I’m kinda leaning towards pure spot possibly. Does have a lot of olive and bronze on em

Caught tons of em mostly in trinity river. Ones from Brazos could be different colorations etc like any body of water. Just like lm bass.

I’m a part time taxidermist and mounted many lm bass and painting em can be much different coloration looking at pic from when was alive if skin or c and r replica.

Some almost light green no to very little markings to crazy patterns etc.

Here is another pic of a trinity river spot what I would called a normal spotted bass color next to Brazos fish we are talking about.

Decided we are Going to keep em as pets in my big native tx river fish themed tank until they get big enough or depressed etc or to go into my pond or back to river.

spot

The issue of species identification is often much more complicated than most people realize. The are usually outliers and hybrids. There are also issues with how scientists define a species. This issue is often defined as lumpers and splitters. For example, the Alabama bass is now considered an independent species, when before it was a subspecies of the spotted bass. DNA analysis has clarified some issues and resulted in reassessment and confusion of others. A friend of mine at a biodiversity center summed it up well, “Very little is black and white in the real world.”

Very true, especially when you’re dealing with subspecies of fish. Good examples are the muddied gene pools in trout streams where nonnative strains of cutthroat trout have been introduced, or where there may be a certain subspecies of rainbow trout and a nonnative strain is stocked. Same goes for bass, and if my understanding is correct, the offspring are not always sterile, hence why genetics can start to get muddied. There are so many subspecies in he sunfish and trout family that readily hybridize its often not straightforward.