Goggle-Eye ID

[Quillback]

From AGFC:

Know Your Goggle-Eye For anglers who enjoy wading through the cool, clear streams of the Ozarks, there is a thrill of catching a unique "goggle-eye." But did you know that not all goggle-eye are the same? The Ozark Bass is a species found only in the upland streams of the White River system in Arkansas and Missouri. It shares the goggle-eye nickname with its relatives, the Shadow Bass and the Northern Rock Bass, which can make identification challenging. The key is to pay attention to the color pattern of the fish and your location. The Ozark Bass, found in the White River drainage in northern Arkansas, has a "freckled" appearance, with irregular dark spots scattered across its sides. The Shadow Bass occurs in the Red, Ouachita, Arkansas, Illinois, Little Red, Strawberry, Spring, Black, and St. Francis river drainages. It has dark vertical blotches, giving it a camouflaged look. The Northern Rock Bass, found in the Neosho River drainage in Northwest Arkansas, has spots arranged in neat, parallel rows that resemble horizontal stripes.  All three species of goggle-eye are excellent sport fish, known for putting up a lively fight on light tackle. You will find them in their preferred habitat of deeper pools, hiding near cover such as large boulders, submerged logs, and root wads. They are aggressive predators with a diet mainly consisting of crayfish, aquatic insects, and small fish. To catch them, try bouncing small jigs, beetle-spins, or crayfish-imitating lures or flies along the bottom close to cover. Live bait, especially small crayfish and hellgrammites, are also very effective. In Arkansas, all goggle-eye species are managed together as "Rock Bass," with a daily limit of 10 and no minimum size limit. As a slow-growing species and with its schooling nature, the Ozark Bass can be vulnerable to overharvest, so by being selective with their harvest, anglers can play a key role in conserving this unique Ozark species for future generations. We hope you have time to get out on the river this summer and catch one of these feisty fish!

[dblades]

Best bait for any creek fish is a hellgrammite. Caught many Goggle Eye, small mouth, catfish  and perch on them.

[tjm]

I think crawdads are a lot more common than hellgrammites in the creeks that I fish, but a marabou jig is an awfully good bait that might look like either. 

[Johnsfolly]

Used to catch a bunch of northern rock bass in ozark creeks fishing a PBJ Ned Rig😁

 

Here is a shadow bass from the Current river

An ozark bass from Finley Creek

 

[ness]

I like 'em all, but those Shadow Bass are so cool looking, and I like the name too!

[Al Agnew]

Actually the big dark blotches on shadow bass are not unique to them, as can be seen in these photos of the other two species.  Their blotches tend to stay darker, but the others can get just as dark or darker.  I find Ozark bass to be the most distinctive and easiest to identify, because of how scattered the small dark spots are, and it also has a more slender body than the other two.  Shadow bass tend to have heavily mottled anal fins, while rock bass anal fins are either not mottled at all, or just slight mottling at the base.  Shadow bass have the same small dark spots on the scales on the side, but these rows of spots are often interrupted with a couple unspotted scales.  Rock bass scales on their side almost all have dark spots.  

But over most of their range, the easiest way to identify them is their location.  The Ozark bass is indigenous ONLY to the upper White River system, and nowhere else on earth.  The rivers where it is found include the James, Beaver, North Fork, Bryant, War Eagle, Kings, Crooked, and the Buffalo.  Shadow bass are found in the Black River system (Spring, Eleven Point, Current, Strawberry, and Black), St. Francis, and Castor systems.  Rock bass are found in the Osage system (Niangua, etc.), Gasconade and Big Piney, Meramec, Big, and Bourbeuse, and the small streams running into the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau.  Over on the Spring and Neosho systems, there seems to be a mixture, with some rock bass and some with shadow bass characteristics.  Farther south in AR it's all shadow bass.

Here is an article I wrote and illustrated on the three species.  

https://riversandart.blogspot.com/2020/04/growing-up-in-missouri-ozarks-and-being.html

[Al Agnew]

Some more about them...all the rock bass (Ambloplites) species can radically change color and pattern contrast in a matter of seconds.  Although they are known for having red eyes, when they go really dark on pattern and color, the dark pigment obscures the red in their eyes.  They do this in response to mood, stress, excitement, light levels, or surroundings.  Their skin cells, including the cells of the iris of their eyes, have pigment structures called melanophores which make the cell go dark or light, and chromatophores, which can change the basic color of the scale.  When I said that rock bass can get just as, or more, blotchy than shadow bass, here is an example.  This is a rock bass from Big River.

[Johnsfolly]

Out east we have the northern rock bass and in VA/NC there is the Roanoke bass. I still haven't caught one😒

[Dutch]

The ones we catch on the James around Martin Hollow always are kind of yellow, very different from the ones that we catch around Kimberling City.

[snagged in outlet 3]

On 7/17/2025 at 3:03 PM, Johnsfolly said:

Used to catch a bunch of northern rock bass in ozark creeks fishing a PBJ Ned Rig😁

Zman makes a micro size that I bet would be deadly on them.