Northwest Fishing Reports

OK, this is a totally rookie question... but I just came back from the time of my bass learning life catching about 8 smallies in 1.5 hours on Bitter lake, King County. I won't make it a lake report here, but I wanted to ask... I am pretty sure that I am catching small mouth.... they are about 11 inches, and their mouths appear to be the size of a quarter I would say. They are fairly oblong/football shaped, obviously at 11" they aren't FOOTBALL shaped, buy you know. The dorsal area is pretty sharp. They strike in a pattern of 2-4 strikes multiple times before I'd set the hook. (when fishing with soft plastics)
Anyway..... all that said, how do I know if I've got juvenile large mouth,, or just plain small mouth bass?
(you gotta start somewhere with this stuff)

Thanks:king:

One rule of thumb is that a largemouth's mouth extends way beyond the back the bass' eye. A smallmouth's mouth, however, will only extend to the middle of its eye if you are looking at it vertically. See Diagram:




Additionally, the smallmouth is going to have more defined vertical marks that extend down the side of the body than a largemouth and the whitish belly area will not will not extend high on the sides of the fish. The Largemouth is going to have distinct lateral marks, but these marks will not extend vertically like the smallmouth's marks will. Most often the smallmouth is going to be darker in color as well. Here is a comparison between two I have caught (and released). The top is a largemouth, and the bottom is a smally.

I use to fish Bitter lake quite a bit and never caught a smallmouth there. Look at Beerman's Photos, biggest thing is that Smallies are brown and Largies are green. And once you caught both species, you'll notice smallies fight a lot more. Keep on fishing Bitter, I've caught a couple that was close to Beermans Largie photo.

That is great info. Beerman... I have to admit that the fish I am catching do not have the vertical marks, they have a "Simpler" style of coloring/marking than your small mouth pic. which shows a fish that is more spotchy with vertical marks, etc. The ones I've got have one defined line I think which runs down the side of the fish.
Maybe I can take some pics. and shoot them to you, although they are sounding a lot like LMB.

One other thing... So all these fish are in the 11" range. With frye in the lake, and fellow 11" fish, does this mean that these are the mature fish that are spawing and keeping the lake going? Or I assume there is another generation out there lurking that is the parents to these fish?
What do you think? How big are LMB when they began to spawn?

Thanks much

the biggest thing (for sure) is the mouth diagram. Ive caught smallmouth with almost no markings and just a solid brown.

mouth and brown vs green, like the others have stated.

And the fight. smallies>largies.

Everything stated already should be pretty conclusive. One thing that I always tell people besides obvious color and mouth differences. First off smallmouth are a fish that are built for speed, one way to tell this is their tails are more V-shaped where largemouth have more rounded tails. I don't know if that helps at all.

sounds like you caught a bunch of crappie

don't forget the reddish/orange eye color around the pupil of the SMB. LMB are just black.

Did it look like either of these?

Black Crappie

Rock Bass


Sorry for the size, those are the best detailed pics I could find. I caught a TON of rock bass before I figured out what the heck they were, and they fight pretty good sometimes too.

Hey, thanks everyone for your input on this one. I feel pretty computer savy.. but %^%$!! I can never figure out how to compress the size of my jpeg files so that they can be attached to this forum!

Anyway I have learned a lot from your input.

oh man if you havn't caught a smallie yet then itll be a treat when you compare it to the lmb/rock bass fight. (i dunno about all your experiences, but all the rock bass ive caught gave up REALLY easily).

your fish are probably LM bass. A lake usually takes a rocky bottom, and generally deeper than Haller or Bitter lakes to support smallmouth. Just thought I'd mention Haller in case you've tried that one too.

a for sure way to tell a largemouth from a smallmouth is to stand their dorsal fins up. a smallmouths top fins on its back will clearly connect together, while on a largemouth they are not connected together. in other words a smallmouth looks like it was one big fin on its back with 2 humps, while a largemouth has 2 distinct fins on its back. i think a common mistake people make is to look at the shape of a fish to determine if its a large or smallmouth. both fish come in all shapes; ive seen skinny largies and huge fat smallies. as someone stated above, once you catch a few of both you will know right away what you have.

also, i disagree somewhat on the fighting aspect too. smaller smallmouths will always put up a better fight than the same size largemouth, and they jump far more often, but big largemouth are some of the best fighting fish alive. they know all the tricks, and will jump, head shake, run at the boat, pull tons of drag, and of course always try the obligatory dive right at the boat that has snapped line in my boat for sure. for a fun fight that has lots of acrobatics, the smallmouth wins hands down, but if you want a scary, white knuckled, sweat beads on the forehead fight that includes a lot of drag being pulled and where it's always in doubt whether you will even get the fish in the boat, i would go with a nice 4+ lb largemouth.

fishnislife wrote:Here are Chris's (quadradomus) pix that he sent me to re-size.
Looks like a rock bass and a LMB to me.



fishnislife

Yup, I agree, the first pic is a rock bass and the second one in the net is without a doubt a largemouth.