Texas fisherman’s ‘meanmouth bass’ catch is a world record - For The Win

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A fisherman in Texas caught what he thought was a lake-record smallmouth bass, but it turned out to be a world record for something different and very unique.

The 7-pound, 9-ounce smallmouth bass that Wyatt Frankens caught at O.H. Ivie Reservoir in March was actually confirmed by Texas Parks and Wildlife as a smallmouth-largemouth hybrid, commonly referred to as a meanmouth bass.

This information instantly made the hybrid fish not only a lake record but a state record.

Then, earlier this month, the International Game Fish Association confirmed it as a world record. The IGFA is the official recordkeeper for sportfishing catches.

"At first I thought it was a big smallmouth," Frankens explained to USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. "O.H. Ivie has some big largemouth in it, but it also has big smallies.

"After I got her weighed, some guys mentioned that it could be a hybrid. Meaning, it could be a largemouth-smallmouth mix. After scale samples were sent in to the biologists at TPW, the results showed that this was true.

"I was honestly pretty shocked. It's not something I've ever really thought about mainly because it just doesn't happen very often."

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O.H. Ivie Reservoir is located on the Colorado and Concho Rivers in Concho, Coleman and Runnel counties, 55 miles east of San Angelo. The lake has white bass, crappie, catfish and sunfish in addition to the largemouth and smallmouth bass, and evidently meanmouth bass.

Incidentally, the meanmouth bass was so named when in the mid-1960s, Dr. William Childers and his colleagues at the Illinois Natural History Survey began studies on sunfish family hybrids.

From InFisherman.com:

The researchers noted that different black bass species didn't hybridize when stocked in ponds with members of another species (i.e., all males of one species with all females of another). But fertilizing largemouth eggs with smallmouth sperm produced viable offspring that reproduced among themselves and with both parental species.

The term "meanmouth bass" was born when Childers observed a school of largemouth-smallmouths attacking a female swimmer. "The bass leaped from the water and struck her on the head and chest," he wrote, "and drove her from the pond." On another occasion, he watched meanmouths attack a dog that ventured into shallow water.

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Frankens, a fishing guide on various Texas lakes, has caught many big bass before, as evidenced from his Facebook page. He has now added meanmouth bass to his largemouth and smallmouth bass catches.

"I feel blessed, to say the least," he told For The Win Outdoors."

Photos courtesy of Wyatt Frankens.

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