Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes - Second Edition (Peterson Field Guides)

I guess I never realized how many different types of darters there were. (And minnows, etc. Essentially bait fish. Loads and loads of bait fish in this book.) This book is more for someone who is into fish identification (like bird watching, but with fish) than for fishermen. Still, it did show me some kinds of fish that I will be on the lookout for in my area. Good pictures, good maps, good descriptions.

This updated edition is great! The new juvenile plates for the sunfish are exactly what I needed as I work with sunfish for my graduate work. I would recommend it to anyone with a genuine interest in North American fishes.

I have been using the first edition Page and Burr field guide for the last ten years from Ohio to Florida and North Carolina to Missouri. And this second edition is everything that you might expect. Many of the illustrations are updated and newly described species included. The old system of having a maps section at the back of the book has been scrapped and the range maps are now included with the species descriptions. These have also been updated to use color to indicate the species range instead of the old black and white cross hatching.

Not sure about this book yet. I might should have just stuck to a book that discussed fresh water fish. This is like an encyclopedia of fish and with the smaller print, may not be my first choice. There is certainly enough information and plenty of pictures.

Lots of info. But it is more like an encyclopedia. Fish of Minnesota is a much more compact and useful book to me and is extremely more useful fieldbguide to carry. The Minnesota guide covers almost all species will see in the midwest.

I'm rather disappointed in this book. The very first fish I looked up was a channel cat. The index says pages page 24 and 342. Page 24 has pictures of minnows and 342 had a description of the channel cat with no picture. After digging through this book I finally found pics on page 48 and put a memo in the back of the book myself. It also had other problems on pan fish. While the pictures that are correct are clear, it's a bit hard to have to search through this book and find so many mistakes. It's difficult to figure out what you caught unless you have good knowledge of what family it's in and hope you can find the correct page with the picture. I would not buy this as your only guide book for fish. You'd think a second edition book would be better than this.

Nice information and illustrations. I respect that one must capture and kill some species for identification. My primary issue with this book is that there is no quick index system. One not already knowledgeable on local species finding a fish in the guide proves difficult. It would be simpler if all the plates were colored as that would at least slightly increase the expedience of identification. A key to the species would be very helpful as would the illustration of all the species, not just the vast majority. Range maps next to the illustrations would be useful for those who have not fully memorized the list of local species. It is fully usable, but identification is slow.

Peterson's Field Guides are known to be authoritative and comprehensive. This one, on freshwater fishes of North America North of Mexico, is no exception.

There is much information here that will benefit would be ichyologists. This is a seriously scientific text.

For the rest of us, however, this guide is less than accessible and could be more user friendly. In particular, the separation of the plates from the species account text makes for a confusing read with lots of flipping back and forth. Peterson bird guides are not organized in this manner; they have descriptive species text opposite the relevant plate.

I'm not sure why the fish guide took the direction it did, but for me its usefulness is somewhat compromised as a result.

Finally, a definitive guide on freshwater fishes.
Under the weather? Gloomy? You need to buy this wonderful document.
Can you imagine how many books I went through in vain to find a truly definitive fish guide?
Killing certaihn fish is wrong, because some of them are very rare.

Plus, there's a comprehensive index to find the fish of your choice fast.
Enter the magical realm of freshwater fishes.
Now, don't get too excited.
It included no information on mammals or insects.
So, you should just consider it a specialized book on fish.

This book is an excellent update to the already amazing prior edition. This edition has increased the number of species entries, updated information, given each species its own map, and altered ranges to be watershed specific, amongst other updates. If you need a field guide for freshwater fishes in North America, you will find no better overall guide than this book.