Spotted bass in the Spotlight
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FOR THE RECORD
If such things are possible, spotted bass have long suffered from an inferiority complex, mainly because largemouth and smallmouth bass have always seemed to hog the limelight. But that was before such spotted behemoths as the 10.80-pound fish caught by FLW Tour pro Cody Meyer from California’ s Bullards Bar Reservoir in December started showing up.
An angler in the eastern part of the country might think of spotted bass as just a hedge against going to a weigh-in without a limit on an otherwise bleak day of fishing for jumbo largemouths. On the West Coast, however, spots win tournaments in eye-popping fashion. And although Meyer’ s fish was a monster by any reckoning, at least four other spots in the same weight class have been caught from California waters in the last couple of years. Nine-pounders have become fairly commonplace, and 8- pound spots might help win tournaments, but they don’ t make much of a splash in the state’ s records book.
The spotted bass story is an interesting one, if not a confusing one. Biologists once recognized two subspecies of spotted bass: the northern( Kentucky) spotted bass( Micropterus punctulatus) and the Alabama spotted bass( Micropterus punctulatus henshalli). Recently, however, DNA analysis was used to determine that the Alabama spotted bass is not a
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MOORE
Spotted bass in the Spotlight
subspecies at all, but a distinct species – the Alabama bass, or Micropterus henshalli.
The Alabama bass grows larger than the northern spotted bass, but to most anglers, they’ re collectively referred to simply as spotted bass, as they’ re not easily distinguishable. In some states where both are present, the two are separated in the records, though usually as separate subspecies.
Confusion has been part of the spotted bass story for nearly 200 years. The northern spotted bass was first described by French naturalist Constantine Rafinesque in 1819. Ichthyologists that followed, Dr. James Henshall of Book of the Black Bass fame included, thought Rafinesque was actually talking about a smallmouth bass. Thus, the spotted bass was all but ignored until 1927, when a Michigan ichthyologist, Dr. Carl Hubbs, recognized it as a distinct species of black bass. Originally, Dr. Hubbs referred to it in casual conversation as the“ Kentucky bass,” believing that the fish was limited to waters of that state.
Boy, was he wrong. Spots naturally inhabit waters of the lower Mississippi River drainage and rivers of the southern Appalachians and Ozarks.
With regard to either species, when – and not so much where – they are caught makes a big difference in weight. For instance, the current Tennessee spotted bass record is 6 pounds, 15 ounces, and was caught from Parksville
Lake by local angler Shane McKee on a mid-March day in 2014 when it was carrying eggs, which added at least a pound to the weight. FLW Tour pro Wesley Strader boated the previous Tennessee record, 6-7, on July 30, 2010 when it was spawned out.
Both fish were confirmed to be of the Alabama strain, caught from waters where they weren’ t supposed to be and aren’ t welcome by fisheries biologists. The concern is that Alabama bass, which are naturally more aggressive, might gradually replace both native spots and smallmouths in the eastern reservoirs of the Tennessee River and elsewhere. Ultimately, the least they’ re going to do is spawn a dominant mongrel strain.
Tennessee fisheries biologists also conducted a genetic study of McKee’ s catch to make sure it wasn’ t a“ meanmouth bass,” which is a cross – either naturally or artificially produced – between a smallmouth and a spotted or largemouth bass. Many states don’ t keep records of meanmouth bass, though the International Game Fish Association does. Here again, the threat of hybridization in otherwise natural fisheries concerns biologists.
California’ s behemoth“ spotted bass” are pure bloods. That is, all are of the Alabama strain, the first couple of thousand fingerlings having arrived from Lewis Smith Lake in northern Alabama in 1974 and being stocked in Lake Perris near San Bernardino.
By any name we call the fish, it was the beginning of another beautiful relationship between bass and California waters.
PHOTO BY TIM LITTLE
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FLWFISHING. COM I aprIL 2017