Close, but no cigar! Though the smallmouth bass is a popular Minnesota game fish, and are sometimes caught in the same lakes/rivers, it is not the correct answer for this question. Though smallmouth tend to be brownish in color compared to the green/silver colorization of the largemouth, the surest way to tell the two apart is by closely looking at the closed mouth. If the upper jaw extends past the eye, the fish is a largemouth. If the jaw stops in the middle of the eye, it is a smallmouth.
Photos courtesy of Jay T. Hatch, Natural History of Minnesota Fishes. Reprinted with permission.