How to know it
A largemouth is green on the back fading to a white belly, with a dark, broken stripe down the side. The mouth is the tell: with the jaw closed, its hinge reaches back past the eye. The two dorsal fins are nearly separated by a deep notch. A smallmouth, by contrast, has a jaw that stops under the eye, vertical bars rather than a stripe, and a bronze cast.
Where it lives
Largemouth are native to the eastern and central United States and have been moved nearly everywhere. They want warm, slow water with cover: weed beds, lily pads, docks, fallen trees, brush and bulrushes. In the Upper Midwest that means shallow natural lakes, flowages and reservoirs, the backwaters and sloughs of big rivers, and the weedy bays of deeper lakes. They are rarely far from something to hide beside.
Through the year
Largemouth spawn in late spring when the shallows warm into the sixties, the male building a nest in a protected bay and guarding it; many states close the season or require release through this period. After the spawn the fish push into the thickest cover of the summer — pads, matted weeds, docks — and the fishing is close-quarters work in the heat of the day as much as in the morning. In early fall they feed heavily on the outside weed edges as the water cools, and then go deep and quiet for the winter. They are caught through the ice in some lakes but few guides target them then.
How guides fish for it
Casting into cover. The baits are soft plastics — worms, creature baits, tubes — pitched into pockets in the weeds; jigs flipped under docks; spinnerbaits and chatterbaits along weed edges; frogs over matted weeds; and topwaters at first light. Tackle is heavier than for smallmouth because the fish has to be pulled out of what it is in. A largemouth guide reads the cover and the sun — which bank, which weed, which dock the fish are using today — and the trip is a steady series of short, accurate casts. Some guides run largemouth and smallmouth on the same day where the water has both.
Handling and release
Hold a largemouth by the lower jaw, keep it level, and do not bend the jaw back on a big fish. Most are released. In warm water, keep the handling short.
Rules
Seasons, catch-and-release periods and length limits vary by state and by water. The Wisconsin DNR and the Minnesota DNR publish the current rules, and a guide will know the ones for the water you are on.
