Science: Spawning – Spots vs. Largemouth

Quick, which spawns first, a largemouth or a spotted bass? If you’re like most people questioned, you’ll guess the spotted bass. And you’d be right a small percentage of the time. Turns out that there is a lot of overlap between the two species, and in many bodies of water, the spot is actually the later spawner of the two.

I did a search through the literature that compared specific hatching dates of largemouths to spots, and the results were interesting. In one example on Normandy Res. in TN, the spots hatched after the largemouth in 4 of the 5 years observed. Largemouth started as early as April 1 and at temps as low as 55.4 degrees. Spots never started before April 21 and at temps of at least 61.7 degrees. Both species never hatched after May 6 in this study.

However, in a study of 6 AL reservoirs comparing the two, spots spawned earlier than LMB in 2 of those lakes, later than LMB in 1 of the lakes and at the same time in the other 3 lakes. In this study they were able to correlate spawning time of each species to eutrophication and reservoir productivity. The two lakes where the spots spawned first were the least productive reservoirs from a chlorophyll-a standpoint.

The other interesting thing is that in both studies, LMB always had a more protracted hatch duration than spots. LMB durations were from 35-68 days while spotted bass spawning times were much more compacted, running 26-42 days.

So it certainly isn’t unusual for spots to spawn later than LMB, but this would depend on the specific reservoir in question or even the specific section in a given reservoir due to productivity. However it would seem like a good rule of thumb that when LMB are spawning, the spots are also probably spawning, or in a very similar phase with no more than 1-2 weeks difference (either ahead of or behind).