Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Mean Mouth Bass?

Anybody had any experience with LMB and SMB crossing in your pond? Are MMB only something some researcher came up with or do they occur naturally in nature? I am wondering because I stocked 1 LMB in with my 5 SMB. The LMB was a couple inches shorter than the SMBs when stocked. Is it possible that LMB may get lonely and find a SMB boyfriend or girl friend?

Yes.

AaronM from Phoenix got meanmouth in his pond.

I think there's some threads about it.

I thought there should be some threads but was unable to find them using the forum search engine. I tried google too which has worked for me in the past if I just add Pond Boss to the search criteria but no luck.

BillD. Keep us informed if you see some young bass that do to not look like regular smallmouth. The SMB that you have will likely produce young bass. It will be your job to figure out if they are pure SMB or hybrids. Here is some information about the SMBXLMB hybrid (aka Mean mouth) and how the name was coined. Info from In-Fisherman.

Meanmouth 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. Cody Note: Some think the two did not cross because each had a slightly different spawning period temperature requirement, thus both were not ready at the same time.

The term “meanmouth bass” was born when Childers observed a school of largemouth-smallmouths attacking a female 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.

Though indications of hybrid vigor were evident in aggressiveness and fast growth, high mortality and low reproductive rates for the hybrids led to a halt of this investigation in the 1980s. Childers cautioned that backcrossing of hybrids with parental species would be harmful, since gene flow between the species would reduce the fitness of populations as maladaptive genes were introduced. Over 30 years ago, he urged caution in mixing bass subspecies and even geographically separated populations of fish of the same species.

In nearly all cases of hybridization outside the lab, smallmouth have been involved. Geneticist Dr. Dave Philipp, colleague of the late Dr. Childers, noted that fertilization of largemouth bass eggs with smallmouth sperm resulted in more successful crosses than the reciprocal cross (largemouth male and female smallie). The aggressive male smallmouth bass may be an instigator when introduced into waters outside its natural range where spawning sites are limited, or in altered habitats such as reservoirs.

When smallies were added to newly constructed Squaw Creek Reservoir in Texas, they soon hybridized and backcrossed with both northern and Florida subspecies of largemouths that were already in the impoundment. In 1993, Rich Fry caught an 8-pound 3-ounce bass from a Pennsylvania mine pit that was genetically identified as a first-generation hybrid of a largemouth and a smallmouth bass.

Thanks Bill,

Sounds like it could happen but pretty remote chance unless My LMB is female.

So if it did happen and I got MMB, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a good thing, how bad is it? I eat fish and I figure on not going swimming so I would meet them on the shore near my skillet!

Good question. First you will have to get some hybrids. Most likely all you will see are new smallies.

Sure hope so. Now I also have 1 WE so if that WE crosses with a MMB then I get something really mean with big teeth so we will just save that discussion for another day!

I know this has been brought a few times on the Pond Boss forum, but to my understand the "meanmouth bass" is the cross of a Spotted bass and SMB, with the aggressive nature of a spot but the size of a SMB.

Thanks for the input Snakebite. I have been looking at MMB on the internet and I see that spotted bass and SMB crossed are also called MMB.

As far as I can tell, there was no such thing as MMB before man jumped in and started intoducing fish into new environments. I see from research that MMB spawn with MMB so has man created a new species or is it still considered a hybrid? Do the spawn of MMB and MMB follow the parent MMB or revert back to be more similar to one of the original SMB, spotted bass or LMB grandparents?

Sshh..... cool hybrid photos, a familiar face or two, and a link to PB....

http://www.meanmouthbass.com/