Green Sunfish

Another watercolor journal entry, and another unsung fish to spotlight. This is a green sunfish.

If you like to fish, you’ve caught one. In the US, they’re seemingly everywhere — from trophy trout streams to silted farm ponds to mighty reservoirs to meandering creeks. The story goes that if you left a bucket of water outside for a couple of weeks, there would be a green sunfish swimming in it.

These are immensely resourceful and adaptable fish, but not without issues. For one, they are hardly recognized for what they are. Hold up a green sunfish to a fellow angler and he’ll either shrug indifference or mutter, “nice bream.” [Bream, which is pronounced “brim” around here, is both a misnomer and a catch-all. Most panfish* are called bream, just as most soft drinks are called “Cokes.”]

But, a greenie is neither a brim nor a breem. It’s a green sunfish. They’re part of a larger group of similarly-shaped but proudly-different fishes within the Lepomis genus of the Centrarchidae family. Greenies are not as flashy as their nattily-attired cousin, the long-eared sunfish, and nowhere near as popular as their attention-grabbing, cricket-gobbling relative, the bluegill.

Green sunfish are also aggressive fish. Perhaps, too aggressive. Equipped with a larger mouth than most of the Lepomis clan, they can out-predate most of their kin. Greenies are like your cousin who piles four pounds of mac-n-cheese on his plate, then passes you the empty bowl.

The voracious little greenie that inspired this painting took a fly on an otherwise fishless outing on an Arkansas tailwater. When you spend all day fishing for trout that either aren’t there or aren’t fooled, you relish whatever eventually tugs on the end of your line. Maybe that’s the best thing about these guys — they’ll eat when nothing else does. So, thank you for being you, Mr. Green Sunfish. Hope you like your portrait.

* To be a panfish, you have to fit into a frying pan. Don’t be a panfish.