Alabama bass likely to join official ranks of state fishery
Texas has a new black bass. Sort of.
Actually, it’s an old black bass, whose direct ancestors have been finning in the species’ home waters for at least several thousand years. But it’s new to Texas — although not really that new, having been a resident for 21 years or so. Andit won’t officially be a new bass in Texas until later this year, and then only if a proposal to place its name in the state’s regulatory code is adopted.
Still, Alabama bass, Micropterus henshalli, is the newest species of the black bass family, the most popular game fish in the nation, to call Texas waters home. Well, it calls just one piece of Texas water home — Lake Alan Henry, which is near Lubbock. But the fish certainly have made a name for themselves in that one lake, and even bigger splashes in another state. (More on that later.)
Never heard of Alabama bass?
Few people had until 2011, when the American Fisheries Society looked at the considerable and pretty much indisputable scientific evidence and decided this fish native to a handful of waterways in Alabama was, indeed, a separate and distinct species of black bass and not a subspecies of the widely distributed Kentucky spotted bass. The fishes’ official name changed from “Alabama spotted bass” to just “Alabama bass.” Relatives from Kentucky
Long before that, there were strong hints that Alabama bass were not just a subspecies of Kentucky spotted bass. For years, many folks had called the bass living in the Alabama/ Mobile River system “Alabama spotted bass.”
They look much like Kentucky spotted bass — one of the nine species of black bass identified in the United States. They are long and lean, with the namesake broken lines of “spots” dotting the length of their body beneath their lateral line, just like Kentucky spotted bass. They are red/orange-eyed, brightly marked, handsome “river” fish that prefer flowing waters with hard-clay or gravel bottoms. In reservoirs, they tend to hang out in deeper water and away from the bank much more so than their largemouth bass cousins.
They also are, like Kentucky spotted bass, generally much smaller than largemouths. Across Kentucky spotted bass’ native range, which covers most of the southeastern United States and Texas as far west as the Colorado River, a “big” spotted bass pushes 2 pounds with a 3-pounder considered a true beast of a “spot.”
But the Kentucky “spots” from Alabama tend to grow larger than those in the rest of the fishes’ native range. A lot larger.
Texas’ record Kentucky spotted bass was a 5.56-pounder caught from Lake O’ the Pines in 1966. Alabama’s record is an 8-pound, 15-ounce fish that set a world record for Kentucky spotted bass when it was landed in 1978.
Fisheries scientists looked closely at those Alabama “spots.” They were different. The Alabama fish had slight physical differences from Kentucky bass. Andthey obviously had the genetic predisposition to grow larger than Kentucky bass from other parts of the fishes’ range. Fisheries science experts decided to designate these Alabama fish as a subspecies of Kentucky spotted bass.
There certainly was precedent for this. Large- mouth bass from Florida had been found to have a genetic predisposition to grow much heavier than other members of the northern largemouth bass species. Those Florida fish were designated as a subspecies of northern largemouth bass —“Florida bass” or “Florida-strain” largemouths.
Every bass angler knows what happened when those Florida-strain largemouths were introduced to waters outside their range. They brought their heavyweight genes with them, changing bass fisheries and bass fishing. Double-digit largemouths — fish weighing 10 pounds or more — were as rare as 5-pound spotted bass before Florida-strain bass were introduced and stocked into fisheries across the South. Today in Texas, which began stocking Florida-strain largemouths in the 1970s and now raises and annually stocks millions of Florida bass into the state’s public waters, almost any body of water can and does produce largemouths weighing 10 pounds or more.
Something similar occurred with Alabama bass.
In 1996, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s inland fisheries staff were considering how to develop the fisheries in Lake Alan Henry, a 2,900-acre reservoir built in 1993 on the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River in Garza County about 45 miles south of Lubbock.
“The habitat there looked to favor spotted bass more than largemouths. Deep water, steep banks, hard clay, gravel and chunks of rock on the bottom,” said Craig Bonds, director of TPWD’s inland fisheries division.
TPWDstaffobtained a load of 150 adult Alabama subspecies spotted bass and released them into Alan Henry. The small, isolated reservoir is the only lake in the state to have been stocked with the Alabama strain of fish.
“They have really thrived in that lake,” Bonds said.
Indeed. Andthey have manifested their characteristic grown potential. Anglers fishing Alan Henry began catching big spotted bass from the reservoir. Bigger and bigger
In 2011, the same year the American Fisheries Society designated Alabama bass a distinct species, an angler on Alan Henry landed a 5.62-pound “Kentucky spotted bass.” The fish was certified as the Texas record for spotted bass, replacing the native spotted bass that had held the state record for 45 years.
That fish was topped by another Alan Henry fish — a 5.98-pounder landed in January 2016.
In California, a tremendous fishery has developed from “spotted bass” from Alabama first stocked in 1974. Several lakes in California have produced what apparently are Alabama bass (but still considered “spotted bass” for record consideration) weighing more than 8 pounds and some more than 10 pounds.
There is some contro- versy, or at least serious discussion, among fisheries scientists and angling’s record-keeping organizations over how to differentiate between Alabama bass and Kentucky spotted bass when it comes to angling records.
Texas is moving to incorporate Alabama bass’ separate species designation into its fishing regulations. In late January, TPWDstaffrecommended a rule change that would add Alabama bass to the list of black bass covered under the state’s fishing regulations. The proposal also includes adding Alabama bass to the specific black bass regulations governing angling on Alan Henry Reservoir.
If the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission adopts the proposals at its March meeting —a move that seems almost certain — the changes would take effect Sept. 1.
WhenAlabama bass become an official, distinct game fish in Texas, TPWD will move to create an Alabama bass record category in its angling records program. Andthat could open the door to moving Texas’ current “spotted bass” record from Alan Henry to the Alabama bass category and reinstating the 5.56-pound Kentucky spotted bass caught from East Texas’ Lake O’ the Pines in 1966 to its spot as the biggest “spot” landed in Texas.