Spotted Bass: How to Tell It From Largemouth and Alabama Bass

A spotted bass has a rough tooth patch on its tongue and an upper jaw that stops at the rear of the eye; a largemouth’s jaw runs past the eye, and a tooth patch is rare on one. Its near-identical twin, the Alabama bass, can only be told apart by a scale count or a genetic test. The spotted bass is a river fish of the Ohio and Mississippi basins that took to reservoirs. It fights harder than its size, and most never reach three pounds. Anglers in Kentucky call it the Kentucky bass, and it is that state’s official game fish.

The IGFA reopened the spotted bass record in June 2024, because the biggest “spotted bass” on the books turned out to be Alabama bass, a species only recognized since 2008. The record now stands at 2 lb 8 oz.

How do you tell a spotted bass from the other bass?

Check the jaw, the tongue and the spots. The spotted bass is the black bass that gets mistaken for both of the others: a largemouth that seems small-mouthed, a smallmouth that has a stripe. Three marks separate it from a largemouth. The upper jaw does not extend past the rear edge of the eye; on a largemouth it reaches well beyond it. There is a rough tooth patch in the center of the tongue, which Virginia’s wildlife agency calls “rare in Largemouth Bass”. And below the dark lateral stripe, the lower sides carry rows of small dark spots, which give the fish its name.

The dorsal fin helps too: it has ten spines to the largemouth’s nine and is only shallowly notched. Against a smallmouth the stripe settles it, because smallmouth have vertical bars and no horizontal stripe.

Size is the other giveaway against a largemouth. Texas puts it bluntly: a spotted bass’s “maximum size is less than one-third that of largemouth bass”. The largemouth bass and smallmouth bass pages give each look-alike in full.

Spotted bass or Alabama bass?

You cannot separate them reliably by eye. The counts of lateral-line scales overlap at 68–71, and the spot patterns differ only on average. Wired2Fish’s guide counts 7–10 mottled spots above the stripe on a spotted bass and 10–12 on an Alabama bass. Where both occur, or where the Alabama bass has been introduced, only a scale count or a genetic test settles it.

Free PDF · Water temperature chart When do spotted bass bite?

One water temperature reading, and the 16-page chart tells you who's spawning, who's feeding hard, where they sit and what to throw. 26 fish, every number sourced.

Your email address

Send me the free chart

Enter your email, confirm it with one click, and the PDF is in your inbox. Plus one email a week on what's biting. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy.

Where do spotted bass live?

The native range is the Ohio and Mississippi basins into Oklahoma and Texas, and along the Gulf states. In Texas the fish is native from the Guadalupe River to the Red River, excluding the Edwards Plateau. It prefers more current than a largemouth, and in Texas’s words water “too warm, turbid, and sluggish for smallmouth bass”. That means river pools with flow, rocky banks, and the deeper, clearer, more open water of reservoirs.

In reservoirs, spotted and Alabama bass suspend over channels and follow schools of shad in a way largemouth rarely do. Wired2Fish calls both “habitat generalists with an affinity for open water and current”, and that habit is why so much spotted bass fishing happens over open water rather than on the bank.

Through the year they follow the same temperature bands as the largemouth on the bass hub, with two differences. In rivers they hold on current and rock rather than in vegetation. In reservoirs they suspend over deep water in summer and fall, schooling on shad.

Where has the Alabama bass spread?

In Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, where anglers moved it illegally. The Alabama bass is native to the Mobile River basin and was recognized as a species in 2008. North Carolina counts it in more than thirty waters, and at Lake Norman, Alabama bass outnumbered largemouth within five years of their arrival. North Carolina’s agency says it hybridizes “aggressively” with smallmouth and spotted bass: at Fontana Lake, more than three quarters of the smallmouth it tested genetically (38 of 50) were Alabama bass hybrids. The smallmouth cross is the meanmouth bass.

North Carolina removed all size and creel limits on Alabama bass in 2020 and asks anglers to harvest every one. Virginia lists it as predatory and undesirable, with no limit. Where you fish matters to what a “spotted bass” is.

How do you catch spotted bass?

Spotted bass eat what smallmouth eat and live where largemouth live, so the tackle is the finesse end of the bass box. On rock and current seams that means shaky heads, drop shots, Ned rigs and small jigs with craw trailers, all on the rigs and jigs hubs. Small crankbaits and jerkbaits work in spring.

In summer and fall, schools push shad to the surface over deep water. Then walking topwaters and small swimbaits cast to the boils catch them; the topwater and soft plastics hubs cover both. For most of it the rod is a 7 ft medium or medium-light spinning outfit, with 10–15 lb braid to a 6–10 lb fluorocarbon leader. The rods hub explains the matrix. Expect a fight above the fish’s weight: Texas calls spotted bass “excellent fighters”, and Wired2Fish describes the adults as aggressive predators that compete with the other bass.

Are spotted bass good to eat?

Yes, and the states would rather you kept some. Spotted bass mature small and can stunt a lake, so many states allow more of them per day, at a smaller size, than they allow largemouth, as Wired2Fish notes. Where the Alabama bass has invaded, the agencies would rather you ate every one. The same mercury advisories that apply to largemouth apply here by waterbody, so check the state health department page for the water you fish.

How big do spotted bass get?

Most never reach three pounds. Sports Illustrated puts it plainly: “a true spotted bass rarely reaches three pounds”, where an Alabama bass can pass ten. Wired2Fish gives the average maximum as about 18 in (46 cm) and 3 to 5 lb (1.4–2.3 kg), and Texas records its biggest spotted bass at just over 5.5 lb (2.5 kg). Reservoir fish grow faster than river fish: about 6 in (15 cm) in their first year, against 3 to 4 in (8–10 cm) in a river, in Wired2Fish’s figures.

What is the spotted bass record?

The all-tackle record is 2 lb 8 oz (1.13 kg), caught by Art Weston at Toledo Bend Reservoir, Texas, on February 13, 2025, on 1 lb test line. It beat the previous all-tackle mark of 2 lb 4 oz. That is small for a record, and the history explains why: it is a lesson in taxonomy. The biggest “spotted bass” in the book were Alabama bass, up to Nick Dulleck’s 11 lb 4 oz (5.1 kg) fish from New Bullards Bar Reservoir, California, in 2017.

In June 2024 the IGFA split the categories after a fisheries study in an American Fisheries Society journal. As Outdoor Life reported, “many records previously attributed to spotted bass were, in fact, Alabama bass”, and the IGFA moved them to the new species. The true spotted bass record started over and will climb from there. Wired2Fish names Texas and Tennessee as the only states that keep separate records for spotted and Alabama bass, and Texas puts the known maximum for its spotted bass above 5.5 lb (2.5 kg). Many states allow more spotted bass per day, at a smaller size, than largemouth, and the invaded states have removed all limits on Alabama bass; the state pages carry the current rules.

When do they spawn, and how fast do they grow?

Spotted bass spawn in spring over rock and gravel at 57–74 °F (14–23 °C) in Texas’s figures; Wired2Fish gives 63–78 °F (17–26 °C), from March or April in the South to May or June in the North. The female lays 1,150 to 47,000 eggs, and a nest holds 3,000 to 5,000. The eggs hatch in two to six days. The male guards the eggs and then the fry “for up to four weeks after they have hatched”.

Growth is fast and life is short. Reservoir fish reach about 6 in (15 cm) in their first year and add about 5 in in the second. They mature at 9½–10 in (24–25 cm), under two years old, and “a large proportion reach maturity within a year”. The fish on the spawning grounds are usually three or four years old. The average lifespan is about six years, eight to ten for Alabama bass.

The names, if you want them

The spotted bass is Micropterus punctulatus, and the Alabama bass is Micropterus henshalli. Kentucky bass is another name for the spotted bass, not a third fish. The bass hub covers all five black bass species.

Free PDF · 16 pages

Know what's biting before your first cast

The Water Temperature Fishing Chart. Take one water temperature reading, find it on the chart, and you know which of 26 freshwater fish are feeding today, where they are and what to throw. For your phone and the tackle box.

• Where they sit and what to throw at every band: bass, crappie, bluegill and walleye; catfish by species; trout: when to stop and where they hide
• The best hours at your reading, the cold front day by day, and the spawn calendar from ice-out to midsummer
• The three thermometer mistakes that make a reading lie (the first one is the surface)
• The 26-fish chart: who's spawning, feeding hard or shut down at your reading

Your email address

Send me the free chart

Every number from state fish and wildlife agencies and fisheries research: 61 sources, all on the site.

Enter your email, confirm it with one click, and the PDF is in your inbox. Plus one email a week on what's biting. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy.