Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bulletin No. 10. It is difficult to confuse this silvery fish with any other, except the white bass. The sheer size of adult stripers quickly separates it from its next of kin. Colors of the striped bass grade from a bluish back into a white belly. Their silvery sides are dressed with seven to eight horizontal stripes from which they derive their common name.
Stripers have two parallel patches of teeth on the tonque, white bass have just one.
Unlike the black basses, stripers have separate spiny and soft dorsal fins. The anal fin spines grade into larger sizes from front to back. The first spine is half the size of the second, and the second, half the size of the third. Seasonally, they could be found in coastal streams as they made their way upstream 100 miles or more to spawn. However, striped bass are now widely stocked in deep reservoirs across much of the southern United States.