Sunfishes

But what it can do is it can change the age at which it matures.

All of the sunfishes, that is the family of Centrarchidae, which are all of the bluegills, pumpkin seeds, crappies, rock basses, all that, and all of the black basses, smallmouth, largemouth, all the rest of the 19 species of black bass, are very plastic in their age of maturation.

So largemouth bass and smallmouth bass in Canada can mature as early as, three years of age when they're say 180, even as small as 180 millimeters, or they can delay maturation until they're maybe eight or nine years when they're well over 400 millimeters in total length.

So, and how they do that determines how big they get.

They were just in the Saline River.

But they also found a huge increase in Centrarchid sunfish bass abundance.

I want to say it was like a 728% increase from historic to contemporary times.

And so when you think about where do sunfish like to hang out, they kind of like to hang out in water willow.