If you asked the average American angler to name all the different types of bass, a handful of species would roll off the tongue, starting with largemouths and smallmouths, then probably stripers, and ...

A big rock bass—at least where I grew up fishing in the Northeast—might weigh a .5-pound. (The current world record is 3 pounds.) Of all the places I’ve fished across the country, I’ve never had the ...