Paul Roberts

I do. And I don't even fish with drag. I back-reel. Backing the drag off just seems like the nice thing to do for my reels.

Experience. But the quickest thing I can say is that fish feel "alive". I'm most apt to be fooled hitting water-logged wood. Can feel a lot like the 'Tap' of a bass. Just have to know its there, which is what probing the area around you does. Some say 'hook-sets are free'. But they aren't when there're snags around.

One big hole in this theory: -American Eels are catadromous -the opposite of anadromous. So Eel larvae/elvers live only in saltwater, the adults migrate to the Sargasso Sea and back to FW. They must have access to the ocean. Elvers are free-living in the ocean until maturity, then migrate into FW. Sorry.

Things could be different elsewhere. But this is how it appears to work here: Males do not corral fry, although it may look like that. Early fry stay together and relate to each other as a swarm -that's pretty much what keeps them together. The male centers his guarding activity around the swarm, making looping turns as he defends them and the immediate vicinity. You can see this behavior in my Spawn Behavior documentary. As fry mature into young fingerlings (and rapidly), they become stronger swimmers and venture further afield. Although these "early fingerlings" relate to the male (will follow his mass here and there, when he happens to be close enough) they relate more to each other and, more and more, to their environment. They have developed the ability to react with alarm to larger, esp rapidly moving, objects and they commonly spook en masse (flash) if the male appears quickly, or turns quickly. Their reactions to the male's presence can be polar -they spooking at a quick turn of his tail, and then a moment later follow him a short ways. He tends to leave them in the dust though as he's so much faster and has a wider scope, being involved in keeping the vicinity clear of threats. What appears to happen is that the young bass (at the "early fingerling" stage) leave the male, not vice-versa. They split up into smaller shoals, and many will aggregate at key locations. Cannibalism is frequent so size grouping begins to appear. My next documentary -in process- is on development from swim-up fry to adulthood. Speaking of that... I've got to get to work. Got ~30 hours of video (2 days, 4 cameras worth) to make into something meaningful and, hopefully, entertaining.

Not offended in any way. I too have caught females off beds. (Was once the only way I knew to catch the largest bass in a water body.) I was describing the wider roles that males and females take. Both sexes will grab or move things from the bed or immediate vicinity. But these are in-their-faces objects. I have, so far, not seen females take on the role the male does. When they are at bed sites they are pretty much preoccupied with spawning or resting between bouts ("Classic Pose" I've mentioned before, is what this looks like when females are affixed to a given male and bed.) Their energy is way ramped down compared to the male and it appears that smaller fishes -would be nest robbers- easily avoid them and, so far, I've seen little aggression in females in terms of "guarding". In fact, to catch them, the bait has to be slow and in their faces pretty much. As if you have to get their attention first, and then trigger them. Males are MUCH easier to trigger. So... do females "guard"? Could be the answer lies in who it is that's knocking on their door -would be egg stealers, or fisherman. I do not know how far females will move between different spawning beds. But where I've done most of my observations -in small waters- I've watched females cruising the entire shorelines of 3 to 5 acre ponds, looking for willing males with beds. That's a pretty good linear distance. In general, bass don't like to be exposed -seen from the air. The spawn is the exception. But females are not always -even usually- as visible as the males. After a spawning bout with a currently chosen male, they commonly hold just outside the bed site, suspended over deeper water. Compared to the males they appear "cautious" of shallow coverless water where the beds are often located. Courtship appears to be, in part, coaxing females into such shallow water. After completing spawning with a given male, what they do is just speculation on my part. They generally disappear from sight. I assume they are resting, and feeding some, as their next batch of eggs mature. I generally catch them -on slow often more vertical presentation- still shallow but out of sight related to prominant objects. In my small waters, "the first drop off" is pretty close at hand. I do not believe they drop terribly deep, likely they do not move all the way back out of arms or coves. Instead they most likely shrink back into holes, pockets, and prominant objects. I would not doubt however, that there are more transient wider ranging females that might travel even farther in larger waters, if spawning options are more sparse. In nature, What works... works. What "works" is the sum of "experiments" that tend to cluster around certain behaviors. These over (a lot of) time may solidify into... more "hard-wired" behaviors. Species are made up of populations, that are made up of sub-populations, that are made up individuals. Nature does the culling and sorting. Irritability? (For all us parents with teenagers out there). So far, I just haven't seen this. It's common lore, but... I've become a bit skeptical. I say this not only bc I haven't seen it, but bc bass fry at the time of separation are too small for mature bass to eat with any efficiency. Juvenile bass prey on them a lot. Mature bass seem to get interested in them later on, when the now fingerlings break 3+inches. Not saying this doesn't happen. Possibly in waters with higher growth rates of fry/fingerlings, this can happen? Curious, have you seen this Tom? Thanks. OK... I'm going fishing. Just broke into full "pre-spawn" here (sorry @A-Jay -feelin' for ya buddy) and I've got to get in there. /

Florida Largemouths (floridanus) females have been reported to do some bed guarding. The closest I've seen I n terms of female aggression were a group of females competing for a male in a pond with few available males.

First, as TOXIC mentions, it's the males that guard the nest, eggs, and fry. Females are courted, lay eggs, and move on. This takes ~2 to 3 days from what I've seen. Females are known to continue to spawn though, with other males over the course of the season. During this spawning window -which can be months in the south, and a couple of weeks in the north- the females remain "shallow", cruising for more spawning opportunities, and holding at prominant cover pieces. Also, as TOXIC mentions, females are catchable; They appear to be willing to feed. But I've found that slower -often vertical- presentations work best. The females are now expending the energy that they gained since fall and seem to be conservative in their hunting activity. This will change as they strengthen through post-spawn.

Good stuff. Hopefullly, the head and the gut should be working together. So, don't ignore either. First, enjoying your fishing time is primary, of course. If you enjoy the "science", great. My advice would be not to expect to kill it -'cause you can't. You can't know it all. It's a process, and there really is no end to that process. Problem is, we are not talking simple machines in a simple environment here. We're talking deeply complex "machines" in enormously complex environments. For me, I've spent my life -with varying degrees of success- essentially trying to figure Nature out, and aquatic systems esp. Still working on it. Don't expect to be done anytime soon. That said, I feel like there are some pretty core pieces that explain a lot. Then there's being able to relate what I . That's where I'm at with it. I can say that I'm a lot less clueless for all that effort than I used to be, and able to be a lot more philosophical about the rough spots. Maybe this latter is the wisdom beneath the "knowing". If you enjoy learning -more than knowing- you are in the right space.

@Joshua Vandamm, it would be best to start a new thread for this question; Going OT (Off Topic) here. Not that that hasn't happened before. I may be the worst at that. Happy to chat. Thanks, Glenn!

Glenn, I don't see anything wrong with your BassResource videos. You've put together an extensive reference library of fishing education material. You have a friendly easy going, approachable style. Looks to me like you are pretty well centered in the fishing education niche. That said, it appears to me that to get really BIG on YT, one must be a YT channel first, and a (fishing) channel... somewhere else down the line. Each of us must decide on where we want to put our valuable time. (The Pro's burros mentions are already plenty busy.)

I think I agree with you. Sink rate is the most important thing to me. However does action matter? In many soft plastic baits, yes, absolutely. I spend the time to boil or modify many baits to get better action. Stickworms are attractive via their shape alone however. And there has been such a study, done at Pure Fishing by Dr. Keith Jones. That cigar shape is uniquely attractive to bass. However, I still boil some of my stick worms. Senkos are so heavy they produce that quiver on the fall that appears to help -maybe. But some lighter (less salt) worms i do boil as a wriggling twitch seems to trigger bites especially well. A lot of bass will fall for any old stick worm, but I think certain action elements trigger even better.

Agreed, fishing alone isn't much of a sampling method, in terms of the why's. Sorry... forgot to respond to that question. I can't really say. I've not seen anything that like that, that stood out anyway. Then again, my observation waters here in N CO do not tend to produce really out-sized females that might make such a thing more noticeable. Although the females here can get larger than the males, they are not substantially larger. And, the waters that produce large females also produce large males too. I think I can say that the largest females I've seen were generally with average sized males. I've had a couple ponds that produced uniquely large males. I only knew they were males bc they were with good-sized females, of equal size, on beds together. I do remember a particular male that drew a crowd of females -the largest in that little 3acre pond. He was about 17 inches, the females 18 to 20. That pond had a shortage of males that year -likely fishing mortality. But this one male drew so much female attention that it really stood out. There was another big male on the other side of the pond that did not draw the big crowd. He did spawn however, with an 18inch female. His nest failed though as he was caught repeatedly (evidenced by hook bruises) and then was gone -likely kept. What did the attractive male have going for him? There's some good research that showed that scent -possibly a pheromone- was important in attracting spawning females, as scent was more important than even vision. However, the attractive male I mention had another thing going for him. He held a great site, beneath the largest overhanging tree on the pond. It's a tree that attracted the large bass in the pond all year long. I've not found too much on mate selection in bass in the literature, although I haven't looked specifically. There are some studies that have suggested that pairing -or close association with mates- can occur well prior to the spawn, even under the ice. Whether this is a social bond, or due to the fact that bass tend to group by size, is an open question. Best I can do at present.

One thing I don't agree with in that article is the statement that if the "fish weighs more than the pound test of line you are using...". Neutrally buoyant fish are essentially weightless. What they pull with is their bodies and fins. And small fish can easily break lines by sheer torque. Make it a big fish and parts of your tackle can be tested you'd never guess were weak links.

The 1lb test fish was 9lbs. I've back-reeled browns to 14lbs, steelhead to 12lbs (back-reeled and lost one about 15, but not due to back-reeling), and Chinooks to 24# -although that old Mitchell 300 was toast after a few such fish. Gotta have good gears. I then got a Quick 441N (high speed, big spool) which allowed me to backreel salmon to 15lbs without letting go the handle.

Thanks for the encouragement, LadiMopar, and Joshua. Yeah, I'm a fish nerd. Encouraging to know there are others out there that value seeing fishing as much from the fish's perspective as from our own. That's the really cool stuff in my mind. And, I'm a die-hard fisherman too. My questions aren't, tell me what to do; It's tell me why! Why does that lure work, or not, in that particular situation? What are the parameters that define that situation, and why do the fish respond that way. Interestingly, there are patterns to much of it. Otherwise, I'd find something else to do. Joshua, more on my take on the "Why" vs the "What": The "why" is what I've come to call "exportable knowledge". If I tell someone what to do: Go to this particular place at this particular time, throw this particular lure, and retrieve it in this particular way... that's pretty limited. If I can tell them Why that location, timing, and presentation, I've given them a whole lot more. And it's exportable -able to be applied to many other scenarios. Maybe or maybe not directly, but it gets them asking the right questions, which are much more flexible than pat answers. "Give a man, or woman, a fish..." Granted, the what is a heck of a lot easier to get at than the why. Many, if not most, of those why's are simply not available, or accessible, to us. But, there is a HUGE body of work in many fields of science, and observations by managers, anglers, and divers that collectively have and continue to provide a tremendous amount of insight into not only the what's but the why's that underlie those what's. I feel that all those sources have been enormously valuable to me in my understanding of not only what's going on down there -the behaviors- but the why's that underlie those behaviors.

The fingers on my rod hand can reach the rotor. I have regular sized hands -wear a Lg glove. All I need to do -if I leggo the handle, say, to lip the fish- is stop the rotor with my fingers that are already draped off the handle. It's... easy. Adding a short video clip: Back-Reel.mp4 Exactly. Bingo. As to steelhead, I've back-reeled a number of them, and some salmon too. Even took a steelie on 1lb (2kg) Trilene XT with a 6ft ultra-light, in wide open water on the lake. Took 10 minutes to land on a watch. My biggest concern was the fish landing on the line during those jumps. Wouldn't recommend it, but I learned a lot about fighting fish in those 10 minutes. Most of my steelies were caught with single-action fly reels though.

I've never used drag on a spinning reel. And you don't have to keep two hands on the reel either.

Gee. (That's a darn poor emoticon for, "Gee, thanks folks".) Happy -relieved- to see that other fishers can sit through my nerdy "lecture format" intros. That's been my biggest concern. How boring is this, really? Early on, when I shot my very first on-the-water videos, I wanted to do it vlog-style -and still will here and there. I like that format, being on-the-water with someone on their waters. But I found myself saying all sorts of things all day long -ofttimes just mumbled- that wouldn't make sense, that had whole bodies of work behind them, or that might contradict what people in other regions and waters see. What a bear to edit! So, I thought I should just lay it out first in a clear concise format, then take you fishing. Which is the opposite way vlog-style fishing, and fishing in general, really tends to go: We experience, and THEN we make sense of it all, picking, choosing, and refining our lessons of the day. I've come to joke that I start writing and re-writing history as soon as I leave the water. I guess I have a lot of "knowledge base filters" to run everything through, before I can pull together a coherent narrative. That doesn't mean I'm entirely flying by the seat of my pants; I've done this kind of thing -sans video- for some time, and things do come around again and again. So I have some idea of what to expect. But seasons are more predictable than weeks, hours, and moments -those conditions and circumstances that require adjustments. Now, all that's from my -the fisherman's- side of the fence. Then there is the fish's side, and that's what really has me intrigued. If I have an "angle", a focus, that's it. And I have been doing my best to get at that for... decades. YT or not, that's what I do. I just plain want to know what the heck is going on down there.

Good luck with it. Guess you're getting into the spawn now? Seeing that you're weather is pretty cool yet, heating may play a role. Shallow heated back coves perhaps? Good mix of cover, some wood thrown in? Any rip-rap? In water like that, cover options may trump depth. Although some depth change in the area, esp with sharper breaks, can be important. Not news to you. Just vicarious fishing for me.

The relationship with you and others along is primary. The rest comes on a need to know basis. They will be best served learning with you than from you. They will care more that you care, than care that you know. Ultimately, fishing should be introduced, supported, and allowed to become their own.

Pretty much the same stuff all year: -Heat -Weather/Water Conditions -Prey whereabouts -Vegetation conditions -Circumstances, miscellaneous. One thing I almost always do, esp under transition periods, is do a lake, pond tour. I'm looking at the above list of parameters. This informs my tackle, techniques, and strategy(ies).

@Catt As I knew, you're on it. Time on the water, thumb on the pulse, is the best way to tip those difficult odds. Would your wife and family miss you?

Advice from a small shallow water fisher (1000mi away), from my post above, with edits for your situation: Three pieces of advice: 1. -Make sure the dock talk is sound. 2. -Pay attention to weather and water conditions. 3. -Versatility matters. 4. -Find the food. The bass will know when and where. Yeah, I know it's everywhere, but some is of greater interest than others. I will venture a guess that there are LOTS of smaller bass there -shallow water is a tough go- but some really big ones too. The big ones have figured out how to hunt in dense cover (I've been able to video some juvies learning the heavy cover ropes). Prey is more vulnerable at certain times (see #2.) And in certain places (think "ambush points" -these are how bass get fed). The latter can end up being a one fish at a time deal, but if there is a chance at big ones, it may be worth the pain. I know this is not news to you. But, it's so much like a lot of my waters that... I feel your pain.

I started my serious fishing as an UL guy years ago, and gradually worked my way up. I pull them out though for my bass fishing during winter -when vegetation has died back, clarity is up, and the fish respond to the little stuff best. I've also broken them out during strong hatch years of little bass, when tiny baits do really well, or in high visibility conditions. A little 1-1/2" twister type grub has caught quite a few good bass for me. However, all that said, I've found that really small stuff may NOT interest mature bass, esp as waters warm. So, use it where it works.

Bout 18F here, Raul. Just coming out of single digits. Ah! Heat wave!