White Sucker

Family: 
Catostomidae (suckers) in the order Cypriniformes (carps, minnows and loaches)
Description: 

A slender, fine-scaled sucker with a short dorsal fin. Scales are largest near the tail fin, becoming smaller toward the head. Lips covered with small bumps. This species’ coloration makes it almost invisible when resting on a gravel stream bed: Back and sides are greenish with a brassy or silvery luster; the belly is white. Dorsal and tail fins dusky or clear; lower fins white, often tinged with yellow or orange.

Size: 
Total length: 9 to 15 inches; maximum about 23 inches.
Habitat and conservation: 
Decidedly a small-creek fish, occurring only rarely in major rivers. In prairie regions, it is abundant in deep, sparsely vegetated pools of high-gradient, often intermittent headwater streams with gravelly or rocky bottoms. In the Ozarks, occurs in rather densely vegetated spring branches, spring-fed streams and cool overflow pools with groundwater seepage. Also found in Lake Taneycomo.
Foods: 
Feeding habits and diet vary with age. For the first ten days of life, the young suckers have terminal mouths and feed near the surface on bloodworms, small crustaceans, protozoa and similar. They soon develop the lower, horizontal mouth of the adults, and from then on they feed almost entirely on the bottom, starting with organic-rich bottom ooze, then moving on to a generalized diet of immature aquatic insects.
Distribution in Missouri: 
Nearly statewide, but absent from the Bootheel lowlands and the southeastern Ozarks. Abundant and generally distributed in prairie streams of central and northeastern Missouri. Locally common but spotty westward in the prairie region and over the parts of the Ozarks where it occurs.
Status: 
This game fish is also called "black sucker."
Life cycle: 
Individuals can live 17 years.