That’s some fish! Record-breaking shoal bass caught on Chattahoochee River near Columbus
Joseph Matthew McWhorter of Lanett, Alabama, has set a new fishing record in Georgia.
McWhorter caught a shoal bass weighing 8 pounds and 5 ounces on Dec. 23 on the Chattahoochee River near Columbus, breaking the previous record set in 1977 by 2 ounces, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
“Catches like these really showcase the amazing fishing opportunities found in Georgia,” Scott Robinson, chief of fisheries for the department’s Wildlife Resources Division, said in a news release.
Shoal bass are the state’s official riverine sportfish species. They are native to the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers and were introduced in the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers, according to the DNR.
“They have an upper jaw that does not extend beyond the eyes, unlike the largemouth bass, and the dorsal fin is continuous and not deeply notched,” the news release says. “. . . Unlike smallmouth bass, they usually have a large dark spot at the base of the tail.”
Shoal bass are usually found around current breaks near flowing water, according to the release. This can be in the middle of a big shoal, in a deep-water bend of the river with large boulders or on the bank behind a tree in the water.
Information about state-record fish, including an application and rules, is at at georgiawildlife.com/fishing/recordprogram/rules.
The world record for a caught shoal bass is 8 pounds and 12 ounces, set in 1995 on the Apalachicola River in Florida by Carl Davis, according to the International Game Fish Association.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 9:45 AM.
