Paul Roberts

Yes, wind and shade can surely influence things. Shade can draw cruising/exploring fish over time. Shoreline trees and high banks can draw fish like other types of structure and cover. On a shorter time scale, flotsam piled up can collect fish. On the flip-side, heat from direct sun can draw fish at times. Wind has all kinds of effects that can influence both location and activity of fish. Current can be a big draw. It rules rivers, and pretty much regulates activity on many reservoirs, as well as in canals and channels that move water, sometimes under the influence of wind. Inflows, papajoe mentions, can be particularly good, drawing fish to the location and influencing their positions. In some cases these are just local effects the fish can take advantage of, or have to deal with, although in some cases they are more permanent. In small waters especially such areas are eventually discovered by hunting bass.

Snakes, cougars, bears -use respect and wherewithal, not fear.

The "least common denominator" would be: habitat quality. Just how that sorts out will depend on the particular pond. Most basically there will be three location types: winter, spawning, and feeding. In such a small water, some of these may overlap. Winter is often oriented to survival, mediated by environmental parameters like oxygen, temperature, lack of current, cover and, lastly, food. Spawning keys are temperature, substrate, and depth. The rest is all about food and here you are looking at prey species and places and times that provide vulnerable prey. These are the pieces to the puzzle in a nutshell. Am I missing anything guys? The other possibility, and not an entirely unlikely one, is that the one side is favorable to the way you fish.

Great thread idea! I've LOVED little creeks. My dad and I spent countless hours perusing local creeks. No planning, just get in the car and drive til we came to a creek. We fished jigs (mostly) on UL tackle and caught whatever was there -various minnow species, bass, pike, pickeral, and trout. We fished both hair/feather jigs I tied myself and plastics: curly-tails and grubs w or w/o an overhead spinner (for visibility, buoyancy, and "grip"). I came to especially love stream smallie fishing. As to size, it depended mostly on stream size (volume in particular). They ranged from 10" to 14" on most small "creeks". Rivers produced fish up to 22" for us. Some mid-sized streams could give up 15ers. Small small tribs of lakes had spawning runs and in those waters smallies topped out from 15" to 18". At the trib mouths the fish could break 20" But, I was and still am, just tickled to catch... whatever's there. I still love 9" smallies on UL tackle. I could catch them all day, and have. Creeks can hold big popns of smallmouth too. I didn’t tend to tally but I did have a 100 fish day on a mid-sized creek once. It was always fun to see how many we could catch from one pool, and where the big ones were. I found few streams with LM in my area though, bc most waters had too steep a grade. But I did have one that was slow and running through swampy ground that had both LM and crappie in it. My best there was in the 14” class that took a small Bayou Boogie lipless. I remember that fish and that lure and that strike really well. I don’t know why it’s so etched in my mind. Maybe it’s my general love of plying moving water for hidden surprises. That LM bolted up from a grassy embankment and engulfed the little plug at my feet. I can still picture it, although it was nearly 40 years ago. And it still gives me a rush. Streams require really active, target oriented fishing. It’s just plain fun. Maybe the best “fishing” there is.

Once upon a time I measured and weighed everything, and made my own length/weight chart. I use length now, usually to keep track of growth rates (how year classes are coming along) in various waters I fish. I'm pretty good at guestimating lengths now. Body condition varies throughout the year so weights vary with it. Fish over 20" I may drop on a regularly calibrated spring scale though.

It's a largemouth. But, the lack of lateral stripe and silvery color is likely due to its immediate surroundings, or for social reasons. Bass like other fish are chameleon-like (well almost) in that they can adjust hue and change patterning to quite a degree. Lack of markings and silvery reflectance is common when bass are in open water for some extended period or in turbid water.

Well Tommy, I'm working diligently on a book on bass behavior. I've been collecting info for years now from all sources -scientific and angling observations- and am finally getting down to organizing it all and putting it together as a book. No small task. With pressure from my wife, I may actually get er done in the next year. Wish me luck -that I don't keel over at my desk in the meantime. If my posts sometimes sound robotic and full of jargon, it's bc I've been mono-dimensional for too long. In some ways, I want this off my plate... because I want to write one on small water bassing too. And there are others lined up behind that.

Wow. I've not fished waters that large with such productivity. Just about every water seems to offer some new wrinkle. With bass especially, adaptability is the word. Mass migration? Something had to bring them together in the first place. My guesses would be large amounts of (probably pelagic) prey, or a habitat bottleneck, like what happens in winter in many waters where adequate habitat shrinks and bass end up packed together. Smallies in meso and oligo lakes in the north are known to hunt pelagic prey like alewives, emerald shiners, and ciscoes. They do so in big shoals bc there is simply enough food out there to support big numbers. Smallies are also generally more efficient at pursuit type hunting than largemouths. When traveling distances over open water, which these fish do, I could understand them forming "school-type" behavior bc it's efficient (again, think drafting -like F1 race cars or flocks of geese). Your description of Little Lake doesn't sound out of the ordinary behavior-wise, although the lake is certainly unique. The behavior sounds like so many lakes in which bass suspend offshore and feed inshore, pressing baitfish up against shorelines (or weedlines, bluffs, etc). Probably there just isn’t much bass food out there in that 1500ft deep (and cold) fissure, and not a lot of security for bass in shallow. I fished a gravel quarry years ago that was like that. Gin clear with broad 3ft deep flats with little cover (rubble and sparse weeds) and a few deep dark potholes that provided the only security. Darn those bass could be spooky, bolting for the potholes when a cast was made on a sunny day. I remember it well bc of a particularly large bass of probably 6lbs that spied me first and headed out to the lip of the largest pothole, and just sat and stared at me. Until I cast to it, and it melted away. Never did catch that fish. Speaking of bass on trout, have you seen the video on Mike Long's site of huge bass intercepting the hatchery truck? Pretty cool. Cool stuff, Tom. Appreciate you sharing so much of your experience. You have a lot of cool stories and observations. You should write a memoir –seriously.

Luckily the two coincide. Otherwise, I guess we wouldn't have any bass to chase after.

There's an old saying. (I say it's old bc I'm old lol.) It goes something like this: "There may be only a handful of CO's (Conservation Officers) in the state. But if you are in the wrong they have a way of being there." It can be uncanny. Licenses go (or should go) toward bettering fisheries and fishing in most cases so they are worth the investment. Plus, they're cheap if you figure how much pleasure you get out of a year of fishing for the price of a single dinner out. Only once was I in the situation of not having my license on me. I was just putting my (rather well equipped) float tube in at a local town park pond when a CO came riding up on a mountain bike and asked to see my license. I usually have a combo license (hunting, fishing) and I'd just returned from a backcountry elk hunt. I realized right then that I'd left my license in my hunting pack. I explained this to the officer and then, making light, said, "Look at all this stuff. I wouldn't have put all this together and and NOT bother with a license." The officer laughed and gave me his card, asking that I email or fax him a copy of my license. He rode off and I went fishing. I scanned and emailed my license to him that night and that was that.

Seasonal patterns are broad strokes. They are a revelation to newbs. But they won’t necessarily tell you what’s happening on a given day, esp in a small water body. As others above said, immediate conditions are where it’s at bc we don’t fish seasons, we fish moment by moment. OK... that was essentially saying that seasonal patterns are just guidelines. Thoughts on your question… The reproductive period is the most defined period in a bass's life bc selective pressures are pretty intense then (bc eggs, fry, and fingerlings are where by far the majority of mortality –the hatchet– falls, serving to filter out deviations over time. However, when you really look at it close on any given year, the spawn has plenty of variability too. Also, it's easiest when location is simplified, like with the majority of bass in the lake piling up shallow -esp when you're standing on shore. Location is easier, the fish are visible in many cases, and fish are feeding pretty recklessly through much of the spring. (There's also a great bit of reckless feeding going on in early summer, and again in mid fall, and lots of other times, but those windows are much narrower. When you hit em you might say "Wow. Classic fall pattern right there!" ) Outside of the spawn, the rest of the year bass have a much broader range and focus, mainly finding enough food, which involves all sorts of other species -the entire food web is at play, which is linked to all sorts of ecological variables. No two lakes are the same bowl of soup, and no two seasons come out the same. There are trends we observe, but collected largely in hindsight. Which is another way of coming round to talking about seasonal periods being just guidelines again.

Personal space? Yes. Bass are not (normally) “territorial” exactly –except during the spawn at the nest site. But they are agonistic and competitive which can be confused for territoriality and can extend into territorial-like behavior in confined circumstances (aquariums are a good example, as are places in natural waters where people feed bass on a regular basis). It's more like they carry their territories around with them rather than have specific locations they defend. But they do have "home ranges" -areas that encompass their needs- and again the size of them tends to vary with resource availability (food especially). Shoals of young bass are often called “wolf-packs”. They are agonistic, competitive, and cannibalistic. Most young bass never reach maturity. Possibly, but it would depend a lot on the prey species. Prey are not pushovers; each offer their own challenges. Bass (individuals and shoals) will aggregate at locations where prey is abundant and vulnerable. But if food is scarce bass have to, and will, travel more to find it. If there is abundant food, they tend to have decreased home range sizes. One neat study put up two automatic fish feeders in a natural lake: one that dropped minnows periodically, and one that didn't. Telemetered bass were released at both sites. The bass at the feeder offering regular food had remarkably small home ranges. The bass at the control feeder (no food) had large home ranges. Just what type of food there is, where it's located (say, pelagic or littoral), and how much is available determines how bass will hunt and with whom. All environments have appropriate habitat areas within for a given species. Lots of water can be devoid of mature bass for many reasons -most often bc it doesn't provide enough food. In rivers though, current is probably the primary constraint. Also, and you may know this, sonar is not terribly good at picking up fish tight to bottom. And current can put fish tight to bottom. Because of your mentions of personal space and hierarchies I suppose you are asking if territoriality is at play in rivers? Do I have that right? What I have come to understand with bass is no. Instead they are better described as agonistic and competitive. I suppose if specific lies/holds (called foraging sites) are small enough that there would be competition for them. This is the case for trout. Possibly bass could compete for holds, especially smallmouths. Hope this helps.

Awesome sleuthing. Very cool.

I’m going to suggest that there are not “two social mindsets” among bass, but instead that we see a range of behaviors depending on what environments require. Bass are highly adaptable and may use available prey in almost any sector of a given water body. They can (or at least some can) figure out how to hunt effectively from dense cover to open water. We anglers often focus on the bass, but their prey species ecology and behavior can tell us a great deal about what bass are doing, as Tom introduced to the conversation above. There are a number of factors that affect bass group sizes and how they arrange themselves, in particular: mortality/survivorship, body size, and prey type and abundance. Some prey –in particular open water true schooling species– are more difficult, even impossible, for single bass to catch. There are social factors too that appear early in life stages and “individualism”, as put above, is one. Bass fry start out in large groups (and these aren’t true schools either) and continue to hunt cooperatively in shoals and aggregates because it works. But when it doesn't, they will abandon it. Extra large bass tend to be loners in most waters bc there are so few of them. Lots of food in a small area tends to produce bass with smaller home ranges while waters with sparse and patchier resources produce more "roamers". Bass do what it takes. There are few fish out there more capable of exploiting varied environments than bass. That’s why we love em. Bass do sometimes exhibit "schooling" behavior –defined as tightly coordinated and moving in synchrony in the same direction. I believe that this is, in most waters, rare and/or transient. And, because of the individualistic part, I’ve chosen to call it "schooling-type" behavior. Selective pressures that created true schoolers are not present for bass and aren't exhibited in their morphology or behavior. The places where bass are most apt to use schooling-type behavior is when hunting open water prey fishes, and possibly during migration movements in certain circumstances. The scenes in Glen Lau’s “Bigmouth” appear to show some schooling-type behavior. But exactly what is going on there is not apparent. It looks to me as though those bass could just be, and likely are, a good-sized shoal (obviously there’s plenty of food there to support larger groups, including several open water schooling species) doing what shoals do. In fact, at one point you see some members of the group spot something in the vegetation below and break up momentarily to inspect. Then they move on like active cruise-hunting shoals do. In some clips where they are looking more school-like they may be being pushed by the diver. It’s also possible that they may be influenced by current as the film was shot in Rainbow Springs in the Crystal River in Florida. Schooling efficiently covers distance over open water (think drafting), and current could force shoals of bass into assuming a tighter “school-like” arrangement in certain places. The narrator states that telemetry studies have shown two types of bass –schoolers and loners / social and asocial– but that’s a very simplistic take and there have been a whole lot more studies done since. Again, I’m going to suggest that there are not “two social mindsets” among bass, but instead that we see a range of behaviors depending on what environments require, possibly within those two extremes. Indeed pelagic and littoral habitats are extremes and most fish species can’t handle both, but apparently bass (as a species) can. Wish it were true that we could say that there are only two types of bass, but freshwater systems are enormously complex, especially as you start jumping around between water bodies. Each water body has its own (often changing) story going on and each is illustrative. But there are core tendencies that define a species. Bass just happen to be a highly adaptable one.

From a recent thread: The reasons 'why' -the circumstances that influence social behavior- are both physiological and ecological.

Been wondering the same thing. KVD said the same in an older video.

Just means you're still kickin'.

Same with me. A network of shared info can be a great thing.

How big was the bluegill the 2.5lb swallowed?

Neat observations. I love watching fish too. Can be very informative as well as entertaining. The bass that swallowed the big 'gill... How big were each of them? Any clue as to whether there was any rhyme or reason to when the big one decided to feed? Just hungry? Related to any conditions, time of day, ...?

I guess I shouldn't have used your posts to jump off from. Apologies there Lund Explorer. As to the fishing... I, for one, keep my ear to the ground, and share. It comes round. I can't be everywhere.

Do what needs to be done. Sometimes having a lure visible over the water, and even the big splash, can draw bass. This is most apt to happen under dark skies. Bright skies and flat water can yield just the opposite, although I've used super-high (and long) overhead casts to get over and beyond spooky fish in high vis conditions. It's also easier to throw really long casts overhead. That said, a low profile cast and quiet entry are skills worth having. Yeah! What he said too! ^ ^ ^

I care. Real weights can carry meaning. In that there are waters that produce big fish, and those that don't. And there are year classes that grow large and offer a run of good fishing. I keep close accounting of my small waters. I appreciate good info. I don't appreciate bad info. In this I'm not comparing myself to others catches but deciding where to spend my precious time. Again, there are waters that I am MUCH better off spending my time at, and I simply can't be everywhere. I appreciate good info. Here's an example. I had a local insurance guy tell me he and his wife had taken several bass over 6lbs from a particular small res. (In CO I have LOTS of small waters to comb through). He seemed honest and knowledgeable. I checked it out. Got out of the car and walked up to the edge and right up to good 20" bass. I walked a little further and there was another! I had the shakes by the time I got back to the car and had a hard time tying a worm on. In all I spotted 4 around 20" that morning and caught 3 of them. I then drove over to check out another pond I knew held potential. (I "knew" bc a couple weeks previous I was fishing a neighboring pond and heard all this whoopin and hollerin. I looked over and two guys were dancing and holding 5+lb bass.) So, after catching those 3 CO lunkers that morning I hit this other potential pond and took another 20". That was a mighty good day and if I hadn't cared I'd have been catching 1-3lbers. The place to ask that question would be at Pond Boss. Or directly to Pond Boss owner Bob Lusk. In fact, he has an article on this site about just how rare a DD is. Worthwhile read if you haven't already seen it.

Ditto. In the north it's "5lbs". As you go progressively south it goes up: "6", "8", "10". These are "representational measures" and have no truth of measure beyond a level of excitement or ego boost. And they are often obtained via "relative measure" that goes like this: An angler catches three 12" bass (1lb each), thinking "nice 2lbers". Then he catches a 16"er (a true 2lber) and knowing it's bigger than his previous erroneous guestimate says "Whoa! that's a good... 3lber!" Then he hangs a 18"er (a true 3lber) and says, "Holy Moly! 6lber!!! Wooo hooo hoooo!" (Notice the change in numbers are more exponential than linear.) Makes for a great story too when he gets home to share his excitement and accomplishments, thinking "You shoulda been there to see that gorgeous fish! I'm so excited!" The measure ("6lbs") is more a measure of excitement and pride than actual flesh and blood. Relative measure is often socially derived and influenced. Anglers commonly end up comparing their catches to weights thrown around on TV, video, and magazines, as well as their buddies' erroneous measures. Media measures are often yielded from southern waters where bass grow bigger than they do in the north. Bassmaster only recognized (may still) only 10lbers in their angler awards, which sets an impossible mark for northern anglers. More intelligent assessments go regionally, like In-Fisherman's Master Angler Awards, and others use a proportional difference from the particular state's state record fish. This is human nature. And psychologists have been studying this for decades in all sorts of ways. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel in economics for his 30+ years of work measuring we human's (in)ability to take measure of the world around us. Fascinating and revealing subject on how our minds work. So... I try not to take such measures of fish personally. But I do carry a quality (regularly calibrated) scale with me and report real numbers. My numbers often wind up lower than most people's. I can handle it.

I...dunno. Used them all and what I care about most is the blank. Can't think of a handle that I disliked enough to etch a memory. OH! Except maybe pistol grips on casting rods -only have one left. I've even replaced a few with longer handles. And I've added fighting butts to a few fly rods too.