What on earth is this??

Can't be a Sacramento Perch (eat it man eat it!..quiet!) It does not have a perch body but a bass body. Rubber lip is gone and it looks like a mutant strain of bass, which is kind of common to bass. I say it is more bass than perch by a wide margin;my 2 cents.

My questions is.... how does it taste? 

I'll make a deal with ya, Chuck:

You batter that bad boy up and fry it, and I'll eat it and let you know!   

Perch, bass, etc.. common names don't really help when it comes to determining which species are related to which.

The Sacramento perch is neither a perch nor a bass.  In fact it's in the sunfish family Centrarchidae.  On a similar note, largemouth bass and smallmouth bass are also Centrarchidae and therefore actually just the biggest members of the sunfish family.

True bass are in the family Serranidae (groupers, cabrilla, spotted bay bass) or in the family Moronidae (striped bass).


-Brian