Not many fishermen can say they’ve caught (or seen) a spotted striped bass in the wild. The phrase alone is contradictory—does the fish have spots or stripes? Well, both, kind of. Captain Joe Diorio of Connecticut recently joined a short list of anglers who have encountered such a bass, and the clip of its release has left the internet reeling over this anomaly.
In a video posted to Diorio’s Instagram page, which was later shared by On The Water, one of Joe’s charters briefly hoists a large striper with an obscure scale pattern before returning it to the water to swim another day. The post prompted anglers across the Northeast (and beyond) to question what could have happened to a typically seven-striped fish to create such a unique and flat-out odd appearance.
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Angler speculations in the always-amusing comment section ranged from outlandish, to practical, to downright silly. Some suggested this striped bass is the byproduct of cross-breeding with weakfish or brown trout. Others considered more reasonable causes for the blotchy patterns, like remnants of a healed wound from a gill net, a seal encounter, or mycobacteriosis. And of course, a small percentage of fishermen were in total disbelief, calling out the captain for the use of AI. Whatever the cause may be, it’s not the first time On The Water has posted a photo of a striper with this rare condition. Check out the photo below from May 2023.
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Two things are certain: For one, no AI was used to create the mottled markings on the stripers pictured above. While uncommon, we’ve seen this condition before and I’m sure in due time, we’ll see it again. Additionally, these striped bass did not “accidentally spawn” with trout or weakfish. They are biologically incapable of doing so, which means we can consider alternative factors.
One of the more logical potential culprits is mycobacteriosis—but with a little research, it’s clear that the chronic bacterial disease is not responsible for such a bizarre scale pattern.
Dermal mycobacteriosis manifests as reddish-colored sores and lesions in striped bass, and the first cases were reported in Virginia in 1997. A peer-reviewed journal article in the National Library of Medicine cites the disease as a contributor to elevated mortality of striped bass in Chesapeake Bay. While the infection does alter the outward appearance of affected stripers, once infected, a the fish never fully recovers. Scarring and scale loss are two common side effects, but even in cases of lesions going into remission, a bass remains internally infected. In other words, once retained, mycobacteriosis is permanent. According to a study led by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in which 1,420 Chesapeake striped bass were sampled between 2003 and 2005, “A fish infected with mycobacteriosis is only about 70% as likely to survive another year as a non-infected fish.” The study’s findings go on to suggest that, “older females are more likely than males to succumb to mycobacteriosis, perhaps due to the energetic demands of spawning and migration.” Based on that information, we can reason that very few stripers affected by mycobacteriosis survive to reach full maturity. Since the bass shown in Captain Joe Diorio’s video is a mature fish, this unfortunate disease can be crossed off the list of potential causes.
Although we can definitively eliminate a few speculative comments, we’re still left with more questions than answers. If it’s not AI, crossbreeding, or a bacterial infection that led to these peculiar scale patterns, what could it be?
Perhaps—like a “pug-nose” striper—the scale loss and deformities were caused by a mutation or some uncommon, early-stage developmental defect.
It is also entirely possible—as Diorio noted in a follow-up Instagram post—that the fish landed by his charter survived an encounter with a large predator, like a seal or shark, which led to scarring that eventually healed. Or, maybe its appearance is indeed the result of a fishing net raking against its scales as a juvenile, and healing over time.
Regardless of the underlying cause of the spots, one thing is clear: these hardy, stripe-less stripers are survivors. Plain and simple.