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<p>Hey gang, sorry to ask such a stupid question, but upon looking at the 2 (greaters) we took pictures of I found out that this stretch has rivers and greaters running together. I'm 99% positive FP's is a greater but the one I'm holding looks different then his, if I'd have known ahead of time we would have documented them better, I just classified them as red tails and not concaved dorsal so NOT shortheads, never thought about greaters and rivers. Any help would be greatly appreciated, we didn't get any good side shots for scale counting as we didn't want to drop and hurt them. Here are the two fish we photographed:</p>
<p><img src="http://roughfish.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/IMG_2377_0.JPG?itok=yrs2TckR" /></p>
<p><img src="http://roughfish.com/sites/default/files/IMG_2380_0.JPG" /></p>
<p>Now the second one the mouth/nose looks darker and the red is darker, unfortunately when he took the pic of mine he chopped off the rest of the tail too, like I said we just knew they weren't shortheads so had to be greaters. I have the MOX horse ID chart, but these are the first ones we've ever seen up close, silvers, goldens, and shorties are now easy because we've caught so many. Any dead give aways between the greater and the river? Andy's tip that blacks don't get tubercles was a huge help IDing my golden as a golden. Thanks gang sorry for dumb questions and not so great photos of mine. These are the only two pics we took of mine:</p>
<p><img src="http://roughfish.com/sites/default/files/styles/very_large/public/user-lifelist-images/IMG_2383.JPG?itok=jRSeQZkM" /></p>
<p><img src="http://roughfish.com/sites/default/files/IMG_2385.JPG" /></p>
I was able to move the "live" feature on the phone and screenshot this dorsal on mine better too now:
and here's a better picture of FP's they just look different:
Both these are Greaters. Major ID points
~16 scales around the caudal peduncle on Greaters, ~12 on Rivers
Rivers have very asymetrical caudal fin lobes (upper and lower parts of the tail fin are different), Greaters are pretty symetrical
River dorsal fin top edges are concave to straight, Greaters are straight to convex
Also obvious once you'd caught a few but not at first for most:
Greaters are more slender vertically than Rivers, Rivers often have bigger mouths and heads proportionally (more so on large individuals)
Dark scale pockets at the base of the scale, very obvious on Greaters basically non-existant on Rivers
Coloration of the body is poor ID tool on many species. Often times it seems like that is more of a male/female thing
Big Thanks Tony! I posted them both as greaters but wanted to be sure mine wasn't messed up, very cool fish and they fight like tanks. Thanks for the helpful advice too.