The sunshine bass is a hybrid striped bass that is produced by crossing a female white bass with a male striped bass. Sunshine bass closely resemble both striped bass and white bass making identification difficult, especially for young fish.
In the picture to the above, the fish on top is a sunshine bass and the fish on the bottom is a striper.
When comparing adult fish, the sunshine has a deep body and an arched back similar to the white bass. Sunshine bass can often be distinguished by broken or irregular stripes on the front half of their body and straight lines on the rear half of their body. A mid-body break in line pattern occasionally occurs.
Sunshine bass are stocked throughout Florida. The largest fish are from northwest Florida, but sunshine bass have produced fisheries as far south as Lake Osborne in West Palm Beach. Fishing for sunshine bass is very similar to fishing for striped bass. Although, you may want to downsize your lures a little bit because sunshine bass do not get as big as the striped bass.
