Types of Freshwater Fish: Main Families and Examples

Freshwater fish are fish that live in rivers, lakes and ponds, and they are a big share of all fish: Wikipedia puts 41.24% of known fish species in fresh water, a high number it links to the fast speciation that scattered lakes and rivers allow. The types most people mean are the sport and food fish of North American lakes, which fall into a handful of families, plus the tropical aquarium fish sold in shops. Both are below, with links to identification pages.

Groups follow Wikipedia's List of freshwater game fish and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) inland fish list.

• Black basses and sunfish (Centrarchidae): largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass; bluegill, pumpkinseed, redear; black and white crappie. See the sunfish family.
• Temperate basses: white bass, yellow bass, striped bass and hybrid stripers (TPWD).
• Perch and walleye: yellow perch, walleye and sauger.
• Pike: northern pike, muskellunge and chain pickerel.
• Trout, salmon and char: rainbow, brown, brook and lake trout, plus salmon and grayling.
• Catfish and bullheads: channel, blue and flathead catfish; bullheads.
• Carp and minnows: common carp, grass carp, shiners and fathead minnow (TPWD). See carp species.
• Gar: alligator, longnose, shortnose and spotted gar. See gar fish.
• Suckers: bigmouth, black and smallmouth buffalo (TPWD).
• Others: bowfin, freshwater drum, paddlefish, shad and the American eel (TPWD); sturgeon (Wikipedia).

Aquarium shops sort freshwater fish differently. LiveAquaria's freshwater categories include tetras, barbs, danios and rasboras, livebearers (guppies, mollies, platies and swordtails), bettas, gouramis, corydoras and other catfish, plecos, loaches, cichlids (African, New World, angelfish and discus), killifish, rainbowfish, hatchetfish, fancy goldfish and freshwater 'sharks'.

Our pages: tetras, guppies, platies, bettas, corydoras, plecos, clown loach, cichlid types, zebra danio and goldfish types. For a starter list, see best fish to have as pets.

Some fish on freshwater lists spend part of their life at sea. Wikipedia defines anadromous fish as breeding in fresh water but living most of their adult life at sea, such as salmon, some trout and sea lamprey, and catadromous fish as born at sea and living much of their adult life in fresh water, with eels the main example. Many of the largest 'freshwater' fish, such as the beluga sturgeon, are anadromous. See freshwater versus saltwater fish.

Figures from Wikipedia's species articles and its List of largest fish:

• Giant freshwater stingray: largest verified 300 kg (660 lb) and 4 m; unverified reports to 600 kg.
• Mekong giant catfish: a 2005 female from Thailand, 2.7 m and 293 kg (646 lb), was long called the largest entirely freshwater fish ever caught, until a giant freshwater stingray passed it in 2022. The species is critically endangered.
• Nile perch: up to 200 kg (440 lb) and 2 m.
• Alligator gar: a recent verified fish of 148.5 kg (327 lb), up to 2.6 m.
• Wels catfish: heaviest verified 134.97 kg (297.6 lb), from Italy's Po River in 2010.
• Sturgeons: the beluga (2,072 kg) and white sturgeon are bigger, but Wikipedia lists them as anadromous.

For the full ranking, see big freshwater fish.

A few family traits settle most North American catches:

• Barbels (whiskers): catfish and bullheads have them; so does the common carp, which has two pairs (Wikipedia).
• Joined spiny and soft dorsal fin on a deep, flat body: the sunfish family, including black basses and crappies (Wikipedia).
• Black ear flap and a dark spot at the rear of the dorsal fin: bluegill (Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife).
• Long, narrow, toothy jaws and hard ganoid scales that form armour: gar (our gar fish page, citing Wikipedia).
• Duckbill-shaped snout, many sharp teeth and a single dorsal fin: northern pike (our northern pike page).

Our guide to common fish look-alikes covers the pairs that fool people most. A side-on photo in FishLens gives a species name to check against these marks.

Research and drafting for this page were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed below. Every number names the organisation it comes from, and where sources disagree we say so instead of picking one silently. Prices and rules are given with the date we checked them; they change, so confirm before you rely on them. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.