I found myself a bit stymied today. We had 4 whites in the cooler, or so I thought. We caught an undersized hybrid and I was showing my father in-law the difference in the tooth patch between hybrid and white. We're trolling so he grabs the booklet and looks up the description and tells me one of the whites we kept is a hybrid. He bases this on the stripes and the fact that one had multiple stripes go all the way back. However, it absolutely had a single tooth patch. The booklet says to consider all characteristics in identifying them, but what the heck is the dominant deciding characteristic. I'd be unhappy getting a fine when I try my best to make the right decision. If we were killing them, I'd just toss it, but things were slow on Tawakoni today and we were scraping for a meal.

Lots of new info on male hybrids being 95% sterile not 99.9. So much in fact they are stopping stocking hybrids in lakes that can escape threw tail races and "interfere" with pure salt water stripers spawning up rivers. Reports lead us to believe that if continued that we could lose the pure Striper strain with enough time. With that being said a theory I have is slight hybrid genetics have crossed into whites on lakes that have both. Not wanting to elaborate more as I am tired but the tooth patch is still the way and I believe you had a white bass but on twok I see all kinds of slight hybrid looks the the whites like broad bodies and busted up stripes. Again just theories

If there's a doubt in my mind that it's a legal fish it's going back in the water.

On a smaller hybrid, it can be tough to distinguish the two tooth patches. On a sandbass, it's sorta triangular. On a hybrid, they're more elongated, and on a small hybrid it may look like a single long tooth patch with a thin line running down the middle.

Hope this helps, it's a learning curve.

I use the stripes on the side. A sandy will have one distinct lateral line that is continuous from the gill plate to the tail even if others are broken or it appears to have more than one extending to the tail. Most of the time I can tell before I ever see them just based on the way they fight. A hybrid will almost always head shake a lot more. But ultimately, the stripes tell the tail for me, and if there's any doubt I throw it back. In fact, most of the time I C&R schoolies anyway, so it's not really an issue for me unless someone with me wants to keep fish. And then, if there's any doubt whether another fisherman on my boat knows the difference I check every fish before it goes in the livewell.

This is absolutely the case. Every lake that I've fished with only sandbass, they look like pure sandbass. Lateral line solid stripe, all the way to the tail, stripes below faint.

The lakes with hybrids, those fish are few and far between. Unless, whenever they stock the hybrids, they're taking the sandies out, something fishy is afoot.

As a relatively newer fisherman, especially for white bass, this sometimes stymies me to this day.

The worst part about it is explaining to my father why I'm throwing back a 16 inch fish...

If thats the case Cedar Creek and Chambers are in trouble because they dumped a healthy dose of hybrids into the Trinity River/Lake Livingston this spring. We've never caught so many hybrid on Livingston before.

Enjoy the hybrids! I'm pretty sure most of them came out of Richland Chambers. I've caught a grand total of 1 keeper all year. It was 18.1" long. RC absolutely sucks right now. Not sure why I keep fishing there. Just habit I guess. I may have to come see you on Livingston. Always wanted to learn that lake.

not in the cooler?

Nope, I prefer my visits with the game warden to be short and sweet. Trying to explain the theory about the genetic makeup and dna percentages probably wouldn't end well.

Lake Limestone completely goes against lateral line identification on Whites. The only good thing is that there are no Hybrid in the lake to cause any confusion. But most whites I catch there have several, distinct, lateral lines extending to the tail. I even asked the local Game Warden to confirm that an unknown stocking did not take place. He assured me that it had not and agreed with me on the lateral lines. On all other lakes with both species, the when in doubt throw it out rule applies. I believe that a sub-species has actually created itself naturally. And these fish are in most lakes now by transferring themselves through rivers and creeks.

Saturday I caught the biggest Sandie I had ever seen , just a tiny bit over 14 inches and fat as a cow , but the tongue patch wasn't as defined as I'm used to seeing , like his tongue was fat and where the tongue patch would have either connected to be a V or made two lines , the patch just smoothed out , then I realized the stripes were flawless and bright with lots of definition all the way to the tail , Since I don't really know what a striper looks like in real life I got a little uneasy about what it was and released it , I couldn't risk being wrong and encountering a warden .

Would you mind posting a few good photos of such fish? I'd love to compare them to what I'm accustomed to seeing in my local lakes.

Thank you!

I agree with you on this. There are some white bass with elongated bodies and tooth patches and more defined stripes that still fall well short of being hybrids. A first generation hybrid stocked in a lake looks a lot different and have an obvious "football" shape than the sandbass I am thinking of. Maybe there are strains of white bass with a lot of striper genetics just like there are strains of coyotes with wolf genetics? I notice the sandbass I caught this year below the Denison dam look like the perfect example of sandbass and have no obvious striper traits though. It seems like when I'm 5 miles up a creek or river early in the season is when I tend to see the sandbass "strain" that looks hybrid like most often.

I did some clicking and found a study where some hybrids escaped in a lake in Turkey where white bass and stripers did not exist. Researchers found offspring of hybrids reproducing with each other that resembled white bass more that striped bass. The offspring had a single tooth patch for instance. Here is a link to the study. As bad as it must be for the environment I cannot help but thinking what lucky anglers there are in Turkey to get a shot at some hybrids even if by accident. I'd like to see what these fish look like in another 100 years. http://online.journals.tubitak.gov.tr/publishedManuscriptDetails.htm?id=15262