Game fish

Specimens of game fish whose measurements (body length and weight) significantly exceed the species' average are sometimes known as trophy fish, as such captures are often presented as bragging rights among fishers.

Examples

The species of fish prized by anglers varies with geography and tradition. Some fish are sought for their value as food, while others are pursued for their fighting abilities, or for the difficulty of successfully enticing the fish to bite the hook.

• Big-game fish or blue water game fish are large pelagic saltwater fish such as tuna, tarpon, grouper and billfish (sailfish, marlin and swordfish). Occasionally other predatory fishes such as sharks, barracuda and dolphinfish are also pursued. Large powerful freshwater fish such as alligator gar, lake sturgeon and flathead catfish can also be considered big-game fish.
• Freshwater fish targeted by anglers in North America include bass (especially black bass), salmon/trout, char, walleye/sauger, common snook, redfish, northern pike and muskellunge, sturgeon, gar and several catfish species. In Europe and Asia, large cyprinids (e.g. carps, barbels, breams, chubs, daces and tench), perches, freshwater salmonids (trout, graylings, whitefish and taimen), drum, pikes, catfish, eels and snakeheads are also popular, although many of them are regarded derogatorily as "trash fish", "dirt fish" or "pest fish" in America.
  • In the United Kingdom, "game fish" refers specifically to salmonids other than graylings – that is, salmon, trout and char. Other popular freshwater fish are called coarse fish.
• Small/medium-sized freshwater fish routinely sought by anglers are called panfish in the United States, because they typically can fit wholly into a normal cooking pan without needing to be cut or filleted. Examples are crappies, yellow perch, rock bass, bluegills and other sunfish (Centrarchidae). Panfish are often sought by younger, more inexperienced anglers, at least partly due to their proactivity to feed and the relative ease to be caught; although adult anglers sometimes consider them as "nuisance fish" due to their tendency to opportunistically strike the baits/lures intended for other larger fishes.

Some popular game fish have been introduced and stocked worldwide. Rainbow trout, for instance, can be found nearly anywhere the climate is appropriate, from their native range on the Pacific Coast of North America to the mountains of southern Africa, and is now listed as one of the worst invasive species.