White Bass, Morone chrysops
White Bass, Morone chrysops. Fish caught from Lake Nacimiento, San Luis Obispo County, California, May 2021. Length: 30 cm (12 inches). Catch, photograph and Identification courtesy of Vince Golder, Santa Cruz, California.
The White Bass, Morone chrysops, is a member of the Temperate Bass or Moronidae Family, that is also known as the Barfish, the Sand Bass, the Silver Bass and the Streaker and in Mexico as Lobina Blanca. Globally, there are four species in the Morone Genus, with two species found in Mexican waters, one in freshwater of the Atlantic drainage and one in the Pacific Ocean.
The White Bass has a streamlined silvery fusiform moderately deep, laterally compressed body with the back rising steeply behind their small head which has a large, slightly oblique terminal mouth with a projecting lower jaw that extends past the middle of the eye Jaws with small conical teeth along the side and a single oval patch at the center. The body depth is 31% to 35% of standard length with a body depth greater than the head length. Their back is blue-gray and the sides are silver with 4 to 7 brown longitudinal stripes, that may be broken, on the sides wit h the lowermost rows being of elongated dark dashes transitioning to white ventrally. The anal, caudal and dorsal fins are dusky; the pectoral and pelvic fins are transparent. The anal fin originates well behind the second dorsal fin and has 3 spines, with the third spine much longer than the second, and 12 or 13 rays; the caudal fin is distinctly forked with a homocercal tail lacking vertebrae; the first dorsal fin has 9 spines; the second dorsal fin has 1 spine and 13 to 15 rays; the pectoral fins have 15 to 17 rays; the pelvic fins have 1 spine and 5 rays. The gill cover is serrated with one sharp spine. They are sexually dimorphic with the males having one urogenital opening behind the anus and the females two. They have 19 to 29 gill rakers. They are covered with large, rough scales and have a continuous lateral line.
The White Bass is a freshwater species that is found in the open waters of large lakes and reservoirs or in slow moving rivers with temperatures between 12oC (54oF) to 32oC (90oF); on occasion they are found in brackish water at depths of less than 14 m (46 feet). They can be seen in schools on the surface and found offshore during the daylight and at night inshore. They avoid acidic and turbid waters. They reach a maximum length of 45 cm (18 inches). As of December 1, 2024, the International Game Fish Association world record for weight stood at 3.09 kg (6 lbs 13 oz) with the fish caught from Lake Orange, Orange, Virgina. The White Bass is both a carnivore and an invertivore. Food habits vary with developmental stage as well as the season. Larvae consume the larvae of other fishes, copepods, cladocerans, and midge larvae; juveniles consume cladocerans, midge larvae, copepods, and water bugs; large juveniles consume a wide variety of juvenile small fish including crappies, minnows, mosquitofishes, silversides and sunfishes, as well as cladocerans and midge larvae; and, the adults feed on aquatic insects in the spring and gizzard shad and threadfin shad. In turn they are preyed upon by birds, fish, and humans.
The White Bass has a limited range in Mexico being limited to the feeder tributaries of the Rio Grande in the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon.
White bass are potramodromus and migrate long distances upstream in unisexual schools from reservoirs to shoals upriver or to the heads of reservoirs and into smaller streams during March and April as water temperatures reach 13°C (55°)F for spawning. Each female can release up to 1 million eggs which are then fertilized by multiple males and then abandoned. The sticky eggs are demersal and adhere to submerged trees and other substrates where they hatch unattended after approximately 45 days. The larvae stay in the shallows for a short time before becoming planktonic moving to deeper water. They grow fast and reach maturity quickly within two years. They have life spans of up to 9 years.
The White Bass is easily confused with the Hybrid Striped Bass or Palmetto Bass, Morone saxatilis (interrupted or broken stripes that extend into the caudal fin; two tooth patches on their tongue) and the Striped Bass, Morone saxatilis (two tooth patches on their tongue; two sharp points on each gill cover).
From a conservation perspective the White Striped Bass is currently considered to be of Least Concern, with stable, widely distributed populations with adult populations estimated to be in excess of 1,000,000 individuals. They are a heavily pursued recreational sports fish with live bait (worms and minnows) and spoons and spinners and considered to be an excellent food fish. As they are a top-level predatory fish they have had a major negative ecological impact on native species in their introduced range.