the brown bullhead's native range, but not the black bullhead's. Next, the whiskers are light at the base and dark at the tips, which I think is only true of browns, but again I'm not familiar with all possible color variations. Second, the mottling looks a lot more like the pictures of brown bullheads on this site. Seems like the black bullheads generally lack this mottling, and tend to have a bit chunkier of a body shape.
I think the darker coloration of the barbels' base is due to the extreme dark coloration of the river itself. Cedar, tannic acid, and iron are concentrated here, and the river is a dark tea color, generally appearing black, and having a visibility of about 6 inches on a good day.
I've noticed that asianangler is mired in a bit of a Fish ID slump, if you look at the last few ID attempts. Certainly cannot question the effort though lol
Hey, we've all had slumps. I once identified a bluegill as a pumpkinseed and made several other such horrible guesses. The only way I got better was by handling the fish and being corrected by people on here who know more than me.
I've had mindbogglingly poor ID's and inexcusable overlookings of fish over the years. Between this year and last I realized that I failed to add a new fish due to poor ID work in 2014, 2017 and last summer lol.
I do feel as though I am now ready to make advancements in the Fish ID Arts, however.
I'm glad Asianangler brought it up, because it gave me a chance to really look at the two species side by side and do a close comparison, which I imagine is great way to hone your fish id skills.
Brown vs black bullhead is a classic, especially with bigger Black Bullhead. Tony gets tired of me sending him large Blacks during the June contest asking "IS THIS A BROWN?!?!?"
The tail crescent on blacks gets so much more indistinct on larger specimens, and color mottling is rough.
I actually believe the New York state record black bullhead was really a misidentified brown bullhead. Considering it was caught on long island and we dont have black bullhead here
Thanks so much for acknowledging my ID attempts and debating the Black vs Brown bullhead issue, I'm still not very good at it myself, even to this day actually because they just seem so similar to me. I did manage to eliminate all other similar species of bullheads and catfish. Again, I am grateful for your support, such as reminding me of the tail crescent on Black Bullheads.
I spent half my money on fishing, gambling, alcohol, women and billiards. The other half I wasted.