DeltaD

FishChris, first off congratulations on ANOTHER fine catch to add to your growing list of trophy gamefish. That is one heck of a fish! I've looked at that picture and the other quite a lot, I believe the markings are within the typical pattern (helps to use the kids photo to gain perspective) but I believe they (markings) are distorted, kind of like if you drew a picture onto a deflated balloon and then blew it up, picture is still the same, just distorted from swelling, same for your fish. Coloration as we all know is highly influenced by the subjects environment, so for this particular lake that may be the typical color. I have caught smallies at pardee before, all were more green than brown. I believe it is a genetically pure smallmouth. But I also ain't no biologist.

I have seen and caught meanmouth or mulies, I don't believe that's what this fish is. For one there are no documented catches of spotted bass in lake pardee, it is known for brute smallmouth, suprising largemouth and then the trout, kokes and some amazing brown trout from time to time. The size of smallbouth in pardee is well known to some who fish there, personally my largest there is 3.75 lbs a respectable fish, but not a trophy, smallmouth come out of there every year in the 8lb range, so really the only thing we can go on are the markings and while they're not typical, they really aren't that atypical either. The largest meanmouth I've hear is 4lbs or so. So just maybe in the absence of spotted bass what we're looking at is one fat smallie caught by two different individuals a short time apart.