North America's most popular warmwater gamefish (Micropterus salmoides) — native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada, and northern Mexico, and introduced far beyond that, including into British Columbia. An ambush predator of warm, weedy lakes and slow river channels, famous for explosive surface strikes. In the Kootenays it holds in select warmwater lakes such as duck lake inside the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area (CVWMA).