Hello all,

First time poster here trying to figure out what kind of fish we caught a few weeks ago near our shoreline, and maybe someone here can help identify it. My family has a cabin out at Possum Kingdom Lake and I've been fishing there my whole life...I thought I had excellent knowledge of all the fish in it until we caught this one. It looks unlike anything we have ever caught. It had a dark, silvery coloring to it and thicker looking scales. It was fairly slender, but seemed healthy. Maybe it's just a striped bass with some type of mutation. Any help identifying this fish is appreciated!

Fresh water drum, also called a gaspergou.

They can get pretty big, this one was a little over 10lbs.

Thanks man, that's what I first told my brother it was when he caught it...just seemed like the coloring and shape was off for a drum. We don't catch too many drum out here, rest of my family was saying it was some type of bass.

To the Forum. Glad your here. Ask lots of questions and learn. Thanks for sharing the picture.

Lots of them are really slender. Not sure why. I think they are in more lakes than people realize (like all of them).

That's a correct answer scout, we ought to know there are plenty of them at choke canyon.

Maybe a dumb question, but how do species that were not stocked by TPWD usually find their way into a lake? Is it just people transporting them from other lakes and putting them in other bodies of water?

Goo.

Drum are native to Texas waters. Most all of the lakes are built by backing up creeks or rivers. Anything swimming in the filler creeks or rivers will populate the lakes.

Also referred to as "rockhead", simply because they do have "rocks" in they head. Actually the rocks are very hard bones they rub together to make a grunting sound.

I know them as drums but the do have bones that are rocks like DLALLDER said.