Bigmouth buffalo?

[MNFishhunter]

Schollmeier, I need your skills! I'm pretty confident it's a largemouth buffalo. I caught it with an Orvis T3 midflex 9ft 4 weight fly rod today. 29 inches long and 13 pounds at West End Bait shop in Winona.

[Cthulhu]

Classic Bigmouth - Congrats! They are a rad fish. That one would make a lot delicious fish cakes...

Looks like he is getting really to spawn too

[Slabasaurus]

Looks like scholl beat me to it. That's definitely a bigmouth though, yep.

Nice catch, must have been a blast on the 4wt

[MNFishhunter]

To the smoke with this one! Thanks for the id, Schollmeier and Slab!

My wife was fishing with me today and was witness to the long battle. It was a lot of fun! She did well on the pannies. It was a great day with Wendy.

Note the Fenwick F755 fiberglass fly rod the woman is wielding! I'm a lucky man!

[Cthulhu]

The smoker is fine choice too, or pickling, canning, etc. Buffalo are a top notch eating fish, they typically bring top dollar among the MN Commercially targeted species.

ID wise - the mouth opening forward (see pic 2) is a dead giveaway for Bigmouth. A Smallmouth would open straight down like a redhorse. There are other differences but that's the easiest way. Black Buffs are a bit tougher but insanely rarely anyway - their mouth is about 45* down and have enormous angelina jolie type lips. Bigmouth and Smallmouth have very thin lips by comparison.