World Record Bass Caught At O.H. Ivie

When angler Wyatt Frankens of of Wyatt Frankens Guide Service hit the waters on lake O.H. Ivie March 1, he was hoping to get in on some of the incredible monster bass action that has taken place there this year. But no one could have guessed exactly what kind of catch he would pull out of the lake.

He caught a 7.60-pound bass that was “unique” to say the least.

“The lab results are in!! Just got off the phone with the biologist over at Texas Parks & Wildlife, and he let me know that she was in fact a smallmouth/largemouth hybrid! So not only is it a lake at O.H. Ivie, it is a Texas state record as well,” Frankens posted on his Facebook.

After a call to The International Game Fish Association (IGFA) he also found out the fish after being certified will be a smallmouth/largemouth hybrid world record.

“I’m really at a loss for words. Who would’ve thought this small town guy from East Texas would be a world record holder”?”

Largemouth and smallmouth bass can hybridize in the wild and although it’s not common, it’s not not exactly uncommon in some waters.

This type of bass has a name: meanmouth. Yes, the “meanmouth” bass.

Noted freshwater fishing writer Steve Quinn of In-Fisherman wrote about this at length in an article called  “Hybrid Black Bass”

In the mid-1960s, Dr. William Childers and colleagues at the Illinois Natural History Survey began studies of centrarchid (sunfish family) hybrids. In the lab, they produced some oddballs—crosses of largemouth bass with warmouth, green sunfish, and bluegill. Crosses with crappie and rock bass failed.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.

Quinn noted the term “meanmouth” comes from seeing a school of largemouth-smallmouth hybrids attack a 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.

Congratulations to Frankens on his record-breaking, unique catch

TF&G Staff