schools of 'something'?

Tuesday evening my wife and I had taken our nephew and his friend to fish at Lake Rico in Massasoit State Park. While we were there, there was a school of some kind of fish that kept surfacing, almost like you see whales doing out in the ocean - kinda gently breaking the surface and then diving back down... they'd come up, and the whole school would surface/dive for 30 seconds or so, then disappear, only to reappear a minute or two later in another spot. It didn't look like surface feeding, like trout sipping flies, it was a different behavior.

Does anybody know what these fish are?

We made a few casts to the school, but got no takers...

I was paddling around a pond the other day and saw these backs sticking out of the water in groups...it was kinda like watching a shark stick its fin out of the water, but not scary. I think they were crappies, thats what they do when they mate...not sure if that sounds like what you saw, but could be an option

carp do that, both instances, when breeding

Ive seen crappie break surface like you describe,but the way you say they "dive" back down,Ive witnessed schools of hornpout do that exact same thing.Usually from what Ive'seen is crappie swim right under the surface and you can actually see the dorsal fins and or the top of the fish .Sunfish display this same behavior.Hornpout swim staight up,mouth the surface,and dive almost perfectly vertical back to the bottom.

I was paddling around a pond the other day and saw these backs sticking out of the water in groups...it was kinda like watching a shark stick its fin out of the water, but not scary. I think they were crappies, thats what they do when they mate...not sure if that sounds like what you saw, but could be an option

your exactly right about it being crappie,the sunfish family do this as well

I don't know when carp spawn, but crappies spawn earlier than the bass do, and in the brushy shallows... this was open water & I saw em again about 2 days ago doing the same thing. I have no idea.

????

I watched sunfish doing this over twenty feet of water on long pond in rutland yesterday.

lol i saw this my self and when try to get closer on the yak they just swim away. i thouhgt it was either crappies or shads.cause something was chasing it cause they would make loud splashing noise like being spooked and louder noise like something was trying to eat it. i did catch crappies in that schools of fish.

i have seen that more than a few times this summer. a couple of times it looked like the water was boiling. there would suddenly be a burst of bubbles at the surface. i figured it was shad or a group of something being chased by bigger fish. at least twice i have cast into the location and pulled out a 1 to 2 lb bass. doesn't always work, but it has a couple of times.

Just a thought:

I do agree that the culprits could be sunfish of some type. However, it could be shiners or some other type of cyprinid (Minnow family). Did you take any picutures of the swirls, that could possibly help.

My thought is that with people fishing live shiners, sometimes there are "escapees" from the bait bucket and they can establish themselves in pretty much any body of freshwater