A story from Lake Norman

[WB Staff]

From The-Dispatch.com

...The official word is in from the NCWRC, overseer of the NCWRC Freshwater Fishing State Record Program, and Terry Trivette of Surry County is out of luck.

Genetic analysis on a fin clip taken from the huge bass Trivette caught at Lake Norman on Feb. 11 that was thought to be a new state record for spotted bass indicates that Trivette's fish was not a pure spot but a hybrid cross between a female largemouth bass and a male spotted bass.

As a consequence, the fish won't be recognized as a state record for spotted bass. Worse yet, the Commission's state-record program does not have a category for hybrid bass, so Trivette won't get his name in the record books either way.

Dr. Joe Quattro, a professor with the Marine Science Program and Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina, conducted the genetic testing.

Trivette's case is a testimony to the potential harm of illegal "bait bucket stockings" by fishermen. The NCWRC has never stocked spotted bass in Norman; the stocking was done by fishermen on their own initiative, an action which can have harmful effects upon the existing fishery.

"While hybridization of spotted bass with other black bass species makes it tough to identify state record submissions like this one, the larger issue is that we run the risk of seeing diminished black bass fisheries in the future unless anglers quit moving spotted bass into new lakes where they frequently have negative impacts on the existing populations of largemouth or smallmouth bass," said Kin Hodges, biologist with the Division of Inland Fisheries...