In response to the post about the fish the boy caught at the fishing derby, my Mom suggested it might be a bluegill. I didn’t think it was, as there is no blue on the fish whatsoever. But what struck me was how similar the body and fins of the bluegill are to the fish the boy caught.
Well, the bluegill is a member of the sun fish family. That led me to this Wikipedia entry. I was hoping for a list of all the members of the family so I could go through it and compare pictures with the picture of the boy’s fish. A potentially annoying prospect, but I was, (Ahem!), hooked on figuring it out. As it happens, at the bottom of the page is a picture of a fish that looked an awful lot like the boy’s.
After clicking through the link under the picture, I have no doubt that I found the boy’s fish: the black crappie. No snickering out there.
So consider that mystery solved.