Snapper head bump

[bojulabah]

The bump on the head is usually on older male Snapper, but not all have the head bump and some females do. After a bit of research, it appears the NSW Snapper mostly have the bump in older fish and those in other states mostly do not have the bump - even if the same species of snapper, so it is thought that it may be caused by a parasite as many females have the bump also, so maybe the parasite (if this is the cause) may affect bream also?

Pickles

[Yowie]

Have not heard anything like that. Some little reddies I catch in Port Hacking have an occasional parasite on them, but they are always on the outside of the throat, nowhere else.

With just over legal sized reddies, I have seen a very small bump, then those around the 40cm usually have the start of a noticeable but still small head bump. If you cut away the skin from the head, you will see the bony growth starting to develop.

N.Z. reddies do not have any noticeable head bump like our NSW reddies.

I have heard that reddies sometimes use the head bump in foraging for food, but no scientific evidence to back it up.

[Swifty13]

seen a show where they were trying to work it out and thought that it was from bumping their heads in the gravel, but then some grown in tanks still grew the bump so its built in over time or something else, end story, they really dont know!???