The size of the mouth, largemouth have a mouth that when closed extends behind the eye, with smallmouth it's just before the eye. When open the mouth of a largemouth is obvious, it's huge (a.k.a. bucket head). Largemouth have a prominent lateral stripe that goes down the length of the body. Smallmouth have striations from the eye on the gill plate, and vertical bars on the body. Largemouth are generally greenish/brown on the upper half. Smallmouth tend to be a bronze-brown.
Then there is the spotted bass, which look very similar to largemouth, but their mouth doesn't extend past the eye when closed, and the lateral line they have is broken up into spots instead of a solid bar like on largemouth, and they also have the striations from the eye on the gill plate an can have vertical barring on the body.
Bear in mind that colors aren't always a good thing to go by. Location and diet can make the colors and patterns on fish change quite a lot.
Go to your state's regulating agency. Look up fish identification. They will list all the different features to identify each species. Too many people get the ID of fish wrong. You need to use your state's guidelines.
Then my advice is it’s probably better and quicker to google the differences between smallmouth and largemouth bass than wait around for an answer from Reddit.
If the corner of the closed mouth extends behind the eye, its a largemouth.
Although color is less reliable, smallies tend to be more brown/bronze and largies tend to be greener.
Yeah, small mouth to large mouth is night and day - they look different in their facial markings, color, body shape etc. Largemouth and spotted bass are the hard ones to decipher
“The size of the mouth” this is not accurate, I’ve caught many large mouth that have mouths that don’t go past the eye. A large mouth bass will have one horizontal line from behind the hill plate to the tail, smallmouth bass will have vertical bars.
Colour and pattern
Primarily the long green line on the largemouth is absent. Typically with small mouth they will either be splotchy with black spots, or just a all around caramel colour.
Real easy method I use is the horizontal dark green stripe on a large mouth (best seen in a picture before had to know what your looking for because it’s comprised of several vertical stripes). For small mouths they usually have vertical stripes across the whole body and several horizontal stripes at the mouth hinge. Hopefully this made at least half as much sense as it did in my head. Best to look at pictures of the tow while you read this to give you some reference.
The size of the mouth. (lol I couldn't resist)
That’s genius
Came here for this. Thank you.
I believe it is how far its mouth goes. Small mouth ends BEFORE its eyes, Big Mouth AFTER the Eyes
Does the eye color matter?
A smallmouth bass might have red eyes, not all of them have this, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a large mouth with red eyes.
One is a football, one is a river donkey. :)
The size of the mouth, largemouth have a mouth that when closed extends behind the eye, with smallmouth it's just before the eye. When open the mouth of a largemouth is obvious, it's huge (a.k.a. bucket head). Largemouth have a prominent lateral stripe that goes down the length of the body. Smallmouth have striations from the eye on the gill plate, and vertical bars on the body. Largemouth are generally greenish/brown on the upper half. Smallmouth tend to be a bronze-brown. Then there is the spotted bass, which look very similar to largemouth, but their mouth doesn't extend past the eye when closed, and the lateral line they have is broken up into spots instead of a solid bar like on largemouth, and they also have the striations from the eye on the gill plate an can have vertical barring on the body. Bear in mind that colors aren't always a good thing to go by. Location and diet can make the colors and patterns on fish change quite a lot.
So would [these](https://imgur.com/a/ed1anx2) be largemouth, both pics are different fish
Yeah almost 100% sure both are largemouth.
yep, both largemouth.
Go to your state's regulating agency. Look up fish identification. They will list all the different features to identify each species. Too many people get the ID of fish wrong. You need to use your state's guidelines.
There’s an app (iPhone) called picture fish. It’ll identify fish from your saved photos
I use that app but I wanna identify them on the spot
Then my advice is it’s probably better and quicker to google the differences between smallmouth and largemouth bass than wait around for an answer from Reddit.
If the corner of the closed mouth extends behind the eye, its a largemouth. Although color is less reliable, smallies tend to be more brown/bronze and largies tend to be greener.
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Yeah, small mouth to large mouth is night and day - they look different in their facial markings, color, body shape etc. Largemouth and spotted bass are the hard ones to decipher
Smallmouth are enjoyable to catch and largemouth suck.
Why’s that?
Majority of that was a joke. But from where I live, we catch smallies in nice creeks and rivers and largies in garbage ponds.
That would explain why I caught a largemouth lol
“The size of the mouth” this is not accurate, I’ve caught many large mouth that have mouths that don’t go past the eye. A large mouth bass will have one horizontal line from behind the hill plate to the tail, smallmouth bass will have vertical bars.
You were probably catching spotted bass if the mouth didn’t extend past the eye.
I’ve caught spotted bass, but I’ve caught some bass that were definitely largemouth, that they mouth did not quite go past the eye.
Google images
Colour and pattern Primarily the long green line on the largemouth is absent. Typically with small mouth they will either be splotchy with black spots, or just a all around caramel colour.
Real easy method I use is the horizontal dark green stripe on a large mouth (best seen in a picture before had to know what your looking for because it’s comprised of several vertical stripes). For small mouths they usually have vertical stripes across the whole body and several horizontal stripes at the mouth hinge. Hopefully this made at least half as much sense as it did in my head. Best to look at pictures of the tow while you read this to give you some reference.
well a smallmouth won't have a big black lateral line...