Bass Fishing Hacks
Simple Hacks and Tips to Help You Catch More Bass
How can you tell the difference between a male and female largemouth bass?
The largemouth bass is one the most sought after game fish in the United States of America and it is the females that most fishermen want to catch. Why would fishermen want to catch the females? It is because the females are the really big ones.
In the article below, I will cover the various ways in which you can figure out if the bass that you just caught is a male or a female.
I am a Bass Fishing Charter Guide on Lake Okeechobee and the surrounding waters.
1) The female largemouth bass are usually bigger.
If you have ever caught a bass that was 8 pounds or larger, then you most likely caught a female largemouth bass. Like many species of fish the females of the largemouth bass species get much larger than the males.
Fish females must get larger because they must carry many thousands of eggs. A female bass can lay up to 7,000 eggs per pound of her body mass. So the larger the female can become, the more baby bass she can produce. The more baby bass that she can produce, the better the chances of the survival of the species.
Egg laying by largemouth bass is a numbers game because very few of the eggs survive because they are eaten by panfish like bluegills and sunfish. A good survival rate for largemouth bass eggs is .05 %. That is not a very high survival rate.
Once the eggs hatch very few of the bass fry will actually live past one year. They are often eaten by other bass and other predators like wading birds and other predatory fish species.
Females also have a better chance of growing larger than the males because many male largemouth bass die during the spawn. They will go for 2 weeks without eating sometimes and spend huge amounts of energy protecting the nest from predators and keeping it clean of debris.
If you ever see a nest with a single bass in it, then that is a male bass guarding the nest.
Watch the video below and learn more about catching bass during the spawn.
2) When you catch a bass during or right after the spawn you can figure out their sex easily by gently squeezing their bellies.
During the spawn and immediately during the post spawn you can tell if the bass that you caught is a male or female by gently squeezing its belly and looking at the opening near the tail. If it is a male, then you will see a white substance squirt out of the anal opening. That is the sperm or milt of the male largemouth bass.
If you follow the same procedure and you see a few greenish colored eggs near the anal opening then that largemouth bass is a female. The problem with this method of identifying the genders of a largemouth bass is only effective for about 40 or 50 days in every year. You are out of luck with this method during the other 300 and something days a year.
3) The anal opening of the male is usually more circular than the female bass’ anal opening.
This is a very hard thing to spot and even the best ichthyologists cannot discern the difference readily and they look at a lot more bass butts than most fishermen. The females’ anal opening is more of an elliptical shape than the males circular one. They are both the same basics shape with slightly less curvature.
4) Often times the male largemouth bass will have a neatly trimmed mustache and beard.
The facial hair is a dead give away for the adult male largemouth bass. Just kidding. Only mammals have hair.
The bottom line is that you cannot readily tell if the bass that you just caught is a female or male unless it is over 8 pounds in weight. Males just don’t ever get to those large sizes out in the wild.
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