I have never heard of that cross Greg. Sunfish and a rockbass yes. That makes a warmouth and they can get sizable and have a fairly large mouth with the red eye. They are longer and not near so round as the the bluegill we see in the pure form.
White and black crappies have been reported as being crossed, but I have not seen one of these critters. Like roughed-grouse, where there are two distinct color phases, the black crappie can exhibit some tendency toward being lighter or darker. And I am not referring to breeding coloration here either. Personally I have caught crappies [black] from one spot in our local lake where one will look almost like a white crappie on one cast and yet another, much darker, on another cast. They both have the same mottling as any black crappie, just one bieng much “whiter”. On this note, I have also heard some speculation that crappies, all fish for the matter, will pale under the ice since they don’t get any sunlight without it being heavily filtered. The fish that I have taken have been caught after ice out by a number of weeks but well ahead of any spwaning coloration event and I have caught them in the heat of summer and the late fall period as well. Finding these with such distinctive, yet different, coloration variations sort of steers my to think that they possess the ability to run either lighter or darker genetically in a single body of water.
The make-up of the water itself can lighten or darken a fish. Some wa;;eyes come from one water on one side of a road where the lake is influence heavily with tanic acid from tree leaves or cedars decaying in the water. An the other side of the same road might be a lake that has an inlet and an outlet with a current that comes from yet another clear-water lake. The fish coming from that stained lake will likely be much darker, black to green, across the back while those from the clear water puddle will have an amost golden sheen to the back. A fish’s water environment can dictate some subtle coloration variables.
That Warmouth I mentioed earlier is one of the meanest fish in the water. They attack baits feverishly and fight like crazy. I have seen and caught them during the ice season, but they really prefer the warm water period and it is then that they raise heck on light tackle.
.png)
.
