Georgia Mountain Shoal Bass

Dirk

Senior Member
Had to head up north to the edge of the Appalachians this morning early for work, but knew I would have about an hour that I could squeeze in for a little fast water bank fishing. I brought a rod w/swimbait and a rod w/spinnerbait. Started off with the swimbait and no luck at all. Switched to spinnerbait and things improved immediately... :D Got 4 fish from tiny to a pretty nice one almost 4 lbs in the hour I had.

Dink
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A little better (but not much)
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Nice healthy beautiful Shoalie
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Nearly 4 lb Shoalie
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Great to wet a line and have good action to break up a Friday workday and I am blessed to be able to squeeze in some fishing time between work appointments (and hopefully will get to again soon. ;) ).
 

Scout'nStripers

Senior Member
WTG Dirk! Glad you got to wet a line and catch a few nice fish.
 

Duff

Senior Member
Nice!! Been itching to hit the river myself. That last one is a hoss for the mountains:cheers:
 

greg_n_clayton

Senior Member
We call them red eyes. Smallest black and grey rapala you can find in the chattooga.
 

little rascal

Senior Member
Nice Dirk,

reminds me of jumping rocks and fishing the swift water in West Va., for smallies back when I was bulletproof!
 

Dirk

Senior Member
The 1st 2 small ones I did not examine closely and are possibly Redeye Bass. The 3rd one is definitely a Shoal Bass and so is the 4th one (though the photo does not show it well it had the Shoal bass "tiger stripes").

Shoal Bass are a separate species of Bass native to Georgia rivers. They can be found in several rivers in middle GA but only in the Chattahoochee river system north of Atlanta I think. Redeye Bass are a different species that can be found in most rivers in the southeast, but normally are small (2 lbs is a monster Redeye). Eye color does not help tell between the 2 as Shoalies (and even Spots and LM) sometimes have red eyes, and some redeyes do not have redeyes... :huh:
 

Cletus T.

Senior Member
Awesome river bass Dirk……you sure do know your way around the river. Still trying to connect on a fat shoalie but you have to fish where they live in order to catch them!

Those are some beautiful fish man! Thanks for sharing!
 

T.P.

Banned
The last one is def striped up on the bottom. Bad pidture angle but you can see them at the tail. Very nice fish!
 

Randy

Senior Member
Some questions have been asked so:

Presently there are 9 recognized black bass species as I type. It seems like more are added every day. The 9 are:

Spotted bass of which there are two, the northern or Kentucky and the Alabama spot which grows larger.
The Largemouth of course
The Redeye or Coosa some even claiming they are a separate species
The Smallmouth
The Swanee found in South Georgia and Florida
The Shoal bass native only to the Apalachicola River basin but has been transferred to the Altamaha Basin
The Guadeloupe found in Texas
The Choctaw Bass found in the panhandle of Florida

Of these Georgia has the most species at 7. No other state has that many. In the upper Altamaha Basin you can actually catch 4 of these species in one day if you are lucky.

As I stated earlier, this post is only good for today because some people are working to add species as I type. Alabama is actually trying to separate their spots into about 5 separate species. I am no biologist but since the mobile delta is connected to most of these rivers I doubt they are separate species.
 
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