Good Tactics for Bad Spotted Bass
Spotting the Spotted Bass
Editor’s
Note: The spot likes clear water and deep, rocky structure
and loves to fight. He is delicious to eat but tough
to catch because he is the baddest bass in the bassing
business. Here we learn how to spot a spotted bass.
Although not officially identified by scientists until
1927, the spotted bass
(Micropterus punctulatus) had long been recognized by
fishermen on the Ohio River as a separate species in
the black-bass family. Today the spotted bass is found
in the Mississippi/Ohio drainage systems and east to
Florida and West to Oklahama, Texas and Kansas. Too,
spots successfully have been stocked in some western
states. The world’s record on 6-pound line for
spots today is tied with each weighing 9-pounds, 4-ounces.
These two spots were taken in 1987 within months of
each other at Lake Perris about 60-miles southwest of
Los Angeles, California. Spotted bass were stocked into
this lake when it first was inundated in 1974. But the
overall record is 10-pounds, 4-ounces taken from Pine
Flat Lake in California in 2001.
One of the nation’s leading spotted bass authorities,
recently retired Dr. John Ramsay of the Alabama Cooperative
Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Auburn University
in Auburn, Alabama,
explains, “One of the easiest characteristics
for the angler to use in distinguishing the spotted
bass from the largemouth is the teeth in the center
of the spot’s tongue. Although from time to time
a fisherman may see a largemouth with teeth on its tongue,
the largemouth usually has softer teeth. Also a largemouth’s
teeth will be arranged in a line along the tongue rather
than in a patch in the center of the tongue. You can
be 90 percent sure if you catch a bass with a round
patch of hard teeth in the center of its tongue that
it is a spotted bass. This characteristic is one of
the most distinguishing aspects of this particular
fish.” Other differences in the spotted bass and
the largemouth include the spotted bass having a mouth
that does not extend beyond the eye. Too, the spotted
bass has spotting below the lateral line – a characteristic
neither the smallmouth nor the largemouth have.
Dr. Ramsay explains too that, “One of the reasons
the South produces so-many big spotted bass appears
to be genetics. The southern spots seem to be able to
convert their food better than the northern spots do.
They also have better habitat and environment than the
northern fish do.” Four world’s records
spotted bass have been caught at Lewis Smith Lake in
Alabama with the latest weighing 8-pounds, 15-ounces,
taken by Phillip C. Terry, Jr., of Decatur, Alabama,
in 1978. When asked why this one lake produced so many
large spots, once again Dr. Ramsay cited the genetic
factor plus the fact that Smith Lake contains ideal
habitat for the spot. “The spotted bass likes
clear water and plenty of rocky or hard substrate. All
these elements come together at Lewis Smith Lake in
Central Alabama.”
Tomorrow: Locating Spotted
Bass
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