Odd thing on a redfish

[onefishtwofish]

To me at least.

First, we assumed today would be tough will all the rainfall, but we wanted to fish and the weather looked good. Left out to catch the rising tide and fish through as it fell. The redfish were sparse, but the trout were on fire. Today was a rare keeping day as we wanted to have a fry next weekend. Wound up with 8 keepers and turned a ton of shorts loose. Only one over 20" and it was only 1/4" over so it was kept as well (I usually turn over 20" back even when keeping, but we had to pinch it to make it 20", so it came home too). All on artificals, mostly jig and jerk shad bait. The water was a lot clearer than I thought it would be, could see bottom in 2.5 to three feet when the sun was out. I reckon that will change as the rivers empty out.

Now, the weird thing. Caught an over red (just a tad under 29"). Found the following on it.

parasite.JPG (122.01 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

It looked like a cross between a roly poly and a shrimp. Definite arthropod of some type. You can see how big it is. There were two of them on the fish. Bloody spot at each site where it was attached.

Also saw this on the fish.

parasite2.JPG (148.34 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

parasite3.JPG (141.32 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

These were very thin, about a 1/2" long and attached under the gills on the body and behind the gills as well, and 2 on the dorsal fin. Very firmly attached and also left a pin size spot of blood where we pulled them out. We killed all of them and now I wish I had saved them, just for curiosity.

Can anyone point me to where I can find what these are? Google was no help. I have a caught quite a few reds in the Big Bend and never seen these.

[onefishtwofish]

We were still catching when the thunder rain us off. Made it in time to only get a little wet. Had a pretty good hailstorm on the way back home. Had to slow down to a crawl. Figured no sense adding 60mph to the impact.

[EddieJoe]

Parasitic isopod.
That term will google. A lot of times reef fish like butterfly fish or angels have big ones on their heads. You want to just catch them and pull them off, kind of like giant ticks.

EJ

[onefishtwofish]

I tried Isopod, copepod, athropod and crustacean and could never find a pic of the exact one I saw. I am not a taxonomist, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[EddieJoe]

Probably the isopod commonly called fish louse, of the family Argulidae. Google that and marine external parasites.

[CaptainJack]

It is propably an isopod but as far as which one it's hard to tell without a better picture and even then it'd be difficult. According to my invertebrate text (2001) there are over 10,000 different species of isopods both aquatic and terrestrial. If you're able to save one the Marine Lab folks can probably i.d. it for you.

Nice report. Thanks.