Top water and tube jigs

[RICHYD4U]

Just an fyi, it's better to learn to differentiate a spot and a largemouth by the jaw line and dorsal fins than to depend on a patch of teeth on the tongue. It may save you some headache down the road. I have come across largemouth and smallmouth with a tongue patch in ky waters.

Yep....some LMs have tooth patches as well...that is definitely an LM. Nice fish!

-Rich

[Tim_T]

Yep....some LMs have tooth patches as well...that is definitely an LM. Nice fish!

-Rich

Rich, what makes you so sure it is a largehead? Not trying to be difficult, but the broken lateral line and the jaw line looks like a spot to me and I am curious what you are seeing that says largemouth.

[jigman73]

You can't tell by the jaw line from the picture because the mouth is wide open. But there are a few things that suggest that this fish is a largemouth. The dorsal fins are nearly separate, there is no vertical barring above the lateral line, and there is no horizontal cheek barring present. There are other means of determining but they involve handling the fish and a dissecting scope to do scale counts and stuff. Imo, it's a largemouth.

[Tim_T]

You can't tell by the jaw line from the picture because the mouth is wide open. But there are a few things that suggest that this fish is a largemouth. The dorsal fins are nearly separate, there is no vertical barring above the lateral line, and there is no horizontal cheek barring present. There are other means of determining but they involve handling the fish and a dissecting scope to do scale counts and stuff. Imo, it's a largemouth.

I agree it is hard to tell with the mouth open, I was just judging by where the joint on the jaw looks. To be honest, I really didn;t think to look at the dorsal fins. I would say you guys are probably right.