Bill Cochran

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When I first fished for white bass/striped bass hybrids in Tennessee some 30 years ago, I was told by the locals to hold on because “these things fight like a mule.”

I had only to hook my first one to realize just how true that is.

The abundance of hybrids and their mule-like, line-popping strength lured many anglers from Virginia to Tennessee in the '70s. It also generated requests to stock these fish in Virginia, but for a long while that was denied.

Officials then wanted to culture their pure strain of striped bass, and predicted that hybridization could result in mutations. Biologists didn’t even want white bass in the same drainage with their cousins, the striper, especially in the James and Roanoke river watersheds.

By the 1990s, there had been changes in personnel and philosophy in the fisheries section of Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Hybrid stocking took place in Claytor Lake and Flannagan Reservoir, both well away from reproducing strains of striped bass.

One of the benefits of hybrids, in addition to their fighting ability, is their rapid growth.

“We now have a good population in several lakes and they are getting up in size 10 pounds-plus,” said Mike Smith, a hybrid fan and one of Virginia’s top landlocked striped bass anglers.

Smith, who lives in Boones Mill, thinks it is time for the DGIF to establish a citation for the hybrid. He has made that request to Ron Southwick, assistant director of the agency’s fishery division. The idea will be considered, Southwick has promised. Ten pounds would be a good mark for a minimum-citation size, Smith said.

Stockings of hybrids began in Claytor in 1993, and since 1995 the lake’s management plan has called for annual releases of 33,500 fingerlings, said John Copeland, the region’s fisheries biologist. By 2001 hybrids weighing 8 pounds were being caught, and Copeland thinks they ultimately will reach 12 pounds.

The stockings began in 1999 in Flannagan and have continued at the rate of 17,143 per year. That is 15 fish per surface acre, according to Tom Hampton, the region’s biologist.

“We collected some fish in our nets last fall that were nearly 28 inches long and weighed more than 10 pounds,” said Hampton. “A local angler reported catching hybrids up to 13 pounds last year.”

They hybrid record in Tennessee is 23 pounds.

In addition to hybrids, Claytor also is stocked annually with 67,000 stripers, which results in a hefty 22.5 fish per acre release for the two species.

“I think it has resulted in a successful fishery without crashing the forage base,” said Copeland.

The compatibility of the two species is enhanced by the fact that they are stocked at different times of the year and they populate different habitats and have different diets, Copeland said. Stripers are stocked late spring while hybrids are released in August.

Stripers tend to inhabit the deeper water of Claytor, where they feed on baitfish, while hybrids can thrive in warmer, shallower water where their diet is more varied. They are more likely to strike surface lures, a characteristic that endears them to anglers.

At Flannagan, the hybrid population is replacing a trout fishery that did not go over that well with anglers, Hampton said.

“Hybrid striped bass are an ideal sport fish from a fisheries-biologist’s perspective,” he said. “They are a vigorous species that survives and prospers in a broad range of conditions.

Anglers can catch hybrids fishing from shore with nightcrawlers and chicken liver, or they can catch them with high-tech trolling techniques or by casing top-water lures to schools of breaking fish.

“And when an angler hooks a hybrid, he or she immediately knows that something sporty is on the other end of the line,” said Hampton. “It is hard to find a fish that fights harder.”

Smith said there are hybrids in Leesville Lake, where he has caught two in excess of 10 pounds.

If hybrids were recognized as a citation catch, it would generate more interest in anglers going after them, especially in the warm-weather months, and that would help take some of the pressure off stripers, Smith believes.

Southwick said there are some challenges associated with Smith’s request. One is identification. Anglers would need to know how to distinguish between hybrids and stripers.

Another concern, said Southwick, is the cost of establishing a new citation category for a species where catches are likely to be few.

A possible way around that would be to expand the current striper citation to include hybrids, lumping the two together the same way walleye and sauger are in the current citation program.