What is your way of telling the difference between a spot and a largemouth. I've seen GW that couldn't tell the difference.

I can tell by looking at them.

Feel the tongue. Spots have a pad of teeth on the tongue.

For legal purposes from a GW perspective it doesn't matter. Black bass creek limits cover all black bass.

Creel but not the 15 in min length on Guntersville.

That's right. Length limit applies to largemouth but not spots on G.

Alot of folks go by the jaw and the position of the eye to it, the spot having an eye forward of the back of the jaw. Some go by the the dorsal fin spots connect and Largemouth dont and other go by the tongue patch. I have seen largemouth with the rough patch also.... Even after catching a few thousand it can be tough sometimes.

In BFLs ive heard any fish with a tooth patch will be considered a spot. But honestly thats not always true. The jaw will not extend beyond the eye on a spot, and most do have a tooth patch.

If you hold them by the bottom lip spots will look more like a football, their mouths aren't as big as a largemouth. Largemouths mouths can appear to be as big as their belly almost. If they're small you can feel for the rough patch on their tounge like Matt said.

It's easy. If a GW doesn't know how to tell the difference he needs a new job. .02

Agreed. I've never seen a spot I didn't immediately know was a spot once it came out of the water

Tongue patch and jawline. I fish Mitchell mostly and you can tell as soon as you get them out of the water just based on color/pattern

I can tell them because we have so many spots in our area, but the tongue patch, general looks, jaw hinge location, etc.

Spot


large mouth

Yeah, once you've seen a few and recognized them, they are easy to "spot".

There are indications that there may be some inter-breeding between spots, shoal bass, and largemouths.
We could end up with spots or hybred spots taking over.

Tongue patch is the for sure.

If you have caught a lot of spots; you usually know it's one before it's in the boat.

Yep. I haven't caught as many as a lot of y'all but a 2lb coosa spot fights like a 4lb large mouth.

once you know them it really is easy to tell them apart. Some jackwagon put some coosa spots in our 7acre lake yrs back. There is no mistaking them when you put one beside the F1's that were originally stocked.

We've got them in our neighborhood lake too and need them out.

Edit: Coosa spots and spots from a few key lakes will look like a football, spots from other places are shaped like a 2x4 and their tail fins look abnormally tall.

They typically don't tail walk when hooked like largemouths, they like to go under the boat. They're not typically found in the back of pockets with slack water, they thrive in current, main lake wind current if there's no generation.