Bass battle: Bucketmouths vs. bronzebacks

Let’s call it the battle of the bass: bucketmouth versus bronzeback, now that Pennsylvania’s bass season is in play (as of Saturday, June 15) and take a long look at the two most popular varieties of the state’s black bass. Our exercise in comparing and contrasting the largemouth and smallmouth may help determine which of the two is the fightin’est fish when hooked at the end of our line.

In this corner we have the largemouth (Micropterus salmoides),aka the beloved bucketmouth, bigmouth, wide-mouth, and simply black bass. For the most part you’ll find this fish, distinguished by dark blotches that lend it a green sheen, roaming still water ponds, lakes, and reservoirs throughout North America. Its status as a favorite freshwater game fish is cemented by the fact that it’s the official state fish of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Mississippi, a distinction bestowed upon the brook trout here in Pennsylvania.

Another thing that solidifies the largemouth’s popularity over the smallmouth is that the largemouth is the targeted object of desire in the majority of bass tournaments, typically held on still water lakes and reservoirs which are the primary province of this fish. The current Pennsylvania state record largemouth is an 11 pound, 3 ounce specimen caught in the Birch Run Reservoir in Adams County by Waynesboro’s Donald Shade back in 1983. The world record largemouth is almost twice as heavy as our state record (probably a factor of a much longer growing season in southern waters) caught from Montgomery Lake in Georgia and weighed in at 22 pounds 4 ounces.

And in this corner lurks the smallmouth (Micropterus dolomieu) whose universal nickname is bronzeback, aka smallie, and brown bass. This species’ coloration tends to be dark brown (or bronze) with vertical bands and red eyes. As indicated by their respective names, the smallmouth’s mouth is smaller than the largemouth with a mouth that extends to the middle of the fish’s eye while that of the largemouth extends well beyond its eye. And while the largemouth’s dorsal fin is divided, the smallmouth’s is not. Although the five states listed above recognize the largemouth as their official state fish, only one, Tennessee, honors the smallmouth in that category.

In terms of preferred habitat, the smallmouth favors clearer, cleaner, cooler waters than the largemouth and is primarily a denizen of rivers and streams although it can coexist with largemouth in more pristine lakes and reservoirs. The current state record smallmouth was caught right here in Berks County’s Scotts Run Lake, an 8 pound, 8 ounce fish hooked by Havertown’s Robert T. Steelman in 1997. The current world record for a smallmouth bass is 11 pounds, 15 ounces, caught in the Dale Hollow Reservoir on the Kentucky/Tennessee border, way back in 1955.

Belaboring our boxing analogy, which of these two fish is the hardest, toughest fighter on rod and reel? In many angling circles, there’s an ongoing debate, but it’s a question I again sought to answer this weekend as I celebrated the opening of Pennsylvania’s bass season. In the morning, from the banks of our backyard pond, I cast a few lures to tempt the bluegills and bass that reside there. It didn’t take long to hook up with the first bucket-mouth, a fish that fell to one of my go-to bass rigs, a Gary Yamamoto custom bait -- specifically a 5 inch yamasenko worm in green pumpkin and watermelon hooked through the midsection with a #1 Owner Mosquito or Gamakatsu Octopus Hook. This is widely know as a “wacky-style rig,” which bass can’t seem to resist.

That largemouth, a 14-inch fish, put up a nice fight before I landed and quickly released it. Three casts later a smaller bass hit the Senko and gave me a decent tussle before I let it go. An occupational hazard for these soft plastic stickbaits is that they can get chewed up or lost pretty easily. A solution to losing too many of these baits (at $8.99 for a pack of ten they don’t come cheap)is to secure them to the hook with a wacky o-ring, also available at your local bait shop.

After losing the Senko bait I tied on a small white Rooster-Tail lure to tempt a bluegill or two. I immediately caught two more largemouth on the Rooster-Tail before I managed to hook up with a bluegill. Ours is a small pond and the bass and bluegill literally represent a captive audience there, so it’s no surprise that I caught and released four bass and one bluegill in less than fifteen minutes of fishing.

The bronzebacks on the West Branch of the Brandywine Creek that afternoon would be far more challenging. I launched my kayak at Corcoran’s Bridge intending to fish the stretch downstream to the Northbrook Bridge. I had wacky-style rigged another green pumpkinseed Senko worm and was good to go. You never know what kind of finny critter you might hook up with in the Brandywine, home to an array of panfish, carp, chubs, suckers, fallfish, trout, and even muskie in addition to the bass. I’ve often fished this creek with live bait, particularly garden worms and nightcrawlers, but with so many fingerling nibbling away at such baits it becomes a major chore to keep freshening them up while simultaneously navigating the kayak.

On the other hand, those little fingerlings generally don’t bother with the Senko and it holds up much better than an earthworm. It’s also easier to fish from a kayak or canoe, casting toward structure along the bank and jigging it as you reel it back toward you. The single Mosquito or Octopus Hook also makes it easier to unhook and release the fish than the many artificial lures that feature treble hooks.

But these smallmouth weren’t the classic “fish in a barrel” like the largemouth in my pond. You had to work for them. It took almost forty minutes of casting and reeling, but my patience was finally rewarded with one of the heftiest bronzebacks I’ve ever battled on the Brandywine. In fact, as I drifted with the current, I first thought I had snagged the bottom and was sure I was hung up. But then when the drag started to play out, I knew I had a good fish on. My lightweight rod bowed over and strained at the weight.

A father and son in a nearby canoe applauded my efforts as the smallmouth leaped and splashed on the surface any number of times. When I finally got the feisty fish to the kayak, I lifted it out of the water to admire it, then immediately unhooked it and slipped it back into the roiling Brandywine waters. I judged it was just over a foot long, a little smaller than the biggest backyard largemouth I had caught that morning. But in terms of pugnacity and fight, there was no comparison. The muscular bronzeback won that one hands (or fins) down. I would catch one more smallie and lose three others before reaching Northbrook.

I can’t say for sure why these Brandywine bronzebacks fight so much harder than the backyard bucketmouths. Maybe it’s a factor of physiology as well as environment since the smallies are constantly dealing with river currents while, for the largemouth dwelling in my placid pond, the living is easy. Also, the moving water on streams and rivers, especially with high water when the current is racing, adds another level of difficulty in battling those belligerent bronzebacks.

So at the conclusion of my research I could crown an undisputed champion in terms of the better battling bass. Maybe not a knockout or TKO but still an easy call: bronzeback over bucketmouth, at least on this day.