Fish with Dolphin-like Behavior

[Coastal Laker]

Since I wasn't fishing, and wasn't planning to be, I didn't post this under the Fish Tales heading. I'm wondering if anyone would know what fish on the lake would do what I saw last night on Paugus Bay...

An entire school of fish were swimming and jumping like dolphins, cruising right along like little dolphin wannabees. I have never seen anything like it while boating on the lake. There had to be over a dozen of them, their entire bodies even cleared the water as they went along. They couldn't have been longer than 12" in length. I saw them ahead of me while cruising and went around. They weren't the least bothered by the presence of my boat.

Any thoughts? Has the spawn of Flipper arrived in Winnipesaukee?

[Rolie]

.........rock bass??

[Grant]

.........rock bass??


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But seriously -- I have no idea what fish would do this, and have never seen it -- sounds intriguing! John from NH F&G might know. Paging John...

[JohnNH]

One of the species on the lakes that is well know for traveling in schools and often cruise the surface is White Perch.

Over the years we have seen them stay near the boat, jump out of the water and provide all sorts of entertainment.

In many cases, these small to large schools ( a dozen or so and up to the hundreds) of white perch will be under attack by a larger fish and this may/will cause them to jump and/or scatter.

In addition, a school of fish may be chasing some sort of food source (baitfish, frye, water bugs, etc.) and in their effort to capture their lunch, they may become acrobats.

Perhaps John Viar, a biologist from NH F&G can add his comments and experience.

John/NH

[Grant]

Interesting -- never knew that about white perch.

A few years ago, I was startled by a very large school of fish in the Lake -- something I'd never seen before. They were just far enough away that I couldn't ID them for sure, but there were hundreds. Now that you mention this, I think they very well could've been white perch. I was only in about 15-20 feet of water.

[Dave R]

If the wind is light you can smell white perch schools at the surface. Use to troll for them as a kid and we always knew when every line off the boat was about to get a strike because we smelled a strong fish odor as we passed over the schools. Seconds later as the lures entered the school, everyone would hook a fish. Better than sonar...

Tasty little buggers. They are not really perch and are actually in the bass family (like stripers), I'm told. Same source also told me that largemouth and smallmouth "bass" are actually in the perch family like yellow perch.

[Frdxplorer]

Not exactly the same sort of thing but I did have an interesting experience with a bass this past weekend. I came across a big smally that seems to live around the rocks that are under our swim platform. When my sister started to swim away, the fish followed her and when she swam back, it again followed her. By this time, I had swam into shore and found a few crayfish under the rocks. I swam out and after throwing the bass (my sister has named him mervin) the first crayfish, it then began eating them out of my hand. It's an amazing thing to watch. The fish grabbed the crayfish from my hand and then spit it out, sturck the crayfish, spit it out, struck the crayfish again and so on about 3 or four times. It was really neat to watch how it gets its food. I quickly ran out of crayfish and went back in to shore to find more. I certainly expected the fish to remain in the deeper water but to my surprise, when I turned around in the shallow water, there was mervin waiting for his treat. All in all, this story seems too hard to believe. But for the skeptics, stop on by Winter Harbor way in august and i'll introduce you to mervin if he is still around.

[Dave R]

I have had similar experiences with smallies. They are extremely curious fish and seem very willing to be touched and hand fed. I can recall snorkeling near the rope swing at my friend's lake place while people were using the swing. You'd think the big splashes would scare the smallies away but in fact it attracted them. There were dozens of them loitering in the area apparantly just to see what was going on. Largemouth bass seem far more skittish.