Meet a really neat member of North America's native sunfish family: the Flier! You can find this fantastic aquaria fish and worthy ultralight target sipping midges and chasing their small fish prey in cypress swamps. You'll come away from this episode with a great understanding of and appreciation for these beautiful, underappreciated fish. Our guests, both members of the North American Native Fishes Association, unpack their knowledge gained through first hand experience catching and keeping these fish: Tyler Goodale  is a flier enthusiast and fisherman from Southeast Missouri and Dylan Bane is a teacher, football coach and native fish enthusiast/aquarist in Illinois.

Get to know the Spotfin Chub! This beautiful, sometimes shimmery blue fish is endemic/unique to the Tennessee River basin in the Southeast United States and the only species in its genus. After listening, you'll know all about it's cool bedrock/crevice spawning habits, how the impacts of Hurricane Helene are still at play, and tips for interacting with this fish and other cool native species along the increasingly popular Blue Ridge Snorkel Trail. Our guests are Luke Etchison from North Carolina's Wildlife Resources Commission and Pat Ciccotto from Warren Wilson College.

Get to know the Blue Catfish! From their habits in big rivers like the Missouri and Mississippi to fishing opportunities in small reservoirs, we have two great guests to help dig into the details:  Kurt Hentschke and Joe McMullen from the Missouri Department of Conservation. Joe is a big river specialist and manages Missouri's commercial fishing program and Kurt manages Missouri's Hunnewell Fish Hatchery. You won't want to miss fun facts about hotdogs, deer hair, and catfish testes!

Learn more:

https://research.mdc.mo.gov/project/big-rivers-catfish-assessment

Take a trip to the middle Rio Grande: a sandy river that, in its heyday, was "a mile wide and an inch deep" and chock full of millions of minnows. Our guests are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists Andy Dean from our New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office and Thomas Archdeacon from our New Mexico Fish & Wildlife Conservation Office.

Get to know the peacock basses! By the end of this episode you'll be familiar with the different species, their savage feeding habits and habitat preferences, and how to put that knowledge to use for fishing in South America or south Florida. Our guest, Dr. Kirk Winemiller, professor at Texas A&M University, brings a huge wealth of knowledge about peacock bass ecology, diversity, and behavior.

Come to the southern Sierra Nevada mountains with Katrina and Guy to learn about the fish that some consider the most beautiful of all trouts: the California Golden Trout.

You might also like these trout episodes:

• S5:E9 Greenback Cutthroat Trout
• S4:E45 Redband Trout
• S4:E42 Apache Trout
• S4:E10 Mexico's Native Trout
• S1:E49 Bull Trout
• S1:E35 Gila Trout

Learn more:

• Spiciest Trout in the West (cutthroats) https://www.fws.gov/story/spiciest-trout-west
• Western Native Trout Initiative https://westernnativetrout.org/

We've got two fish, four guests, and one closed basin for you this week! Get to know a couple of New Mexico's special fishes and the place they call home. Our guests are Jill Wick with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, Serena Kucera with our NM Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, Robert Prather with our NM Ecological Services Field Office, and Tracy Diver from our Southwestern Native Aquatic Resources and Recovery Center.

You might also like: Gila Trout: New Mexico's Sunset Fish (S1:E35)

It may not be the "most" chub, but this unique native fish has a lot to offer! Kaitlyn Purington and Chance Broderius from the Utah Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife Resources offer a state perspective on the public value of the very cool Least Chub.

Like chubs? You might like these episodes:

• S3:E51 Bonytail Chub
• S2:E7 Bluehead Chub
• S2:E6 Humpback Chub
• S1:E47 Lake Chub