Longear sunfish, Lepomis megalotis, are a very varied sunfish. Some experts recognize up to six subspecies. They are a very small sunfish. Six inches is a true lunker in most waters. Most people refer to them as perch, sunperch, bluegills, or sunfish. This kind of lumping together is why many people don't often encounter them: they expect them to be in the same habitats as all the other "perches." Longears are colored quite differently from most other sunfish species, with shades of red, orange and aquamarine marked on their bodies and fins. They have a set of brilliant aquamarine markings on their cheeks like a green sunfish. Their ear flap is long, edged with white and curves up on juvenile individuals. Some juveniles have an olive green back with a yellow belly, but this is more common in the eastern part of its range. The only sunfish that can be routinely confused with a longear is a dollar sunfish. Where the two overlap ranges, two keys have been used to identify the fish: dollar sunfish have random blue spots, longears have regular blue spots; and dollar sunfish are found in swamp habitat, while longears prefer some sort of moving water.

Longears are very late spring and summer spawners, meaning they spawn later than bluegills. This means bluegill hatchlings have an advantage on their cousins: they can eat them. This also means that spawn fishing is extended by at least a month. Longears on the spawn behave very similar to bluegills.

Longears can be found in several sorts of waters. Their native homes are creeks with rocky bottoms. In some cases, this is the familiar brook with cobblestone bottoms, in others it is the red sandstone bottomed creeks. Longears can also be found in impoundments and ponds with inlet creeks. In most of these environments, stocked bluegills have driven longears either out of the system, or into habitat that bluegills don't prefer. In impoundments, this is places like concrete or stone rip-rap. If the rip-rap is located next to deep water, longears can grow to sizeable proportions, but if the rip-rap is on a shallow slope, chances are the longears will be small. In ponds, longears are pushed into the shallowest water, and up into the feeder creeks. If a pond is mostly shallow water, bluegills may not establish at all, or may be very rare. In creeks, longears will force bluegills out of the system unless large areas of deep slack water are available. Any bluegills left are usually small, scrawny and pale.

To appreciate longears, light tackle is essential. For spin fishing, two pound test is not to light. For bait fishing, two to four pound test and size 10-14 hooks are standard. For fly fishing, if you have a two or three weight you want to use but don't have any trout streams around, now's your chance. Don't be fooled by small size though, they put up a good fight for their size.

Good bait for longears includes the famous nightcrawler, small minnows, crickets (a favorite), mealworms, tiny crawdads, bits of shrimp, cheese and grasshoppers. My favorite lures are curlytail grubs in smoke, olive, chartreuse or pumpkinseed. Several years ago, a soft plastic minnow called the "Keystone Minnow" was offered in a "panfish kit" with about 200 minnows in various colors and five jigheads (you know those types of kits). These were about an inch long and fished with a light round jighead. They were probably the all-time best lure I have ever used for longears; I haven’t seen them in years. Other good lures include marabou jigs, micro tube jigs, tiny spinners and any other small panfish lures.

Flies for longears are pretty simple. They like buggy looking nymphs, preferably in olive, rust, black, or tan, in sizes 10-16. Olive is probably the best color overall, but don't overlook the others. In stained or deep water, bead heads help tremendously. Other good flies include tiny white and silver streamers, small grasshopper and cricket imitations, poppers and wet flies. Most of the flies I tie for sunfish are on a size 8 dry fly hook, but for nymphs and wet flies I will usually use the smaller nymph hooks. Oddly, I have not had much success with dry flies.