San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

Is this one of those Golden Phase Largemouth I’ve read about. Note lack of markings and the Red Eye.

Nice fish!

Smartphone pic? Way over saturated and when I look at a luminescence and color channel histograms for the image they show big spike on both the left and right side. Looks like something the computational enhancements stuff built into phone cams over the last few years would do (yea I'm kind of a semi photo snob>

I'll take your word over the photo that the fish had a golden or yellowish/greenish hue on the flanks (I'm viewing on a color calibrated monitor). I have caught fish with similar markings (faint to no barring or spots visible) on local lakes and as far north as the delta. Usually in water with lower visibility.

With the red eye it almost looks like a largemouth/spotted hybrid.

Did I say it was a nice fish?

Nice selfie too despite my preference for more natural colors. It's hard to do nice selfies when you have to manage a camera, fish, watercraft, leader, rod, etc. Kudos.

That red eye looks very smallmouth-like!

The Water really was that Turquoise color. The other Bass I caught had normal coloration.

Done

Mcfish wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 5:13 pm That red eye looks very smallmouth-like!

Spotted bass can have red eyes too. And they can hybridize with largemouth.

Both largemouth and spots can interbreed with small mouth. The result is often referred to as a "meanmouth". My understanding is that this hybridization is much more rare.

Bass have the ability to change their color to match the background, much like a chameleon. So bass caught in the weeds will have the classic green and black largemouth pattern and I have seen fish caught in the open water be light green and almost silvery.

https://www.takemefishing.org/blog/febr ... ral%20line.

https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factshe ... ciesID=401

I’ve caught one with zero markings at murray

Gotfish? wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 6:18 pm Bass have the ability to change their color to match the background, much like a chameleon. So bass caught in the weeds will have the classic green and black largemouth pattern and I have seen fish caught in the open water be light green and almost silvery.

https://www.takemefishing.org/blog/febr ... ral%20line.

https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factshe ... ciesID=401

May be true but if that was the case, you’d be catching way more with the drastic variations in a batch of catches. I’ve only seen one in person that had zero marks. I believe these fish are one offs. Like a gold grouper, albino cat etc

Seen lots of bass without markings in the local eastcounty lakes...
Also have seen lots of red-eyes on the males during the spawn.
I have no idea if the red-eye has anything to do with the spawn or not, but Rob Magargal "Linebig" seems to think so....

I would like to see Linebig come on here for a discussion of the red eye syndrome....or breeding.

The markings/no markings usually comes from where the fish are, if they’re relating to cover or open water, and water clarity. Guarantee if you catch some schooling open water fish, they will have a bland pattern at best

Hard to say, that one I got was minutes after catching one almost same spot that had super dark markings over 10lb. I’ve never caught another one with zero markings. And that’s in every water column in most local lakes and out of state lakes.

So just a regular Bass with strange to me Red Eyes.