re: Which SEC state has the best bass fishing?

Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina in that order for me.

I’m struggling adjusting to fishing for small mouth in east TN. Large Mouth are generally just not popular enough here in most water for folks to bother with.

I agree 100%. Lake Okeechobee is not what it used to be. Many better places to bass fish FL than Lake O.

As good as Florida is for largemouths, Tennessee is for smallmouths, Alabama is for spots, Texas has to be the answer. There are a bunch of great lakes pumping out big fish and they take it serious.

Last February I drove to Fort Worth. I had to stop for the night in Shreveport because the roads where getting so bad from freezing rain. The next morning it was brutally cold, windy, and everything was frozen. I stopped for gas near the exit for Lake Fork. A truck pulled in beside me pulling a bass boat. Talked to them a second and those crazy bastards were going fishing. I hope they caught them, because it was a completely miserable day.

I have fished professionally all across the nation. Though Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and places like Lake St Clair or Thousand Islands, the best fishing is in Texas. Toledo Bend. Sam Rayburn. Lake Fork. OH Ivie. Choke Canyon. Falcon and Amistad. Conroe. Livingston.

quote:

---

Never found it difficult to differentiate. Spots have a patch of teeth on their tongue LMs do not have and their lateral line is darker and more defined.

---

No matter the water color the best way to tell is their tongue. If it’s smooth it ain’t a spot. When water conditions are cloudy the markings can be almost nonexistent but their tongue is ALAWAYS rough.

quote:

---

Most every sec state is fishing after Florida strain bass. That probably answers it.

---

.

For about 60 years the native habitat of pure Florida strain Lm bass was thought to be the peninsular of Florida and about 50 miles north into Georgia. All other lm bass outside that region were believed to be northern LM. Biologists now know this is not so, native LM bass in almost all of the Piedmont from Alabama to Virginia are almost exclusively florida strain LM or were before the 60s when large scale stocking of northern lm was done on a large scale. The resulting “hybrid” retains the fast growing characterstics of the Florida strain and the improved heartiness of the northern strain.

Interestingly the world record caught off the ocmulgee river was assumed to be a northern lm for years because it was further north than biologists thought native Florida strain bass were. They now know that bass in that area are as close to pure Florida strain lm as there is anywhere.

There is also a delta strain of lm in the SE that radiate from mobile bay. They grow slightly slower than Florida lm but gain weight earlier….they are also no found from mobile to Michigan and west to Arizona and east to the Atlantic coast.

Tennessee followed by Alabama.