largemouth bass

Largemouth Bass
Conservation status
Data deficient
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Actinopterygii Order: Perciformes Family: Centrarchidae Genus: Micropterus Species: M. salmoides
Binomial name
Micropterus salmoides

The Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) is a species of fish. Also known as Black Bass, Green Trout, Bigmouth Bass, and Lineside Bass.^[1] The largemouth bass is in fact, not a bass. It is instead a member of the Sunfish family. The name comes from its resemblance to members of the temperate bass family, which includes the striped bass.

Physical Description

Largemouth from Lake Columbia, Michigan.

The largemouth bass is marked by a series of dark blotches forming a jagged horizontal stripe along the length of each side. It can also be totally black. The upper jaw of a largemouth bass extends beyond the back of the eye. The average bass weighs 1 to 3 pounds and measures between 12 and 18 inches long.The largest of the black basses, the Largemouth has reached a maximum recorded overall length of 97 cm (38 in), and a maximum recorded weight of 22 lb, 4 oz (10 kg, 113 g). It can live as long as 23 years, and, along with the black crappie, is also known as the Oswego bass.

Forage

The largemouth bass's diet changes as it matures, consuming mostly small food items such as plankton and insects as juveniles. As adults their eating habits mature to include small fish, crayfish, and frogs. Largemouth bass have even been known to take small birds, and also small mammals such as mice and rats. Under the cover of grass, brush, or drop-offs, the largemouth bass will use its sense of smell, sight, and hearing to attack and seize their prey, although they mainly rely on sight.

Reproduction

Largemouth spawn in shallow lakes and ponds in the spring, when the water temperatures reach about 64°F and some spawn in 70 to 74 degrees. Most people have found that the larger fish spawn first and in deeper water. Females can lay up to a million eggs during each season in a shallow depression that the male forms in the ground. The male will then guard the eggs and fry, driving away any predators that come too close to the nest site.

Sport Fishing

A largemouth bass caught and released in Forest Lake, Minnesota.

A large specimen of M. salmoides caught by an angler in Connecticut.

Largemouth put up a very respectable fight for the sport fisherman, though many say their cousin species the smallmouth bass can best them pound for pound. Adult largemouth bass generally occupy the apex predator niche, even though they are preyed upon by many animals while young. This dignifies them with a level of sporting prestige as quarry. Anglers often fish for largemouth bass with fishing lures such as plastic worm, crankbait and spinnerbait.

It is common practice among anglers to release them alive. Largemouth bass respond well to catch and release because of their hardiness, and the ability of their large mouth to withstand repeated hook injuries without compromising their ability to feed or damaging their gills.

The IGFA's officially recognized heaviest largemouth bass on record was caught by George Perry at Montgomery Lake in Telfair County, Georgia, on June 2, 1932, and it weighed 22 lb. 4 oz. (10.1 kg). This was surpassed in March 2006 when Mac Weakley, of Carlsbad, California, pulled a 25 lb. 1 oz. largemouth bass into his fishing boat. [1] However, the bass was not hooked in the mouth, was weighed on an uncertified hand-held digital scale, and was then released. This created a dispute about whether the bass should be counted as a record. This dispute was ended when Weakley decided not to enter the fish as a world record. Weakley, however, is reconsidering world record classification[2]

The largemouth bass is the state fish of Alabama^[2] Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida.

Senses

References

Donate to Wikimedia