I think it's a good idea and we can all share photos to get better reference of local species. I try to catch come sort of forage each time I'm on the water. I'll start with a gizzard shad I caught yesterday and a golden eye that was caught on tuesday from texoma.

Crazy how they have that dot. Looks like a really small trout

Good idea too on the thread, I fished my home town lake of broken bow ok and fish were literally schooling all over the lake. I'm talking a half mile from any bank. They were all micro shad though. Really small. I'll try to catch some in the future for you. Heck I may get into painting lures looks fun.

Last one the top two are bluegill and one redear, I'll be able to post a lot more next week

threadfins...

Heck yea man glad to see some more pics on this thread, can never have to many good photo references.

Those last few pics make the fish look electric!!

Where did you catch the threadfin shad? I really like those picture, I have been toying around with a holographic threadfin pattern a little lately might have to break out some other colors to try and make them look like the ones you have pictured.

they should look electric seeing as how we got them during an electrofishing survey! lol those pictures are from a private lake about 10 miles from Lake Fork. I'll look through my phone and see if I can dig up some more. Like I said I can have some more for you next week. The thing I want to be able to have for you is the different color variations on bluegill even from the same water body so you can have maybe 2-3 different patterns for bluegill if that interests you.

Amazing how the shad look different depending on the angle of light hitting them. Really beautiful little fish. The holographic foils come about as close as anything I've seen to mimicking that color shift. As for the gills...they're all unique...basic 5-9 vertical bars, and then one gill pattern is as good as the next. Note the Redear's oversize orange eye. They seem to be better adapted to brackish water where they crush and consume large numbers of snails, midge larvae, and mayfly and dragonfly larvae. Their feeding habits are unique among sunfishes found in Texas. Also, they spawn only once during the summer, which puts them at a disadvantage, especially in bass-crowded waters. My grandpa used to catch the heck out of them in Kickapoo creek upstream from Lake Palestine.

8lber puked this Gizzard








There ya go, happy painting!

Fourth from the bottom is in bad shape. Maybe that is why Bass love a chrome bait with about half of the chrome wore off.

If these guys would paint one to that effect, I would like to have it.

I like it--Distressed chrome; maybe a blotchy camo type pattern alternating between bone and chrome.

It's in bad shape because it was regurgitated in the live well, half digested or at least trying to.

Not sure what this one is...Northern sunfish or Green Sunfish?

Either way its a beautiful picture.