Catch one or 2 a year from the same pond. Spine has a huge curve vertically. They have an obvious humpback and their stomach looks sucken in.
Top one in pic is normal, bottom the curved. Anyone know anything about this? What it is or what causes it?

cat, are you saying you frequently catch bass like the second, lower one pictured?

If these were initially stocked bass, IME it could be from damage that occurred in transport (which would be debilitating in a stocked pond, but poses less of a problem in an empty one). I found a larger-than-expected number (basically meaning non-zero) of deformed fish in both my pond's initial stockers.

If this is occurring in bass spawned in an established population, my guess is you have some weird genetics going on.

It's a form of Scoliosis and caused by what they believe is a missing piece of the genetic puzzle. It seems they don't know for sure what allows or limits this condition but it's not uncommon amongst many species.

I catch 1 or 2 a year like the bottom one in the pic. Biggest with this condition was a 6lb'r so it doesn't seem to be too debilitating. I have no knowledge of stocking in the last 30yrs unless some bucket stocking happened along the way.

Snipe, is it an indication of anything? Do new genetics need brought in or anything like that? Or is it just a thing that happens?

If you are catching 1 or 2 'hump-back' bass like that a year (and you're sure it's not the same fish), then I would think you've somehow ended up with some kind of bass breeding that amplifies that spine condition.

If you like LMB, then adding in some new LMB to add to the gene pool is generally a good idea. Now, if you had some kind of very unique and awesome situation going on in your pond, adding new LMB may not be the right move.

Certainly not the same fish.

I like LMB. I like catching big ones. Would love to catch bigger ones. That pretty much sums it up.

Then I would think there's some kind of in-breeding happening that presents the spine curvature more.

Adding a good amount of 'new' LMB would be beneficial, IMO.

Our State scientists say it is naturally occurring in most populations.
I had one of our hatchery techs tell me they had a batch of smb in one year class that had several of these with scoliosis, but honestly, they cannot tie it to in-breeding. I'm told it's something that occurs during cellular growth while still in the egg.
I've been told-doesn't mean it's absolute-that it is not a genetic issue.

Thanks, Snipe.

I don't recall all of cat's pond details, but his catch rate of these somewhat deformed fish sounds very, very high. Or he fishes way, way more than others. Theo's comment about early stocking survival of such a fish makes sense and in cat's case, it seems it's a long existing pond with no supplement stocking,

I maybe should not have said 'in-breeding.' It does seem like cat has a lot of these fish.

This is what I was talking about regarding Theo's comments:

"(which would be debilitating in a stocked pond, but poses less of a problem in an empty one)"

19 acre watershed. I fish year round if the mood strikes me. A couple times a week at times, once every few weeks at other times. Others (the kids and friends) fish too. I try to remove enough fish to grow some bigger ones. Two days ago when I caught the humpback I kept 38.

I'm told the pond is 30+ yrs old. Noone knows of it being stocked.

Thanks for the replies. It's really interesting stuff!

That is a nice pile of fillets!

Thats going to make a funny looking fish sandwich. Do they even make crooked bread slices?

Lol, after the teen checkout smashes the bread into sack at the store, my kids set stuff on it in the pantry, and it falls a few times... I get all.sizes and shapes of bread! Surely a couple slices will match.

Lots of nice fillets from that outing!