Paul Roberts

I've been a back-reeler for some 40 years now. I've never used drag with spinning tackle. I've never wanted a mindless stack of washers giving line for me. I've posted in some detail about it in other threads.

Seeing bass and not catching them, on sonar or visually, is normal. Not all bass are willing biters. The easiest fish are usually those already actively engaged in feeding. The toughest are those negative/asleep. The rest require finagling or triggering (proximity, speed, contact, ambush points, ...). My best days usually revolve around finding a good feeding opportunity the bass are already engaged in. Bass chasing up faster retrieves sometimes indicate that they REQUIRE speed to be triggered.

Always best to return fish as soon as possible, even more so in warmer water. But, apparently bass are resilient critters; LM more than SM, (and salmoides more so than floridanus): http://www.bigindianabass.com/big_indiana_bass/2008/08/re-examining-holding-your-breath-guidelines.html

You know forage species by first starting broad and then refining to your water. Get to know the fish species that live in your area. Bass/pickeral/yellow perch/pumpkinseed/bullheads are a common assemblage in the NE. Contact your DFW for more specific info. Learn to ID fish. I own a lot of field guides. And your DFW probably has web pages about MA fish species. Google fishes in your area. Talk to anglers -esp those that take fish for the table. Observe as you fish. Lure size? There are some general rules of thumb that would take too much time for me to explain the reasons here. They involve fish activity levels, and visibility of lure details against conditions. Lots of articles and books to read out there. It’s a good idea to learn to fish on a few good waters, rather than jumping around. Get to know the bass’s world seasonally in one or two good waters. Then branch out. Eventually, the more waters you get to know the more versatility you acquire.

Google. Remember, what I offered is all educated guesswork. The real story remains to be seen. Would be worth contacting your DFW warmwater biologist that manages NBR. They have probably done surveys and can tell you a lot about the lake and what you can expect as to how the bass and their forage make live. Lots of articles on swimbaits, and just about everything else, in the articles section. The bulk of my response above pertained to the lower lake. As to sonar, I'm not up on the latest. Things change fast and it strikes me it's all just getting better and better. Get as much resolution (vertical pixels) as you can afford. Color is nice but not necessary. Heck, I loved the old flashers!

Slade House, do your bass sleep? What do they do at night? And, do they use the pipe to rest in?

My apologies. I guess I was in curmudgeon mode; a risk in internet discussion. I was feeling tired of reading articles and reports that highlight lists of lures, and say so little about where the fishing was actually taking place. I love the waters I fish and have realized that getting to know them has been where the real stories lie. Anyway… sorry to throw a wet towel on your already frustrating day on that new lake. I love looking at waters, even from a distance. So…let’s look at your New Bedford Reservoir (NBR). First… Wow! You are in a unique pocket geographically. Your area produces some seriously big northern strain largemouths! I’d always wondered about that MA record bass and assumed the climate effects of the proximity to the ocean was part of the reason. Turns out that’s part of the answer but, also, the very biggest fish come from waters with an influx of anadromous “River Herring”. You are a lucky guy. http://www.telegram.com/article/20100622/COLUMN10/100629955/0 “Our state's record bass, weighing 15-1/2 pounds, was taken out of Sampson Pond in Carver on a tip-up and shiner by Walter Bolonis on Feb. 13, 1975. Rounding out our top 10 are a 13-pounder from Muddy Pond in Carver on April 17, 1976; 12-1 from Palmer River in Rehoboth on May 9, 1963; 11-4 from New Bedford Reservoir in Acushnet on Feb. 28, 1993; 11-2 from Stevens Pond, North Andover on Aug. 21, 1980 and 10-15 from Norwich Pond, Huntington, on Oct. 13, 1973. Also, 10-11 from Sampson Pond, Carver, on Dec. 30, 1970; 10-8 from Mary's Pond, Rochester, on May 20, 2006; 10-8 from Pearl Lake, Wrentham, on June 26, 1985; and 10-5 from Waldo Lake, Avon, July 27, 1963. Our southeast district continues, because of its milder weather and good growing conditions, to produce many big bass. If we can learn anything from history, it's that these are special waters for fishing, as several of the biggest fish taken there were caught during the summer.” Wow! Those are monster northern LM’s. So, to pick apart NBR: You want to identify where the best bass habitat locations are, and start narrowing down real estate. To do this you’ll need to start thinking about the lake vertically (depth layers) as well as horizontally (“which side might be better”). Parameters will be temperature, oxygen, and food production zones. You won’t need any special instruments to make some educated guesses. Looking at a terrain map, the topography is generally not too steep around the area and the Acushnet River is quite small so the lake is probably not all that deep. Taking the lake as a whole (all four bodies) I would call it a lowland reservoir type with some barely hill-land features (due to the steepness in places). I got a feel for the upper lake via a kayaker who was nice enough to snap and post photos of their trip up the lake starting from Lake Street that bisects the upper and lower. At the lower end of the upper lake there was nice topography indicating points and coves from small drainages coming in between the low hills. This looks like a great place to learn how to structure fish as the main structures are attached to the shorelines and therefore easy to see. (The kayaker also mentioned the following, and is the type of thing I’d clip and paste it into my NBR file): “This pond is really viable for kayaking only from mid-May to June. After June, this pond is filled with aquatic vegetation.” Keep in mind that as that vegetation develops it may help reveal the drainage channels and their turns before it fully grows over. There is no hydrographic map available from your DFW, (although there are for some other nearby waters). From a 7.5’ topo map I found http://docs.unh.edu/MA/nwbn41ne.jpg I see that the whole area is flat lowland. Acushnet River is small so it probably hasn’t cut very deeply, and with all the marshland upstream I assume the lakes have even silted in pretty well. Lower Lake: The whole lower lake looks like one wide longitudinal channel, and by surrounding topog it appears to be quite flat and shallow -maybe 10 to 15 ft and 20ft down the center, with a slightly deeper channel –this prior to silt buildup. That map is dated 1941 so it’s an old res. Probably the basin is silted in and, with the lowland nature of the topog, it probably won’t have much hard substrate like rock and little wood left. The W shore is steepest but not by much. It’s also somewhat steeper at the N end of the lake and appears to flatten out a bit at the S end. Via satellite, the immediate shoreline looks somewhat steep all the way around with lay-down and overhanging trees all around. My guess is the steep and “undercut” banks are due to erosion from wave action and not some major topographical feature. Unfortunately the lake does not have the nice points and coves that are so easy to read like the lower part of the upper lake has, that act as food production flats with depth changes to concentrate fish. It has few features along the shoreline that might reveal expansive points or flats. Such waters can be confusing to anglers used to fishing waters with varied topography and expansive shallows (like the NBR upper lake). The next thing is to find the food. An article said NBR holds largemouth, pickerel, yellow perch, sunfish, crappie and bullhead –all warmwater fish. A quick check of DFW trout stocking records does not show NBR on the list –so likely no coldwater fishery there. The lake gets a run of River Herring –both Alewife and Blueback Herring. These are probably the “shad” you mentioned. Food in lakes is produced two main ways: vegetation beds and plankton in the water column. A third way of food production, which is usually not a great contributor, is coarse organic material washing and falling in from the land. Since I see the erosion and lay-downs and you mention the leaf piles in the mouth of the feeder creek, there may be some production there. Just looking at the lower lake, unless there are offshore humps and flats with vegetation (which I doubt) I’d bet that the majority of production is in the water column, meaning there are likely lots of fish using open water. Fish that are in NBR that commonly use open water to feed on zooplankton and nekton are bluegills, young yellow perch, and herring. Bass, pickerel, and adult yellow perch will follow. Herring enter the lake to spawn and this occurs in 50-60F water (April), which falls during the bass pre-spawn period. That’s a great time to have your lake fill with such large prey. There may also be some resident, or holdover, herring too. The herring run has received a lot of attention from government agencies with fish ladders installed to help the herring get upstream and into the lake. They used to be rare but are increasing. This is something to stay on top of: http://www.onthewater.com/fishways-improve-herring-stocks-on-acushnet-river/ “According to the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service website, the two “fishways” built on the Acushnet River have resulted in an 1100% + growth in herring migration since they were built in 2007. The fishways allow herring to access critical spawning grounds in the New Bedford Reservoir from New Bedford Harbor, which eventually empties out into Buzzards Bay.” One way to get a basic idea on how deep food is produced is water clarity through the year. If the water is clear, sunlight penetrates deeper, food is produced deeper and bass can live deeper. Weedlines will give you an idea of how deep light penetrates and how deep bass may go. You mentioned murky, 2-3ft visibility, and weedline at 5ft. That’s mighty shallow. Weedline depth will indicate either the limit of light, a substrate change, or possibly a drop-off. I’m guessing water clarity is the limiting factor. That low to moderate water clarity is due to this basin being downstream of the productive marshy water above. It’s one fertile body that’s for sure. Combined, low clarity and high fertility can result in oxygen deficiencies in the depths. Here are some 02 values from near the Lake St culvert. Although this is not in the lake proper it shows low oxygen values near bottom sediments. It is not unlikely that the lake proper has low O2 during summer months in the depths. This is pretty common in the depths in very fertile lakes with low clarity. http://www.savebuzzardsbay.org/BayHealthMap/Acushnet_River Measurements taken from shore at Lake St., west of culvert. In hearing you describe the water clarity, the weed depths, and with the likelihood of oxygen deficits at times, most of the bass will be using relatively shallow water. This may change at times though if clarity changes, and when the depths oxygenate -usually outside mid-summer and late winter. Fishing: Overall, I’d break things into two scenarios: -Shoreline and weed flat related bass. -The potential that some bass are relating to open water prey fishes. First, I’d want to cruise and look for shallow food shelf areas out away from shore, especially those that turn out away from shore like points or shelves, esp with weeds and/or rock. You might need to burn some gas initially –or test your arms as I think NBR is a motor-free lake. With flat topography, such areas may be subtle. I fish a large pond that shares topographic characteristics with lower NBR. It is shallow –the majority is around 10ft– and has a sloping side and a steeper (eroded) side with overhangs. It has precious little vegetation, and some detrital influx at two inflowing drainages. Most food is produced in the water column. Prey base for bass is mostly yellow perch and young bass. Fish holding structure can be subtle such as 2 foot drops with a boulder or brush, a rather unexciting looking shelf you can barely see with a 4ft drop at the end. And then there’s a 4ft high ridge 30feet long with a few rocks. A couple inlets hold fish, one is really small but a small brush pile there always has fish on it. When it rots away I’ll add another. It doesn’t take much to hold fish in places like this. There is a food chain –kicked off in the water column. The bass seem as hard-pressed to find things to relate to as I do. So, find the shallow flats then look and probe for complexity on those flats –turns in the structure, humps, holes, substrate changes, cover. I also fish the steep eroded side of that pond. Tall shoreline vegetation, like trees, will draw fish similar to submerged structure or cover. However, there is no cover in the water and no depth change along that side to create ambush points. The young guy who introduced me to the pond said that he never catches any fish on that side even though it looks so “bassy”. So I showed him how to finesse fish –jigworms (now called Shaky) and wacky’d 4” stick-worms. In open water free of visual obstructions it can be hard to trigger bass with lures. Finesse baits can do it. At dusk the water column comes alive with zooplankton and insect larvae coming active and soon the whole food chain is boiling under my boat. My sonar screen shows fish nearly top to bottom –mostly perch and bass, and some crappie, coming out of the woodwork and up off bottom to feed. Pretty cool to watch. The way to narrow down open water may be to identify a cline –either a thermocline or an oxygen cline if there is one. The weedline depth, or within 10ft of it (thinking vertically), would be a likely depth range if you wished to search more open water away from shore. If you have sonar, you can look for schools of activity, and start searching for structure you can’t see, either isolated off-shore or connected to shore. Otherwise, probe whatever structure and/or cover you can discern or feel, and don’t be afraid to cast out away from the weed edges. Trolling or drifting can help you find structure and/or open water fish. There will always be some bass near shorelines and the weedlines too. Lastly, those herring, and the big bass potential of your region, made me think swimbaits, and from an article I found (link below) others in your area have been onto this. http://www.offthehookfishing.com/fishspecies/largemouthbass.html That’s my guess from 13,000 miles away, and 1200 miles up. A better source would be your regional fisheries folks at your Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. They are often more than willing to fill you in on your favorite lake: http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dfg/dfw/ Here’s your District Manager for SE MA: Jason.Zimmer@state.ma.us Good luck in getting to know your lake. Hope this gives you some stuff to chew on. Oh yes… my comment on chuck-n-wind meant that casting and retrieving without any contact with bottom or cover is often a poor way to trigger strikes –esp so with crankbaits. And the deeper you fish the more vertical you tend to have to fish. Horizontal retrieves are fine when the fish are shallow, when the fish will chase, when fish are committing suicide, and/or you can make contact with bottom or cover. If you can't be crashing something or ripping off weeds, be mixing up speed and direction, or... go vertical.

This is common. If we could see all the fish we don't catch we'd probably hang it up. The best answer I can give is to say that lures are not food. To fool bass, which is what you are doing, special conditions and circumstances are required. These are windows that open and close. It's a be there or be square sort of deal. This doesn't mean that you may not be able to figure something out for the particular situation you were in. That's what versatility is all about. Keep learning. With the conditions you mention, start the game with stealth (go ahead, try to sneak up on a bass -its tougher than you might think). Or wait for a dark overcast, a wind-rippled surface, or night. Things can change with a passing cloud.

"...b/c it helps ease my shakes" I've found I can "speed test" small bass to help get the tempo of the day. Speed can be really important. Sometimes, in warmer, or warming, water in particular, bass will not commit to a bait unless it's moving fast. When I see little bass chase up when I go to lift out, or when they pull a full 360 around my bait, all excited, I've learned that I need to pick up the tempo.

You gave a whole list of lures you tried. But nary a mention about the water you were fishing. The water will dictate what lures to try. It's only there that the fishing story even begins. If you are throwing lures hoping fish will come to you, you are in trouble at the get-go. Maybe quit switching lures and colors and rig your rods for systematically checking diff depths. And matched for conditions -is water clear, is there cover? Have a shallow rig with a jig, plastic, topwater. Have a few deeper rigs -appropriate cranks that will find bottom -don't ask the fish to come find it. Have a drop-shot, or shaky, rod rigged and ready -the deeper you probe the more vertical you'll be fishing. Chuck-n-wind horizontally will kill you deep. Sometimes it will kill you shallow too -if you are expecting the fish to chase. I guess what I mean to say is lures don't catch fish, fisherman do. Sorry if this seems less than helpful, but we have to know a whole lot more about the lake you are fishing and the creatures that live there, than the lures you tried.

Gizzard shad are open water fish -at least when they are young enough for bass to eat. When they mature they become bottom detritus feeders and are often too big then for bass to eat. I fish some ponds that have a few shad. A very few. These ponds are shallow and weedy. Never knew they were there until I saw a large one or two washed up on occasion like you did. Doubt they contribute much as bass prey, except as fry. Likely very few survive and popns are very low. In these ponds, bluegills are the main course. I fish small reservoirs too though that have some deep open water areas, as well as shallow weedy areas. These hold more shad and I sometimes see schools of them, or find bass-prey-sized ones freshly dead.

Ditto. And lots of waters were stocked long ago and hold small popns of ... all kinds of things. Gizzard shad are common in many, often surprisingly small, waters. They are fecund but a somewhat fragile fish susceptible to dying in stressful conditions -esp in late winter. And mature ones -too big for predators to eat, die and wash up. fishva could be right too.

Big question. My first thought, and forgive me if you are beyond this: This may not be a bass behavior issue exactly, but a location/activity issue –these are often related. If you cast expecting fish to find your lure, you are expecting too much. Catching fish randomly will often result in one here and one there. If you want to beat the random odds you have to do more: -Fish waters that have numbers of quality fish that are accessible to you. -Fish the conditions in front of you (being aware of recent trends) instead of fishing history. -Find groups of active (feeding) bass -which often means finding their prey, and esp where the prey is vulnerable to bass. Not only are bass not easy to catch for anglers, prey are not easy to catch for bass. -Find the strikes zones within these locations that serve as ambush points/vulnerability zones. -Apply correct lures(s) -probably tweaked from factory condition- and know how to use them. Don’t just fish what got you jazzed on TV that morning. -Don’t alarm them. Think before you cast. Be ready to adjust, rest them, or find less difficult fish. Every piece of research on bass catchability has found a certain percentage of a given bass popn that are labeled essentially “uncatchable” or “immune to angling”. Yet, how immune individuals are undoubtedly varies with conditions. -If you know you have numbers of fish in front of you, then you are going to have to start what I call “filching” –figuring out how to eek more bites out of a certain location or time period. This could be a matter of waking them up, finding those ambush points, tweaking lure action, lure switching, etc. If you expect to make good catches consistently in bass fishing, you have your work cut out for you. I’ll give one example (of many): I fished a public pond that receives a ton of pressure, all sorts of lures flying in from all directions, and many of the bass had damaged jaws (I tend to go elsewhere when I see that). The first time I visited, instead of just walking up and flinging a GoTo, I walked the pond just observing. I saw that most all of the banks in this flatland dishpan pond had a very gradual slope. I also spotted lots of young sunfish up in the immediate shallows in inches of water. Smallish (8-11”) bass cruised and kept those sunnies pressed into inches of water. I kept walking. I then came to about a 30 yard stretch that had some small willows growing along it. The roots held the soil and wave action had created a very small cutbank, with a foot of water right at the bank. There was some washed up milfoil and filamentous algae there too. My heart raced. I’ve been doing this kind of thing in woods and waters long enough now that sometimes my pulse will pound even before I’m conscious of why. Then I saw a subtle ripple right at the bank. I had a 1/4oz skirted jig-n-pork (pre-softened) on so I switched to a 1/8 and swam it along the cut bank –Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Four 13 to 16in bass. Then a slap and a miss. Then nothing, although occasional swirls continued. I switched to a swimming worm (tail had been boiled) behind a 1/16oz bullet and took three more –all within inches of the cut bank –the “vulnerability zone”. Then I added a bit of weight and probed a little deeper taking one more. Before I left I tried a topwater frog and caught another. Probably could have milked it all day. Now, most people I observe get out of their car, tie on their GoTo or something they “want to try” –usually to see what “the bass have to say”. If you are asking the bass to come to you, you are fishing for luck. And relying on luck will gives you randomized results. We human predators come equipped with big brains, large eyes, long legs, and dexterous digits so we can observe, think, plan, and adapt. It’s a real world out there with real stuff happening. Your first order of business is to go find it, recognize it, and capitalize. That is how you beat the odds.

No. But my PB small-stream brown trout was an interesting event that had a premonition-like quality to it. I was fishing a lot at the time, and really tuned into that particular stream. I was onto those fish: where they were, when they were there, and what they were feeding on. I was at a pool I knew well and running a big hellgrammite pattern into the basin and I had an… “anticipatory premonition” -imagining a submarine-sized weight loading my rod and moving away. I’d taken some big browns in the reach over the last week and so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine a weight I couldn’t move. And then it happened: my line tensed I set and a submarine-sized weight I couldn’t budge moved away up the pool. It took a while to bring to the fish to net, all 23” of it. It all felt so seamless. but, it as as much imagination -a day dream- in a situation I knew pretty well. Some luck there too, but much less so than if I'd lucked into such a fish on the first visit to that water. I don't. I'm not a big fish guy. More interested in how things work -how conditions and circumstances affect bass and other critters too. I target mature bass, make observations and look for patterns. Some day I may go back to big fish chasing -have done it in the past.

That's a good idea.

This is key. Keeping critters is well worth doing. I've had tanks up to 200gal and a 133gal stream tank.

You've been a busy man, Wayne. Yes!

Years ago, a local expert back took me fishing (I was one thrilled kid) and we returned with limits of bass and pickeral. In the boat he instructed me to reel straight for pickeral as they don't turn real well. For bass, sharp changes of direction will catch bass but ward off the pickeral. Dunno if this would actually pan out statistically though. That said, I've loved pickeral. Go to a light/UL spinning rig and use a mono leader and.. let em run! Gosh they're fast, if you just let them keep their fins in the water. Another thought, is that pickeral may always be mixed in but bass may be able to out-compete the pickeral in your water (?). Bass have a habit (dunno about pickeral) of dropping away from shorelines when water levels fall -a common reservoir scenario. Maybe your bass were a bit further off the bank -maybe even suspended- leaving the pickeral to dominate. Just a thought. Pike are interesting, and I have seen times when pike are all over me. Then other days, they are completely absent. This became particularly interesting when I got to see this in a pond -small enough that I could cover the whole thing pretty well. Some days it seemed all the pike in the pond were active and when that happened I'd do one of two things: To avoid them I wouldn't throw anything flashy but fish jigs and worms in gentle slides and falls. If I wanted to catch those pike, I'd put on something flashy -Rapala, Mepps, or SB- and fish pretty straightforward horizontal retrieves, just covering water. Over time I got to know the larger pike in the pond and if I found that the pike were "on" I'd sometimes visit each big one's apparent territory and either catch or raise each one. It was pretty interesting -a very real phenomenon. I later came upon a technique highlighted in an In-Fisherman article that described catching pike in thick vegetation with a "shaked" skirted jig. It worked! I mean, it was special to those pike. I found I could catch my big pike almost at will even on days when the pike weren't "on". Those "on" days when pike were chasing -willing to chase horizontal lures- were rare. But the "shaken" jig worked almost anytime and it appeared that those pike were tucked away in cover at those times, and simply unwilling, or not in position to, chase. Never affixed any particular weather pattern to this but I do have records in my journals so maybe on some winter night I'll look at it.

That would be a good example of a multi-species aggregation. I've even caught bullheads on lures (!) while fishing the gizzard shad spawn (for walleyes) under lights at night. And on two different water bodies too. On one occasion I got to watch them. They cruised just beneath the surface feeling their way along the surface film. I assume they were successful or they wouldn't have been there, and I wouldn't have caught any. Whether they were catching them live or cleaning up the dead and wounded I don't know -don't remember seeing one nab a shad.

Yes! Over my desk are a few things I display as decor or art. Some wood carvings I did years ago representing some local places and fish I obsessively pursued back then. One is of a fat 15inch largemouth. The other is a 14" brown trout, a 10" male brookie, and an 18" northern pike (representing a small swampy stream I fished that was full of aggressive little pike. If I still lived there, I'd still be adventuring in that beautiful gem of a jungle so close to so many people. And I'd probably still be all alone doing it. Also over my desk is an illustration of a hanging brace of bass I picked up from the basement at a dusty household sale years ago. When I took it home and opened the frame to clean it I discovered that it was an original pastel. And it's nicely done. Not signed however. Once I cleaned the glass the wonderful colors showed beautifully. Which makes me think, it's probably time to clean it again. Hooked from the top of the frame of that brace of bass are three lures: One is a large cork popper that has no significance and probably should be replaced with a bass bug I made that has history -I know just the one ). Next to it is a dragonfly my then 4 year old son made. Next is a frog-colored Jitterbug from the 40's that was used by my grandfather, handed down to my father (the very first bass I ever saw -I was five- came on this very lure), was then handed down to me, and will be handed down to my son. Yes, we still use it on occasion. That's what it was meant for. Lastly, I have a flat lake-shore rock my father (a career illustrator) painted a bass on -a largemouth leaping clear and down onto a frog colored Jitterbug. On the back is painted a "Merry Christmas to Paul from Dad 1972"

True. Bass adapt very well to a wide variety of environments and prey. They do so by modifying behavior to suit -they can learn (and I don't mean "think"). So results will vary, across individuals as well as water bodies. Bass hunt in groups bc it works; it suits their capabilities and hunting style. But when it doesn't, they will abandon it -hence use of "loosely" above. I would assume that the same holds for very large bass, but I've not fished waters that hold large numbers of huge bass -like existed in the young reservoirs of yesteryear, or in CA, or Mexico. I know anglers have described huge bass working in groups to capture trout. I have fished a few ponds that had good numbers of big bass (for the north: 4 to 7lbs) and I've caught them together -in aggregation. Whether they were "shoaled" or not prior to my interference I couldn't say. I know that at least some of those bass winter together and likely some shoaling, maybe even some schooling behavior, occurs then. But this most likely occurs after aggregation. By summer, they are dispersed. I find them one sometimes two at a time as either loners or in opportunistic aggregation.

Since I'm writing about this right now, I thought I'd clear up the terms, as I needed to get it clear for myself: An aggregation is just as Roger put it: An 'aggregation' is just a temporary collection of fish drawn by food supply or attractive conditions. A "shoal" of fish is a group that is socially associated -aware of each other and interacting in some way, even if loosely. The behavior is called "shoaling". A "school" is a coordinated shoal with all fish swimming together in the same direction. Some species are obligate schoolers and take this to the nth degree. Bass are not one of these. I've seen bass behaving in ways that fit all three categories. However, most often I've known bass to be shoalers that have a tendency to aggregate. I've not seen shoals of out-sized bass simply bc my waters do not support numbers of out-sized bass. I've only seen them as loners.

Thanks, Tom. I remember you telling me that a while back. Thought others should know those temps "came from the horses mouth" so to speak. Just to broaden the discussion, the "life zone" Tom is referring to may or may not correspond with a thermocline, although good sonar will reveal the water density change and living critters collected at one. In many waters though, bass may or may not be anywhere near the thermocline. In very clear waters, bass may be deep. In murkier waters, there may be little life worth fishing for near the thermocline, and "life zones" as revealed via sonar -where the majority of activity is- can be unrelated to a thermocline, much shallower, and may vary day to day.

Tom, are those temperatures surface temps, or at-depth?

Tom’s Cosmic Clock is brilliant. There are a lot of years of experience and knowledge rolled up in that breakdown of a bass's year. The cycle shape is right on the money, but harder to read compared to IF’s Calendar Period chart. I think this is probably because we tend to read right to left, and think linearly, (as well as dichotomously) –it’s just easier for us. But as a cycle is the way to look at a year’s progression. Is the Cosmic Clock (or the InFisherman F+L+P formula, Calendar periods, lake classification scheme, etc) all one needs to know? Can one run a finger around a dial or across a chart and predict a day's fishing? No. Keep in mind that it's one thing to nail down large-scale timing, it's another to “be there” at the fine-scale timing in which bites occur -hence, John's "hindsight" comment. Was Ray Scott right that one cannot predict bass behavior? It galls me to no end, but he's right when you get down to the nitty gritty –the fine-scale timing– where the bites happen. It's a big mighty big world bass live in. And they are adaptable, generalist predators, which makes them less predictable than a specialist with more restricted habitat requirements and behaviors. As far as “prediction” goes, it helps when I can fish every day. The only solace I get, I suppose, lies in spite: knowing that much of the day is a crap-shoot for the bass too. Someone well-read, with a lot of on-many-waters experience, and fishing often, is in the best position to predict at finer scale, which in action tends to look more like the chipping away at probabilities and rolling with the punches. That’s fishing as I’ve come to know it.