Did Nathan Cody Develop a New Hybrid Fish?

Every year, Nathan Cody stocks his pond in Summer’s County where his dad lives. Last summer, he stocked black spotted bass and bluegill in the pond. This August he discovered that there seemed to be a strange new fish he had never seen before- what seemed to be a fish hybrid.

“Last summer, I saw the black spotted fish was spawning. A few days later I start catching this weird fish. They looked like bass. A bass’ entire body is normally green and has a few specks that are black.  This new fish has blue specks all the way to way behind its gills.”

After conducting some of his own research, he found that bass rarely bred with fish out of their species and even then, he couldn’t find a hybrid that looked like the fish in his pond.

Nathan was curious, so he went onto the WV DNR site that posts the different bass species here in the state. He didn’t see his fish, so he wondered if maybe he had “created” a new hybrid species. This hybrid is undocumented, so he is contacting the DNR to see if he can get answers as to what this could be.

“I went through every species of fish in West Virginia on the WV DNR until I eventually found the Green Sunfish.”

Nathan believes that this is the fish he caught in his pond, but it has yet to be confirmed. I like to believe that he made a freaky new fish as that’s a pretty fun scenario, but whatever it is, it was definitely an interesting journey.