Hybrid striped bass are man-made crosses between a white bass (also known as “sand bass”) and a striped bass. The cross between a male white bass and a female striped bass is known as a Palmetto Bass, and a cross between a male striped bass and a female white bass is a Sunshine Bass.
Hybrids grow faster than white bass and reach a much larger maximum length and weight. TPWD stocks hybrid striped bass to control gizzard shad populations and to provide an additional open water sport fish. Because hybrid striped bass cannot naturally reproduce, their numbers can be controlled by how many are stocked.
Many anglers who fish Lake Fort Phantom Hill have a hard time distinguishing between hybrid striped bass and white bass. Being able to differentiate between the two is important, since the legal length limit is 10 inches for white bass with a 25-fish bag and 18 inches for hybrid striped bass with a five-fish bag.
White bass are normally less than 16 inches and have one dark line that goes all the way to the tail. They have one tooth patch on the middle of the tongue that is normally heart shaped.
Hybrid striped bass have darker and bolder lines with more than one that goes all the way to the tail. Broken lines are more common on hybrid striped bass but can be found on some white bass as well. They have two completely separate tooth patches on the tongue that are normally oval in shape. Hybrid stripers can reach 26 to 30 inches in length at Lake Fort Phantom.
The smaller hybrids can be more difficult to differentiate from white bass by tooth patches, and this is when the number of stripes to the tail really helps. When caught, hybrid striped bass will fight harder than a white bass of the same size.
Hybrid stripers are hard to judge when it comes to weight. I dug into our gill net data to find out what the average weight of our local fish are. An 18-inch, just-legal fish will average 3.4 pounds. At 20 inches, the average is 4.3 pounds, while 22-inch fish should weigh around 5.5 pounds. By the time they reach 24 inches, they are 7.6 pounds, and at 26-inches they are approaching 10 pounds.
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