Yellow wild minnows? is that even possible?

[ChickenfootDuckbutt]

So I was taking a walk either before the rain set in, and about a quarter mile behind my property there is a creek. I go back their quite frequently, because it's not "owned" by anyone, it's just open land, wild-ness

anyways, set back from the creek about 4 feet is a natural stretch with water in it, which floods over when the creek floods, the stretch is probably about 300 feet all the way around, and 1 1/2 feet deep at it's deepest point. but mostly it's only a few inches deep.

I hadn't been back there since it last was flooded, but when I went back today, I was looking for fish in the pool, and I saw this whitish/yellow flash.

In the water, hanging out with some normal colored minnows, were a few yellow fish!, the small school darted into the deeper water, and I continued my walk, when I came back i checked again, to make sure I wasn't seeing things, and there they were, but this time, I counted ATLEAST 20 yellow fish in with some normal colored minnows.

my ducks haven't gone back there to the creek some one of them got taken by something there, all i found were the feathers.

I know that there are "rosy reds" in pet stores, which are just minnows, but I don't feed my ducks rosys they get goldfish, and I don't feed them all the way back there.


the fish weren't very big, the biggest maybe half and inch long, so can yellow minnows occur in the wild? o-o I've certainly never seen any before, and the ONLY fish I ever intentionally PUT in that pool was when I raised Sword-tails in there last year

, they were doing good until a flood washed them all away

,and these weren't sword-tails, they looked just like the minnows.

 

[stephanie1992]

they could be pets someone let go. in a lake by my house theres goldfish and breeds of catfish u can only get in pet stores in the lake or pond or what ever u call it. its not very big. but the people who live around it are always letting there pet fish go in it.

 

[Windrider]

At the pet stores here they often sell yellow fat head minnows as feeder fish. For a while fishermen were also using them as bait, but I think they are trying to stop that because they would get loose and multiply in the wild, competing with the native fish.

In parts of the country were fat head minnows are native, I can see that some of these feeder/bait fish could get loose and breed with the regular population or at least school with them a while. However, I think natural selection would thin them out fairly fast, since they are conspicuous to a predator.