This was caught in central MN. Does anyone know what it is?

Smallmouth bass. It looks photoshopped to me.

Hum

Looks like a ROCK fish.

Eye is cloudy and it is dried out. I would say "photoshopped".

A calico smallmouth.

It's a fish

Looks like a decent sized smallmouth bass but
I couldn't tell you what that orange is that
is spattered all over it's body.

Looks like smashed pumpkin flesh stuck to the fish.

Weird.

walleyed

It is a fresh water drum that has been living in the discharge port at the nucelear power plant.

Don't know what th orange crap is, but the fish looks like a Goggle Eye.

Zombie smallmouth bass. Just in time for Halloween

A bass that really likes the band smashing pumpkins?

It's a leucistic smallmouth bass. It has the same recessive gene that makes a cinnamon coon, which are also leucistic.

I've caught 4 young leussistic smallmouth, around 2 inches long, out of one school, at Eastwood Lake. I let them go. They didn't have any of the beautiful variability in color yet.

The red version of fathead minnows, called rosy reds, are also leucistic.

Keith

It’s not filleted yet

one messed up fish

Decades ago there was a brand of salmon egg fishing bait called " Patzski's Balls of Fire". They were hot pink. Once I caught a trout that must have found a whole jar full that had fallen overboard. In addition to it stomach being full of the eggs, the entire fish was stained hot pink. The flesh, guts and skin. Looks like something similar with this fish.

Patzski's Balls of Fire were likely pink because they had astaxanthin in them. Astaxanthin is commonly put in fish food and makes the flesh of fish that eat it pink. The fish you caught was likely a hatchery raised fish fed feed with astaxanthin in it. Europeans in particular like pink fleshed trout.

Keith

True wild trout have an slight orange flesh.
We knew a stocked trout because it's flesh was almost white.
50 years ago.

The mouth looks all wrong for a Smallie and the orange and dried out appearance make me think it is fake/staged/altered.

Definitely a smallmouth bass and a dandy. Pumpkin spice is the common name for this variety. (At least this time of year anyway.)
I saw an add for an auto parts store that read. "On sale now for limited time only, Pumpkin Spice Brake Pads!"