Next is the striped bass, or "striper." These fish have two patches of teeth on the tongue, and the dark stripes are very distinct. Too, the body is more slender, and much longer than it is deep. Stripers grow much larger than any of the other species. If the fish looks like a sleek, stout silver torpedo with dark lines, it's probably a striped bass.

The Coosa River striped bass fishery is truly a unique resource. The striped bass is a saltwater fish with the heart of its range on the Atlantic coast. Striped bass are "anadromous," meaning that they live in salt water and spawn in fresh water. But striped bass were first "discovered" in a freshwater sense when they began turning up in South Carolina's Santee-Cooper reservoir system.

When the dam Santee-Cooper Reservoir was closed, spawning striped bass were trapped, never to taste the brine again. Surprisingly, the marooned fish not only survived but also thrived. That revelation led to the striped bass' potential as a freshwater sportfish being realized, and the species began to be stocked in other freshwater systems.

Although stocked fish usually were able to survive in their new homes, in nearly all cases periodic stockings were needed to maintain the population. Natural reproduction was absent or very limited.

The Coosa River received occasional stockings of striped bass through the 1980s. Then, in the early 1990s, reports of anglers catching small stripers in the Coosa became common. Since it had been several years since any releases, the small fish had to be coming from somewhere else.

As the decade wore on, it became obvious that the Coosa had something special present in its waters: a true landlocked population of naturally reproducing striped bass. Such a thing wasn't unheard of, but it was certainly very rare. The riddle was solved when Dr. Bill Davin and researchers at Berry College in Rome documented striper spawning in the Coosa and Oostanaula rivers and even identified where the spawning took place. The result of all of this is a world-class striped bass fishery in northwest Georgia.

Now that we know how to identify a yellow bass, and what separates a white bass from a striped bass, here's the tricky one. Georgia's Wildlife Resources Division hatcheries produce hybrid bass by crossing white and striped bass. Millions of these manmade fish are stocked into reservoirs all across the state as a forage management tool, and to provide an additional fishery.

Hybrids combine the warmwater tolerance of a white bass with the larger size of the striped bass, making the species ideal for lakes whose striper habitat is nonexistent or marginal. The fish are also sterile, so overpopulation is not an issue.