8-Pound Oconee River Bass Likely Crossbreed

It’s often been said that fishermen are the biggest advocates in the preservation of the very fish they set out to catch. Members of the Georgia College Bass Fishing Team certainly proved that Monday as nearly a dozen of them worked to get a bass—later guessed by WRD Fisheries biologists as a cross between an Alabama (spotted) bass and a shoal bass—back into the Oconee River.

Trice Cannon, 20, of Dunwoody, a marketing major at Georgia College, was fishing on Monday, Dec. 6 with his teammate David Alan Stith. Both college anglers were fishing from kayaks in a stretch of the Oconee River below Milledgeville in Baldwin County. The fishing hadn’t been all that exciting until the big fish bit.

Trice Cannon, 20, of Dunwoody, with a big 8-lb. bass he caught from the Oconee River below Sinclair on Dec. 6.

“Three days before my best five went 19 pounds,” said Trice. “But it was so cloudy and windy on Monday. We were actually fixing to leave when the fish bit.”

Trice said he was pretty close to his last cast when he chunked his swimbait into a little transition area in the current.

“We thought it was a big striper at first until we saw the green,” said Trice.

Once Trice got the fish to his kayak, there was no question in their minds that it was a spotted bass, and he knew he had the river record. However, the state-record spotted bass weighs just 8-lbs., 2-ozs., so Trice knew he had a pretty rare fish in his hands—literally.

“It was an ordeal. I got out of my kayak and held the fish in the water for like 30 minutes while we called everybody for help,” said Trice. “At first my teammates brought a cooler to put the fish in, but it wasn’t really big enough to hold the fish.”

After sending the photos to GON, we sent them to Scott Robinson, chief of WRD Fisheries in Social Circle, who emailed the pictures to three biologists and a professor for their thoughts on a possible identification of the fish.

“First, congratulations to the angler on a great catch. This is an impressive bass,” said Scott. “However, judging from the photos it appears to be a hybrid between a shoal bass and an Alabama (spotted) bass. We have documented these hybrid crosses in the Oconee River over the past few years.

“Neither shoal bass or Alabama bass are native to that river basin, and we often see hybridization when species are moved outside their native range. The two species could have come downstream from the Ocmulgee and then back up the Oconee, or they may have come in from unauthorized stockings directly in the Oconee.  Another common way for species to get moved outside their native range is when people stock them in their ponds. As soon as a big rain comes and the pond flows over the spillway, the fish are moving downstream.  Hybridization is a real threat to our native bass in the places where they belong, so once again we ask folks to resist the temptation to move fish around where they don’t belong.”

While WRD keeps up with state-record fish, GON is the gatekeeper for the Georgia Lake & River Records.

Trice said if it weren’t for his teammates with the Georgia College Bass Fishing Team, this fish wouldn’t still be alive and swimming in the Oconee River below Sinclair.