Hello I’m new to forum.

I hope I uploaded these pics correctly and y’all can see this fish.

Background. Caught in Brazos river Texas in deep pool next to heavy current.

Any experts on here think this a hybrid spotted bass of some sort or just regular spot?

Coloration and size is not normally what we catch in the Brazos river in this area.

I attached pics of weird big spotted possibly hybrid between/combo of spot,lm,Guadalupe etc.

One pic of em is next to what I call a normal spotted bass for the river.

Any recommendations? Going to release em back in river after positive id.

He’s about 2 1/2 pounds approximately. Didn’t weight or measure just a geusstament.

Forgot to add has definite tongue tooth patch and very close eye placement in regards to jaw as a spot

More close ups and better pics

I’m not familiar with the fish up there, but it looks kinda like a mean mouth to me.

Yes sir. Kinda what I was thinking. Not quite a full blown spotted bass. Something is different. Never caught a small mouth in this part of the river/they are rare in Texas in most parts unlike northern states. but I know there are some caught at possum kingdom that is up stream of location.

Looks like a guadalupe bass, specific to Texas waters.

It sure looks like a mix between a spotted and a guadalupe bass to me. Not only the spots/splotches but notice the lateral lines across the bottom half spotted bass have those.

Well it says that Guadalupe bass live in the Brazos, sounds like these 2 got it.

Big Guad. Very nice!

Native TEXAS ride dur also State fish

Thanks to everyone that replied and recommendations.

Was caught in Brazos river in between lipan and mineral wells. Don’t fish much there and usually target fresh water drum and channel cats. Yes I eat fresh water drum. I think small ones taste like red fish.

I geuss guads have made it up this far north and are hybridized with spotted bass. Met a guy of a friend that caught the record mean mouth and he showed me a pic the other day in weatherford. Never heard of such a fish.

Geuss this one could be called a mean mouth but with spot and Guadalupe.

Decided to put a huge live crawfish me and my 8 yer old boy caught catching bait with net. I hooked fish and let him reel in.

We’ll he or she bass is going back to where I caught em hopefully to make some more guads or spots vice versa. My gut feeling was this fish was unique.

I imagine the spotted side of bass made em this size. Hill country ones I use to catch fly fishing were never over a pound.

God bless
Bryan c

Update: contacted tx parks and wildlife fisheries department.

They said they do not stock Guadalupe bass below pk dam to lipan in Brazos. They do have a good population of small mouth bass in that stretch and stock with smallies.

I emailed em the same pics posted here and they think it is a spotted bass with some small mouth in em. So hybrid spotted and small mouth bass. Aka meanmouth.

They are the experts but I do agree with y’all who commented that it does look a lot like gaud or some sort of guad hybrid. Will never know.

God bless Texas
Bryan

Spotted bass IMO. Have caught several meanmouth in Ray Roberts and Grapevine. Bet if you showed that pic to 5 different TPWD people with no caption you’d get at least 3 different answers. Really hard to tell sometimes when you’re holding them let alone from a pic.

Largemouth, spots/smallmouth are generally pretty easy to differentiate. The smallmouth and spots, well they can start to get tricky, especially in areas with high population densities of both. I’ve seen it where the gene pool starts to get a little murky and that’s when the arguments start to happen. I’ve done some reading, and while less common, it appears spot/largemouth and smallmouth/largemouth hybrids can occur. I’ve caught hybrid crappie, hybrid yellowXsandbass, hybrid bluegill, and many other naturally occurring hybrids, they get tricky to tell when gene pools get murky.