Micropterus of a smaller species?

Team, my main domain are the 1 to 2 inch fish, and I am passionate about Killifish. There are specimen that intrigue me. I have been dedicated to Gambusia a. differences in coloration and mapping these differences based on locale for example. Every now and then I spot one of these guys racing after the crazy population of Gambusia we have here in SoFlo, Hard to spot, even harder to catch. Yesterday night I manage to get and picture one in one of the bottle-traps. The funny note is here: you can see my 8-year old (I have 8-year old twins who always come with me). I asked him to "hold" the fish while I took the picture. Pic 1 taken, between Pics 1 and 2 the fish was already back on the water ... by itself Question: Am I right com conclude this is a Micropterus? If so, which species? They seem full grown at about 6.2 cm long as what I can observe on different spots of the lakes and canals.  DSC03309.JPG   100.75KB   2 downloads  DSC03310.JPG   88.55KB   1 downloads

I'm going to try to be helpful even though I, too, am a nano-fish person and don't know much at all about larger species. But I wouldn't learn anything by avoiding these questions, so I'll do some research and see if I can help.

Here are pictures of juvenile small and large mouth bass:
small: http://zeus.collegeo...rusDolomieu.htm
large: http://zeus.collegeo...usSalmoides.htm
Based on those two species, your fish looks more like a largemouth than a smallmouth because its lacks the radiating facial lines that the smallmouth has. The chocktaw bass and Guadalupe bass have those radiating facial lines, too.

Some other bass look a lot like largemouth bass. Using the dichotomous key here: http://fishbio.com/f...
we can rule out smallmouth and redeye bass because unlike your fish, they lack a lateral band of spots. But both largemouth and spotted bass have a lateral band of spots. The difference between those two is that the largemouth has no dark bands on its tail, while the spotted bass has a dark band between two lighter bands. Brian Zimmerman posted a photo of a spotted bass juvenile here: http://gallery.nanfa... by BZ.jpg.html
and this is the point where I stop trying to be helpful, because that looks completely identical to me to http://zeus.collegeo...usSalmoides.htm , the picture from earlier that ID'd a largemouth bass.

If they really are full grown at 6.2 cm long, then I don't think they could be largemouth or spotted bass. Both grow to be over a foot long. It could be that the region you're sampling in is a breeding grounds, and as the fish grow they move on to another water with prey more suited to their larger size. My guess is that you caught a juvenile either largemouth or spotted bass. Probably largemouth bass, based on how its mouth ends under its eye instead of before it. (Tip from Shorty on http://www.nefga.org...mouth-(picture) ) But, again, I have no idea what I'm talking about. This is not my area of expertise.

Edited by EricaWieser, 27 May 2013 - 11:05 PM.

 DSC03177.JPG   101.4KB   0 downloads sharing a pic taken little over a week before. While I was collecting nano-fish with my little son, my teen son was angling, one of his catches was this Bass. This angle shows his color pattern, I would assume it is same species of the juvenile on the hand of my other little Twin at the beginning of this post. Going for the M. punctuatus.

Even the smallest Micropterus species get up to 14 inches or so (Peterson Field Guide). You're probably only seeing the juveniles, or else they are stunted. That said, there's a huge range between how much food a fish needs to stay healthy and how much it will eat (and grow) if the given the chance. Stunting a fish by limiting its food intake happens a lot in aquariums, both deliberately and accidentally, and does not necessarily harm it or shorten its life the way stunting a warm-blooded animal would. Many of us have seen aquarium-raised bass, sunfish, and catfish 5 to 10 years old and only 1/3 the size they would have been in a pond with unlimited food.

thank you for the marvelous details Gerald.