Brian Needham

well that sucks..... I never had an issue, except the one time I thought I could spool up and fish it right then, though I think it was more I overfilled it. since then I use liberal amounts of line and lure conditioner and let it sit overnight before i use the reel. I do this on spinning or baitcast.

reinforcement vs punishment would mean bass have a memory, correct? Bob Lusk says they do not have a memory. but if you wanted to say it was instintual then I could go along with that.

perhaps I should have used the word territorial?

Portnoy is an ANIMAL, PURE ANIMAL....

interesting Tom, thanks.

I thought there were 3 reasons a fish would strike a lure: 1. feeding 2. defensive/protective 3. reaction is this flawed teaching handed down through the years?

nice Frank! I contest anything that is living is a creature of habit, or at least instinct. So where would one get their habits from if it was not instinctual? Perhaps that is further if a stretch than needed. You are absolutely correct, it is a wonder we catch anything at all. I for one find nothing better than to sit back and marvel at a fish that I catch on a "artificial" lure. to know for a split second I out witted nature, how awesome it that?

I do believe you are correct, we may come from different angles but I think we wind up at the same place. Indeed, the only "aquarium" I am worried about is my livewell! HA!

mispoke here. what are WE trying to learn?

I think the grass grew better in the wild on its own before I started to mow it, introducing stress, coercing it to grow for playing conditions (golf) instead of growing for health of the plant. Plants, animals they adapt. That adaptation is what makes the lab flawed for behavioral experiments. . Is a bass by any other name still a bass? Western/Eastern bass have totally different water, food chains, ect ect. Perhaps they all revert back to “just being a bass” in the tank. I say that for the fact anything done by man nature will undo in time. I see it in grass…. We have “made” new grasses by genetic breeding. Issue is over the long term, everything reverts back to its original state. It may take 5, 10, 20, 50, 100,1000 years but nature reclaims it all. We can see the changes man makes while studying wild animals. Look at the mortality rate of captive animals once released back into the wild. The animals have become so dependant on their captors they forget how to survive in the wild and die. Knowing that, can we really say bass being studied in a tank are giving us a “natural look”. Which is why I firmly believe any wild animal studies needs to be done in the natural habitat, not in a lab. There are just some things we are meant to enjoy and not study. The study can be futile because we are humans, not creators. BUT if we were going to study it, it needs to be done in the environment the creator/nature has provided, not four walls in a microscope. We are never going to fully understand it, so let’s just fish! I am sure we can all agree to disagree but it is an interesting topic nonetheless and makes for good conversation I suppose.

good point I say nature does it for them.

If a western lab bass acts the same as an eastern lab bass is it really a western bass then? You have to have a “control” in this process you have to be able to fully replicate one or the other, the lab or nature… you cant do either, but you can however use nature as a “given” as it is already provided. I use science/ lab reports daily. They provide me what I need to know. I use them for soil test; they are great for telling me WHAT. What elements are in the ground, and at what concentrate… they cannot tell me however, HOW to grow the grass. I also use path labs. The microscope or a growth chamber can tell me what pathogen the grass is infected with, however it can not tell me HOW to get rid of the pathogen. Science cannot tell you the how or why, it can tell you the what. Sometimes it can tell you the how, but not the why and what. And so on and so on. Science is not complete in its work, nature however is. Really when you boil it all down, you cannot answer a “why” question. Needham how can you not answer a why question? Two reasons 1. Is simple…its called the “why game” Keep asking the why to every answer the person gives you, go through all the permutations and you will always arrive at “cause it makes me feel good” so the “answer” to a why question is 100% without fail, “cause it makes me feel good” 2. Now for the complicated end… To answer a “why something happens?” you would have to explain everything that has happened and every cause and effect since the creation of time. And that is something no human, scientist or otherwise can do. Our minds are not built to that capacity. I will end this post with a quote; “Many men fish all their lives without realizing it is not the fish they are after.” And a lab cant prove that either

a pond and an aquarium are not the same. Never can be as one is made by nature, God, X, verus an aquarium made of glass. Even a man made pond is not an aquarium, and IMO an aquarium can not replicate weather, sunlight, barometric changes(if fully controlled), natural temp changes. but lets go full Socratic method: what are you trying to learn?

wow thanks for bringing the Lemark studies to the table WRB. I will have to round these up if still available. your last post outlined something that is simply impossible to replicate in a lab, and probably provided tons more info to educate with.

I snapped a dobyns off on a boat cleat one time, Dobyns covered it, $60 bucks and done. For a $300 rod that's a pretty good deal. I tore off a guide, jabbing a lure that was hung..... Dobyns sent me the guide for free. great warrentee, I gravitate to Dobyns, not run away. Many people don't think they need info from a manufacture, since they know what they want. Issue is unless you know how every line of rods out there fishes, you better be calling manufactures to see if their MH is light or heavy, since there are no stardards. Which is another reason I like dobyns. I have spoken with Gary about rods when I first started to buy his rods. I told him what I had been using and what I wanted. Then asked him does he have something that fits the bill, he gave his recommendation and I cant say he ever been wrong about the rod he suggested or the comparison he drew to the other company I asked about. I choose dobyns , but you can insert any company you use and like into this example I like them, others may not.... I like the opportunity to speak with the owner/designer, others may feel its worthless.....its what makes the world go around. but for someone to call my or anyone else's buying experience wrong, or tainted, or foolish is pompous at best.

I understand that. I see your point, and I hope you see mine. The theory of relativity and bending of light has nothing to do with wild animals. You can not, no matter how controlled the environment is, study a wild animal in a captive lab. This is proven through the sole fact a lab is not a natural environment. and via pack animal experiments, even psychological stress testing/environmental testing on humans, rats. conditioning vs instinct ect ect. In a lab, you have to feed the animal.......animals do not get fed in the wild In a lab , you have lights.....animals have the SUN in the wild, and many base instinctual movements around the sun, not a fluorescent bulb. In a lab you have boarders and cages......in the wild you do not In a lab you have controls and variables........in the wild everything is a variable (you can make a lab report say anything you want, and continue to prove it ) Animals, bass, nature have been on this planet long before we ever figured out the technology to study it in a lab. and no matter how strong our advances, we as humans will not figure out nature. Why? Simply because we did not create nature, and there is no way to reverse engineer nature as a whole. Now, I think we all agree Steve Parks (BigO) is one if not the premier bait makers in the industry...... send him a PM and ask this question: What produces more results and produces more useable information to create/design a bait, lab reports or in the field testing from the front deck of your boat? JMO, and yours may differ.

I guess we really do need a sarcasm/joke font.

is that a replica or skin mount?

coryn.......... it is your assumptions that makes your rebuttal invalid. You can't simply mix assumptions and a lab. Which I believe is Catt's point..........do whatever you want in the lab, it aint nature, and never will be nature, which is why you have to study it in nature. My point would be, do you think Goodall's research would have reached the level it did if she simply went to a "controlled" zoo? agree or disagree?

Bob Lusk, pond management guru, states under optimum conditions (everything variable perfect, PH, forage, growing season, ect) 2 pounds per acre is manageable. Though most ponds can sustain 1# give or take per acre. this means, using round numbers for easy figuring in a 10 acre pond you can have: 10 1#bass or 5 2#bass or 2 5#bass or 1 10#bass but you cant have all of them. Granted this is to grow "trophy class" fish, not lets go catch a bunch of fish.

its really hard to beat the TP model...... if I did a bunch of cranking I would look at the BB1 just because it was designed for cranking, though I have never used a BB1. and I use a TP5.4. for my deep cranking

yeap the 580GLass can be found on ebay for 180-190...... I use they guy in Mississippi and know they are real.

I know it not what you are looking for. so start watching..........that's what I am doing to try to help you.

here is the broke rod one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbf8HdOP10&feature=share&list=TL1-HGEdyZAVIalEVCE3pvjFvcxQkreIm2

I have seen it.................just start watching all of them again, good fun I say!