Nest mounds of bluehead chubs often are used as nesting sites by other minnow species.
Bluehead chubs have a stout body, large dark-edged scales on the back and upper sides, small eyes, and fairly short rounded snout. A barbel (whisker-like fleshy projection) is present at the corner of the mouth. The tail fin is very shallowly forked and has rounded lobes. In most areas, the large loop of the intestine is visible through the body wall of young individuals. Color is olive on upper side, with a dusky iridescent yellow stripe along the back and a dusky stripe along the brassy iridescent green side. The fins are light yellow to red-orange. Breeding males have a large hump on top of the dark blue head, large tubercles (warty projections) on the head behind the nostrils, orange or blue sides, and orange fins. Maximum total length is 10 inches (26 cm). Nest mounds usually are a little more than 2 feet wide and 4-5 inches high.
Range includes Atlantic and Gulf slope drainages from the Shenandoah River, Virginia, to the Pearl River, Mississippi; lower tributaries of the Mississippi River in Mississippi and Louisiana; upper New River drainage, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina; and Bear Creek (Tennessee River drainage), Alabama and Mississippi. Range is mostly above the Fall Line (except in Alabama and Mississippi) and does not include peninsular Florida. This species is common in most clear Atlantic streams, locally common in Gulf streams. This chub is known from, and probably introduced into, the Escambia River drainage of Alabama and Florida and the Tennessee River drainage and Cane Creek, Mitchell County, North Carolina. In Virginia, it has been introduced into the Rappahannock, South Branch Potomac (Straight Creek), and possibly into the South Fork Shenandoah drainages.
Habitat includes high to low gradient, cool to warm headwaters, creeks, and small to medium rivers. Occupied streams range from usually clear to generally turbid and have highly varied substrate, ranging from bedrock to sand/silt/gravel. Within a stream, this chub inhabits both swift current and pools.
Bluehead chubs spawn on gravel mound nests made by males from April to early July, mostly before mid-June.
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