Why you don't use exotics as perch bait

[Gill-T]

There was a clown on this site bragging about the perch he caught using goldfish as bait.  He could not understand why all of the fuss.   Here ya go clown.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/discarded-goldfish-are-taking-over-hamilton-s-harbour-1.3394203

[hermit]

I've been catching goldfish for years in Cayuga, up to 2-3 bs.  Those non-gold fish pictured in the article look like rudd though.  Wild breeding goldfish can lose the bright colors but I'm pretty sure those are rudd.  Easiest way to tell is the hump the goldfish have between the head and their back, the rudd have a smooth curve.  Not that it really matters, they occupy the same niche and are not good for native fish.  I think the rudd can breed with shiners.

 

Edit:  looking at the pictures again it's hard to tell.  Not good enough pics of the heads.  Could be brown goldfish but at least around here the rudd are far more numerous.

Edited February 25, 2016 by hermit

[EsoxAC3]

Where I am.... Rudd have reddish fins. They look like a massive shiner with reddish fins.

[Sk8man]

Where I am.... Rudd have reddish fins. They look like a massive shiner with reddish fins.

Ditto

[hermit]

Well, in the pics in the article they have reddish fins.

Not as red as they could be, but fish coloration can vary greatly. The brown goldfish I've caught didn't have the red tinge the fish in the pics do.

Also, the shape is telling- in that first pic you can see the smooth curve from the head to back and belly on the brown fish, and the goldfish has the characteristic hump I mentioned on both the top and bottom.

Still think it's inconclusive without better pics but they occupy the same niche and can cause the same problems so it doesn't matter much.

Edited March 8, 2016 by hermit

[BSmaster]

Those are not like any of the rudd I have caught.  They look (to me) more like a common shiner without the purple sheen.  The minnow family is pretty big - hard to say for sure.

 

When I was a kid I threw some golden shiners in a private pond that had goldfish and they cross bred and what happened was the offspring were bigger and had a carp like appearance with color blotches.  A severe winter kill exterminated everything so that was the end of that experiment.  What I learned from that is that goldfish and shiners can cross breed.  The gold fish were 2-3 lbs and the hybrid were like 4-5lbs.