Hybrid Stripped Bass stocked at Guist Creek and Taylorsville

[Duayne]

Lance Sasser caught a really nice one last Sunday on Cumberland. Officially, they are not there but there are a few. As they are not officially there, anglers must follow striped bass size and creel limits and a kept 22" or larger hybrid counts in the striped bass creel limit.

Lance and I talked about it for a few. I always thought they were there due to the white bass experiment a few years ago and the whites and stripers naturally produced some hybrids during spawn. Lance thinks there was just some spill over at the hatchery. He knows much more than I do all the way around when it comes to stripers so I will defer to Lance on it.

[jcclark]

Lance and I talked about it for a few. I always thought they were there due to the white bass experiment a few years ago and the whites and stripers naturally produced some hybrids during spawn. .

Stripers don't spawn in Cumberland.

[Duayne]

Stripers don't spawn in Cumberland.

Whether they are successful or not can be debated but stripers do attempt to spawn on Cumberland and that cannot be debated. Generally, fresh water lakes are not suitably dense enough to float striper eggs for the 30-70 hours needed for successful reproduction. There was some consideration at one point that the salt released from the Fruit of the Loom factory did create a dense enough water for limited successful reproduction but that is neither here nor there for this discussion.

White bass can and do spawn successful in fresh water (obviously). White bass eggs fertilized by striped bass is (or was?) possible on Cumberland. I do not know if they are continuing the attempt to return white bass but they did for a while and some hybrids showed up soon after that. Then again, maybe there is an occasional mix-up at the hatchery as hybrid reports have been spotty for years.