Bullhead Parasites?

[bogtrotter]

I did some warm water fishing this weekend with my younger son on a few different bodies of streams/ponds.

We caught a mix of sunfish, perch and brown bullhead.

Some of the larger (8" to 10") bullhead had a bunch of yellowish orange bumps/carbuncles where the fins meet the body.

Anyone have any idea what they might be? 

Pretty gross looking, whatever they were.

On the plus side, we did get to see a mink for about 5 minutes on the opposite shore of the stream we were fishing at one point.  It kept darting out of a burrow, diving into the water, coming out a few feet away, ducking into another hole to the right of the first one, and then repeating the process.

Pretty neat spectacle.  I was surprised how small the mink was, however.

[scooper47]

Probably a parasite of some sort and probably not harmful. A friend of mine once caught a fish that had worms under the skin so we called the state. They told us they weren't harmful and that if we cooked the fish well, we could eat it. I think some mussels and clams have a parasitic stage.