My partner caught the fish, but I did all the hard work ... I netted her!

As others have said, the fish was caught at Lake Linville. It was a smallmouth-spotted bass hybrid, and weighed exactly 6.0 pounds.

When we first landed the fish, we thought it was a big smally. Later, under the light, we thought it was a Kentucky. This ticked me off, because I had caught a 4.75 pound Kentucky in a tournament at the lake about a week before, and I didn't want my partner to one-up me so soon.

We laughed about not being able to ID the fish, and I mentioned a small piece I'd seen recently in Bassmaster Magazine about a Missouri angler who had caught a large meanmouth. When we looked at the fish under much better light as we weighed it at the dock, we became convinced that's what we had. It was shaped like a smally but marked like a Kentucky.

A meeting was set up with a Kentucky Fish and Wildlife officer. He took one look at her and quickly dismissed the fish as 100% smallmouth. We showed the fish to Corbin taxidermist Johnny Farmer, and he agreed with us he thought it was a hybrid. Eventually, DNA samples were sent to state biologists in Missouri; they confirmed the fish was a meanmouth.

Although it is the largest fish of its kind to be recorded, Kentucky does not recognize the meanmouth as a species so it is not even a state record. Info was also sent to the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), but they do not have records for black bass hybrids, either.

Here is a link to a pic of the fish:

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/4...anmouthif0.jpg

Another interesting note about the night we caught that fish. We hadn't been planning on fishing very long that night, so I only brought one rod. I had been throwing a jig all night and hadn't even gotten a smell. About 10 minutes before the meanmouth was caught, my partner had landed twin 5 pound largemouths on back to back casts with a spinnerbait. Naturally, I got rid of the jig and tied on a blade. You guessed it ... the meanmouth came on a jig just like the one I'd been throwing.