Physical Description
The species' main color is silver-white to pale green. Its back is dark, with white sides and belly, and with narrow dark stripes running lengthwise on the sides. It has large, rough scales and two dorsal fins. The more anterior dorsal fin is much harder and appears to have spines on them. Although these are not true spines, this type of fin is called a spinous ray. The more posterior of the two dorsal fins is much softer, and is thus called a soft-ray. Because the vertebrae don't extend into the tail, the white bass has what is called a homocercal tail. The body is deep and compressed laterally. Most grow to a length of between 10 and 12 inches, though they can reach 17 inches or more. Because the dorsal and ventral portions of the its tail angle inward toward a point to create a clear angle, the tail is said to be notched.
Read more about this topic: White Bass
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or description:
“Let us hope ... that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)