The legend of the one-eyed meanmouth bass

This one-eyed meanmouth bass could not wait to feed again. 
No, really.  It could not wait.

If a blind squirrel can find a nut, the odds are way better for a one-eyed fish.

Fishing today on Table Rock Lake in Missouri with Karen and Eric of Eric's Elite Guide Service, I caught what appeared to be a smallmouth bass.  But Eric said, "Hold on a second," and lifted the fish.  He put a finger in the fish's mouth and proclaimed, "No, it's a meanmouth bass!"

Meanmouth bass are hybrids -- offspring from smallmouth bass and spotted bass spawning together. You know, momma spotted bass lays the eggs, papa smallmouth fertilizes them, or vice versa.

Spotted bass look a lot like largemouth, but their lateral lines are darker and their mouths don't extend past their eyes.  Sometimes smallmouth and largemouth breed, but it's rarer since they usually don't share the same habitat.  They might swim in the same body of water but live on different sides of the track.

Spotted bass are found in southern states from Texas to Florida.  Table Rock Lake is one of those bodies of waters where "spots" and smallies run together, so it's definitely possible to find a hybrid meanmouth at Table Rock.

Which I did today.  

And caught the same one twice.

Without taking a DNA sample and sending it off to a lab, the easiest way to differentiate a meanmouth from a smallmouth is to check the fish's "tongue."  Meanmouth and spotted bass have a small sandpaper-like patch on their tongue.

This meanmouth I caught -- verified by Eric checking the fish's tongue that it indeed have that patch -- was missing its left eye.  Maybe it had lost it getting hooked before?  A battle over territory with a walleye?  At the wrong end of the claw with a crayfish? Who knows.

Eric tossed the fish back, and I dropped my line baited with another nightcrawler to the bottom of the lake -- about 25 feet of water in this spot

Waited a couple minutes dead-sticking the bait and felt another bite.  I set the hook, reeled the fish in and it looked like another meanmouth.  No, wait.  It was THE SAME meanmouth with only one eye.  We all laughed -- that fish must have been hungry for nightcrawlers.  Eric said he had seen some weird stuff -- like three different times people in his boat hooking the same fish at the same time -- but never catching the same fish twice.

The joke the rest of the trip when getting a bite but reeling up a bare hook was that the one-eyed meanmouth bass had finally figured out a way to get the worm without getting caught. 

This is just a tease from today's trip where I caught two other species I had never caught before, plus some tasty walleye.  Guess who caught the biggest fish too?  Stay tuned ....