O.P. Harrison of Mobile caught this 12.6-pound striped bass on a live shrimp in late February while fishing for speckled trout in the Theodore Industrial Canal. (Courtesy O.P. Harrison) MOBILE, Alabama -- On the same day news broke that 65-year-old James Bramlett of Dora had caught a potential state- and world-record 70-pound striped bass from the Black Warrior River in northeast Alabama, pictures of a 12.6-pound striper landed near Mobile began circulating through social media.
O.P. Harrison of Mobile was fishing for speckled trout in the Theodore Industrial Canal that late-February day when the fish hit a small live shrimp he was fishing on 6-pound-test line.
While Bramlett's fish will most likely replace the 55-pounder Charles Totty pulled from the Tallapoosa River in 1959, Harrison's will be admired simply because not many people in the southwest part of the state have ever seen one in its scales.
Few people around Mobile target stripers. Like Harrison's fish, they are rare bycatch that eats a bait a fisherman is using to target another species.
While Bramlett's huge fish was the result of intensive restocking of Atlantic and Gulf striped bass in reservoirs above dams across the Alabama River since 1979, the genetic origins of Harrison's fish are a little bit murkier.
Striped bass were once common in the rivers and estuarine environment of the northern Gulf coast, according to information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has overseen an interstate fishery management plan guiding the species' recovery since 1986.
They were found from Texas to the Suwannee River in Florida, and inland hundreds of miles up the Alabama River and Tombigbee River systems and to St. Louis on the Mississippi River.
Historical reports indicate the fish were landed commercially from the late 1800s through the early 1960s. Except for a remnant population of Gulf-strain striped bass in the Apalachicola River system in northwest Florida and infrequent catch reports in a few other river systems, they are no longer common throughout their range.
While the Alabama conservation department Web site contains information stating that there "may" still be a native population of Gulf striped bass migrating through the Mobile Bay estuary, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division District V chief fisheries biologist Dave Armstrong, who's based on the Mobile Bay Causeway, said not enough is known to say if native Gulf-strain stripers still swim state water.
"As far as if we have a run or not, I believe we are more likely sustaining a semi-resident population derived from previous stocking efforts," Armstrong said. "These fish do have the instinct to run and they'll cover a lot of ground."
Armstrong said that instinct likely contributes to the large congregations of striped bass - and some hybrid bass - that gather just below Claiborne Lock and Dam on the Alabama River and Coffeeville Lock and Dam across the Tombigbee River.
James Bramlett and his wife Janice stand with the 70-pound striped bass he caught from the Black Warrior River on Feb. 28. The fish broke the existing 53-year-old Alabama state record for the species by 15 pounds and is potentially a world record for landlocked striped bass. (Joe Songer/jdsonger@al.com) "Those fish are most likely resident fish that are taking advantage of the abundant shad numbers just below the dams," he said. "They also prefer to live in the cool, running water just below the dams, especially during the hotter months."
Ben Raines, an avid diver and knowledgeable fisherman from Fairhope, reported seeing a single 10-pound striped bass as he and it swam along the rock jetties at Perdido Pass in 2008.
Raines said there could have been other stripers around that he just did not see.
The reasons for the decline of native striped bass along the northern Gulf coast are speculative, according to the USFWS.
Along with the impacts of commercial fishing, environmental alterations, the construction of dams across traditional spawning corridors and industrial and agricultural pollution have also been implicated as probable causes of the drastic decline of striped bass.
Alabama's Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division began restocking reservoirs above dams in the northern part of the state in 1979.
In 1985, the first striped bass were stocked below the dams across the Tombigbee River at Coffeeville and at Claiborne on the Alabama River, according to WFF stocking data provided by Armstrong. Those fish were Atlantic-strain stripers, which were stocked for the first seven years.
The first Gulf striped bass fingerlings were stocked beginning in 1992 and the Atlantic-strain fish have been used in only two years since.
Including that first stocking, more than 2.1 million Atlantic and Gulf striped bass fingerlings have been released at the confluence of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, where they form the Mobile River.
Armstrong said the site is used because it provides the fingerlings with more than one option in deciding which way to swim upon release, the water's deep and cool and there's plenty to eat.
Over the past seven years, an average of 65,000 fingerlings have been released between May 14 and June 2, according to the WFF data.
Fisheries biologists have concluded that natural reproduction is occurring in the upper Coosa River near Rome, Ga., resulting in large numbers of naturally produced striped bass showing up at Weiss Reservoir in northeast Alabama and other Coosa River impoundments, according to the WFF.
Studies on reproductive possibilities among striped bass stocked just above the Mobile-Tensaw Delta have not been done, Armstrong said.
No one can say for sure, but 2.1 million-to-1 odds suggest that O.P. Harrison's fish was probably a 6- to 8-inch long fingerling when it was stocked as much as a decade ago and more than 30 miles from where it was eventually caught.
It's intriguing to believe, however, that at least one true Gulf striped bass still swims along generations-old migration routes in Alabama, especially if it has a mate.
