We were fishing for kicks with our kids at high tide by the Bass River Bridge on Saturday, seeing how many and different fish we could bring in. 10-12" snappers were the order of the day, but I brought two fish in no one could identify. I've spent this morning searching the net with no luck. Unfortunately no pics as I'm still a 35mm guy and didn't have my camera. These two fish hit a snapper stopper and put up more of a fight than snappers the same size. Basically, the same shape and color as a snapper or maybe shaped like a small amberjack, but the markings were unique. They had a distinct black "V" just forward of the dorsal fin, with darker vertical stripes like on a perch or sheepshead and the edge of the dorsal fin and tips of the tailfins were white. Speculations welcome, I'm baffled. Maybe they got disoriented in a storm or something.

Sargeant Major fish? I saw a guy jig one of them up on a sabiki in our local harbor recently. It is a tropical fish- google it and see if it looks like what you caught...

Good guess. The fish I caught was not rounder shaped like a scup, but the vertical bars were about the same, just not so dark and then there was that pronounced "V" on their head and white tips on the tail fins and dorsal. Also the scales were smaller and felt smooth like on a snapper, but not visible like on a scup or bass. I'll take another look for details when I get home as I have them frozen.

Banded rudder fish?

You're good. It was most definitely a young Banded Rudderfish. No one even in my extended family had never heard of nor seen one in that river before, but in the 40 some-odd years I've fished in that area several species have come and gone. The nearshore habitat they like is exactly where I caught them. Thanks for clearing that up.

Thats nothing, ask him a question about rocks!

My kids caught 2 Sunday off the dock in Fairhaven, exactly as you described. I didn't know what they were either.

Well, Geology was not one of my better subjects in college, but I did manage to retain a couple of things. Pahoehoe and Ah-ah are examples of what and describe the texture of each.

Lava, mainly basaltic lava in Hawaii.
I'm actually a 'no rock' geologist'
I work with sediment most of the time

So then you'd be more interested in the earth's layers, what the glacier's dropped off where, that sort of thing? Through my 6th grader we learned all about NJ's makeup last year. Actually, it was pretty interesting stuff.
Pahoehoe is smoother ropy folds of lava.
Ah-ah is rougher to the touch and I guess the early Hawaiians used to say "ah-ah" when they stepped on it so that's what they called it. (At least that's the only way I can remember it).

I mostly work on the deglacial history of Narragansett Bay, so sediment deposited during the retreat of the last ice sheet ~18,000 years or so years ago (thats my dissertation). I also do a lot of work mapping modern depositional environments using side-scan sonar, and other tools (i.e. where is the sand, mud, gravel etc) in Estuaries, Coastal Ponds and the area from the beach out ~1 mile or so along the south shore of RI and Long Island

basically I get to play on a boat, or digging in the mud :D