When he grew up fishing with his father and three older brothers, Terry Johnson always thought he would catch a record fish. His family often fished for redeye bass in the mountains. They had used cast nets earlier to catch small fish to use as bait below the remnants of a small dam. Wiggins came over and just stared at the fish. Johnson wondered what had drawn Wiggins' complete attention.
Redeye bass are similar in appearance to shoal bass, but live in different areas.
Redeye bass are found in the upper Mobile basin and across the Appalachian Mountains to the Savannah basin. Shoal bass are endemic to the Apalachicola basin in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. One characteristic that distinguishes the redeye bass from both the shoal bass and the smallmouth bass is that the redeye bass have white margins on their top and bottom of the tail fin. Redeye bass also have a tooth patch on their tongue. Shoal bass are different than redeye bass in that shoal bass tend to grow much larger.