Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Mouth Gape of a LMB

Here is a link to dLowrence's 22" LMB. He gets an 'AttaBoy' for remembering to measure the mouth gape of this dandy LMbass. Here is the challenge - can anyone catch a larger basss and remember to measure the mouth gape???
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=378870#Post378870

Bill,
We caught a few more LMB yesterday. Here is the details.

3lbs 4oz 17.5 inches MG 3.25
3lb 10oz 18 inches MG 3.50
2lb 14oz 17 inches MG 2.5 This fish looked like it had been injured and the gape reduced


Also, the CC we caught were all over 100% RW.

highflyer - thanks a lot for taking time to measure bass mouth gape for fish in TX. Isn't doing fish science fun? More should try it instead of constantly jaw jerking their bass. At a minimum allow your angling and bass catches to be more meaningful. Now if others in other US regions will help us with more measurements we will have a great data set for mouth gape and predation tendencies of HSB and LMB.

Haven't seen any recent activity in the HSB gape thread, so adding the latest data summary here. Still happy to collect SMB, HSB, YP data if folks get it. This plot includes all data above.

Caught a couple of LMB before dark tonight:

19.75" long
3 3/8" gape
3lb 1oz. (Very skinny bass. 75% RW)

17.50" long
3.5" gape
3lb 3oz

I caught 5 lmb last evening at the pond, and I'm guessing the total weight was between 20# and 25#. Caught one more tonight, tag #10. 18 3/4" long; gape 3" any way you measured it. It was a dead even 4# for a RW around 114%. It seemed skinnier than the ones that I caught yesterday.......

Today I brought the note pad, pen, scale, and ruler with me. 3 of the ones caught yesterday are residing in a cage waiting for the fillet knife. I'll post measurements when they are prepped for surgery.

I used this 5" Sebile magic soft jerk bait, in Bluegill color because Cabelas didn't have Perch color. The LMB didn't care!

They wised up today and I could see them looking at it but not hitting it. I DID have 3 swings and misses tho.....

Those are some nice catches!

I've never used that bait so I did some research and found a great tutorial on just about every way to rig and use them.

http://youtu.be/LfbI-SCK3JU

I used 2 weights on the hook under the belly and twitched it back in, pausing once in a while. Sometimes they'd hit it on the fall, sometimes while I was twitching it.

What pound test line do you typically fish those lures with?

I was using 8# Vanish.

Thank you. At cabelas now.

Caught a few more LMB if you are still looking for data?

1lb 2oz, 13.75", 2.25" gape
1lb 3oz, 13 7/8", 2 3/8" gape
0lb 14oz, 12 7/8", 2.0" gape

Ross - thanks for catching and measuring. We are always looking for more measurements. We can never have too many fish mouth measurements. Those PBoss anglers on the Lk Erie trip did not even get any walleye mouth gape measurements. Shame on them.

I just noticed that I posted these to HSB mouth gape by mistake. They are LMB


21" long
3-5/8" gape

19-1/2" long
3-1/4 gape

10-1/2 long
1-1/2 gape

18-1/4" long
3-1/4" gape

20-3/8" long
3-3/8" gape

21-3/8" long
3-7/16" gape

22" long
3-3/4 gape

17-1/4" long
3" gape

18-1/4" long
3-1/8" gape

19-7/8" long
3-1/4" gape

I have posted pics in photo gallery.

A couple more LMB:

1lb 6oz
14.75"
2.5" gape

And a skinny one:
3lbs 2oz
19.5"
3.5" gape

More data points. Most of the fish I didn't bother weighing except as a group to chart how many pounds of LMB are removed from the pond this year. Sex is after gape if known.
Caught 6-30 and 7-1
19" 3" gape
17 3/4" 2 3/4" gape M
19" 2 3/4" gape F
19" 3" gape
17" 3"x3" gape M
15" 2 1/2" gape M?
17" 2 3/4" gape
18" 2 3/4" F
Total weight of the above fish are 25#.

18 3/4" 3"x3" gape 5.51# F released back into the pond Floy tag #003. Re-caught today 7-16 on same swim bait in same area, she looked even fatter than on 7-4 when weighed. She spent 3 days in a cage before being weighed last time.

Caught 7-16
18.5" 2 7/8" gape 4.20#

Thanks much gents. Gottem all in from here. All the LMB data looks nice. The goofy point is lovinliving's 16" long 1 5/8" gape fish. The trend says that size gape is an 11" fish. Big-mouth award so far goes to dlowrance with his 4"er.

Nice body of measurement data.

Some more measurements:

1. 16" long LMB Gape 3"

2. 14.75" long LMB Gape 2.5"

3. 15.25" long LMB Gape 3"

jludwig makes our 10th data contributor. Would folks like to see the LMB data colored separately by person? Could do a measurement only plot where you could see whose fish lie where. Just an offer. I make my living evaluating data.. no biggie to put together if it would amuse folk.

If it's not much trouble that'd be cool to see.

Nice! I really like it.

jludwig and highflyer have fish on the larger mouthed side of the cloud and lovinliving's fish are smaller mouthed. I think dlowrance needs to fess up to more than just one huge 4" fish... Would be interesting to see if any factors account for that. North vs South, are they all pellet fed or some only eat BG, etc?
You can kinda see the age of the fish population in the pond by how far up the curve that pond's fish are- that's neat.
Everyone feed us more data!

There could be some variance in how far one stretches the mouth of the fish.

When I measured, I was a little unsure of how wide the fish might have actually been able to open its mouth without my assistance. I've just not handled very many LMB.

Caught and gill hooked a 5 lb 12 oz bass today. length 20.25 gape inside to inside 3.5 inch. ****Disclaimer length and game measurements were take about 2 hours after death and exposed to 100F heat.

Bill if you read this in exchange for measurements can you offer thoughts on my other thread http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=383224#Post383224

my misfortune is your gain, I would not have measured this fish due to the heat, if she had not died