ID white bass, hybrids, stripers

I put together a short and sweet video showing the differences in white bass, hybrids, and stripers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnoEeZp7k-s

Nice video Clay...my only comment is if you thrown back every fish you catch on Lake Somerville that is under 18" because it has broken lines...you will only keep one or two "White Bass" per trip. I don't post pictures of my catch because of the cyber wardens on this site. They see all the broken lines on the White Bass and you know how that goes from that point on!

I've commented about this on other forums and with Niki with TP&W in College Station. Many agree Somerville must have some degree natural crossing going on at some point in time. Because it is very rare to catch a clearly marked White Bass.

Game warden checked our fish while I had them all laid out on a table for picture time after a recent trip. He ask if we caught any undersized hybrids (we had 8 big Hybrids). I said yes, we caught a bunch of them. He told me I did a good job ID'ing undersized Hybrids because he rarely checks that large of a catch (56 WB) without finding a couple undersized Hybrids in the mix.

So it's doable on Somerville to tell them apart...the three+ lines to the tail is by far the easiest. I think when Hybrids are 10 to 12 inches the tongue patch is all messed up. I released at least 4 last Friday that were 12ish" long that the tongue patch looked WB, but they had lines other than the lateral line going to the tail. So they got a free pass back to the Lake.

Interesting! Y’all must have some different looking fish on Somerville. Be curious to see some pics! So the white bass have more broken up lines but only one solid line that goes to its tail so still follows some sort of “rule”? Pretty cool!

Thanks for sharing

These fish are prime examples...very normal looking for Somerville.

Nice video, thanks for posting.

Very interesting! Good example that broken lines doesn't mean they are not white bass. They do have only one distinct line that makes it to their tail consistent with white bassl. And you said their tongue patch is not clear cut one versus two either huh? Interesting......

I have caught very similar fish out of Lake Belton.

The tongue on those fish are obvious little heart shapes. But I do see some that I'm pretty sure are some kind of Hybrids, whether they are hatchery raised or natural hybrids. The shape is neither heart shaped nor a set of parallel lines...just a odd shaped blob. These fish, I suspect are 10 to 12 inch hybrids and the tongue patch has not developed. They also tend to have one line above or below the lateral line.

I'm new to fresh water fishing, but years of guiding and ID'ing fish offshore and in the bay I look closely at all details.

Tooth patches on the hybrids can be really close together sometimes making it hard to positively identity them by the tooth patch.