 Species overview: Largemouth bass (Micropeterus salmoides) were originally distributed in the Ohio River and Lake Erie watersheds in Pennsylvania. The largemouth has been established statewide in appropriate habitat. The largemouth bass is Pennsylvania’s biggest sunfish. The state angling record is over 11 pounds, and the fish can grow two feet or more in length. The largest largemouths are generally females. The species name “salmoides” refers to trout (“salmo”), because the largemouth is sometimes called a “trout” in the southern United States. One nickname is “bucketmouth,” which, like the common name “largemouth,” is well-deserved by the fish’s gaping jaw, with which it can swallow sizable prey.
Identification: Along with growing larger, the largemouth is more rotund and less flattened laterally (side to side) than other members of the sunfish family. The largemouth’s head and back are a bright-green to olive-green. Its sides are lighter green, and the belly is whitish or pale-yellow. The largemouth’s upper jaw extends beyond the back edge of its eye. It has a broad black stripe or a line of broken splotches running along its side from head to tail. In the largemouth, the two sections of the dorsal fin are nearly separate.
 Habitat: The largemouth bass lives throughout Pennsylvania in suitable warmwater habitat, which is usually a pond or small, weedy lake. It is also found in the shallow backwaters and coves of large lakes and in the sluggish sections of big rivers. Largemouths are almost always associated with aquatic weeds, a soft bottom or stumps and downed logs. They are rarely found over rocks or in depths of more than 20 feet.
Life history: In true sunfish style, the male largemouth fans a circular nest for spawning and aggressively defends the nest site, eggs and young fish. Largemouths spawn in spring and early summer, when water temperatures remain at 60 degrees for about three days. The typical nest is on gravel, sand or even soft mud. It is two to three feet in diameter, about six inches deep, and in one to four feet of water. Largemouths usually spawn within eight feet of a shoreline and keep their nests at least 20 feet apart.
Several largemouth bass females may spawn on one nest, each contributing 2,000 to 7,000 eggs per pound of body weight. Egg hatching takes about 10 days in 65-degree water. The young largemouths stay at the bottom of the nest for about a week, until the yolk sac is absorbed. Then they rise above the nest in a school and begin feeding. The male continues to guard them for as long as a month. Young bass feed on zooplankton, insects and small fishes, and they are cannibalistic on one another.
Frequently, spring lake conditions determine the abundance of these forage items. Thus, the abundance of these forage items also determines the abundance of young largemouth bass. The number of young largemouth bass produced each year varies according to lake conditions and ultimately leads to changes in adult largemouth bass abundance. Adult largemouths are predators and eat mostly fish and crayfish, but they also take frogs, snakes, and even small mammals and birds, like mice and ducklings that happen onto the water’s surface. Largemouth bass feed day and night. Attention-attracting, splashy surface plugs, minnowlike lures and soft-plastic worms or other slithery imitations, snaked through the weeds, all appeal to the aggressive largemouth. Text provided by The Pennsylvania Boat & Fish Commission - Images Provided by US Fish & Wildlife Service
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