3 hours ago, Pat Brown said:

 My belief that this is ALSO the case in deep water with artificial lures 😯😯😯

 

bass spawn literally everywhere 

How deep of water are you referring to? 

7 minutes ago, 10,000 lakes Bassin said:

How deep of water are you referring to? 

 

According to biologists - as with most things - it depends.

 

I've heard water visibility for human eyes/sechi disc x2-3 roughly a lot of times will be plenty of light penetration.

 

But fish will still spawn deep in dirty water if it's warm enough and there's enough current and oxygen and good hard substrate but in general in dirtier water bass will spawn more up shallow and closer to the bank (in my experience sometimes literally on the bank).

 

I think where we get confused is when we see 2-3 feet of clarity on our home lakes and think it's pretty stained - that's actually fairly clear to a bass and then if you've got areas with 4-6 feet of clarity - they can easily spawn as deep as 12-20 feet down.

One thing really unique about sight fishing is that it allows you to really understand just how unique and individual every single Bass's "personality" is.

 

Every single Bass has it's own unique trigger spots on the nest, baits they will respond to, what they want their mate to be doing, how fast you can annoy them, etc.   

 

It's such a personal experience, to me it's the closest interaction you can have with the fish, to include holding them in your hand.    

 

I watched a 8-10lb fish for 3 days last year.....watched her entire process, and by the end I felt quite the connection to her.    Sight fishing is completely unique in that regard.  

 

ETA:   Agree with everything Pat has said as usual, and it's amazing how quickly we are starting to learn that many of the biggest fish have and are spawning so much deeper than we used to know before FFS.

 

Perspective mode FFS has really started to illuminate this specific topic for sure.  

1 hour ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

One thing really unique about sight fishing is that it allows you to really understand just how unique and individual every single Bass's "personality" is.

 

Every single Bass has it's own unique trigger spots on the nest, baits they will respond to, what they want their mate to be doing, how fast you can annoy them, etc.   

 

It's such a personal experience, to me it's the closest interaction you can have with the fish, to include holding them in your hand.    

 

 Very well said 

Every time this subject comes up I hesitate to give my opinion. 
No other subject on here elicits more passion and personal opinion 

This time the first thing that came to mind was the 2nd and especially the 3rd paragraph which he said the best. 

So I’ll just say this. 
There is no other presentation that if given a choice I would rather do. 
Depending on where you live down here we can Sight fish beds in all 3 phases for 6 months of the year. 

Doesn’t get any better than that. 
 

 

 

 

 

Mike

 

I hate bed fishing mainly because i suck at it. Old eyes make for a hard time spotting fish and when i do find one I don't have the patience to sit there all day trying to make it bite.

I fly fish the bluegill raiding bass beds. 😉

5 hours ago, Pat Brown said:

 

According to biologists - as with most things - it depends.

 

I've heard water visibility for human eyes/sechi disc x2-3 roughly a lot of times will be plenty of light penetration.

 

But fish will still spawn deep in dirty water if it's warm enough and there's enough current and oxygen and good hard substrate but in general in dirtier water bass will spawn more up shallow and closer to the bank (in my experience sometimes literally on the bank).

 

I think where we get confused is when we see 2-3 feet of clarity on our home lakes and think it's pretty stained - that's actually fairly clear to a bass and then if you've got areas with 4-6 feet of clarity - they can easily spawn as deep as 12-20 feet down.

12-20ft is crazy to me, not saying I disagree but ive just never heard anyone say they spawn past that 10 or12 foot range. Lots of lakes around here have water visibly 8-15ft so from what you’ve seen they could spawn almost anywhere.

Im also interested in what you were talking about water temp/time of year for the spawn. With ice half the year and warm water in the summer everyone has talked about a quick, less dragged out spawn in the north. You’re saying that there might be more to this?

6 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I managed to catch 22 fish over 5lbs during our recent spawning 6 week period

 

Man, you sure can cowboy.

 

Haha, thanks Katie!

 

Two years now, March has blown away any other month for 5lb fish.    Before that August was the best month.

 

I'll catch a few as 1-3 5lb fish in Oct/November, so I end up paying my dues lol.  

Like what the Bass Professor Doug Hannon believed. The big females are highly vulnerable and easy to catch disrupting the natural reproductive cycle when guarding their nests. He believed it was an ethical decision and not just a fishing technique.

Good Fishing  

If you are concerned about harming the fish population it seems to me that catching a 2 pound fry guarder and putting him in a livewell is sentencing those fry to a death by bluegill.

Lots of good responses to a great post.  BTW if the lake aint froze I'm goin' fishin'!

8 hours ago, 10,000 lakes Bassin said:

12-20ft is crazy to me, not saying I disagree but ive just never heard anyone say they spawn past that 10 or12 foot range. Lots of lakes around here have water visibly 8-15ft so from what you’ve seen they could spawn almost anywhere.

Im also interested in what you were talking about water temp/time of year for the spawn. With ice half the year and warm water in the summer everyone has talked about a quick, less dragged out spawn in the north. You’re saying that there might be more to this?

 

 

There's a lot of stuff that we thought was true that we are learning is not true and that's just kind of part of what I'm trying to add to this discussion. 

 

People have been repeating what they read in a bassmaster magazine article in the '70s for 50 years now and there's a lot of stuff that's not true that is thought to be true.

 

Elite series pros and guides who will take you out to catch large fish on Lake Fork or Toledo Bend or Sam Rayburn will take you out deep and put you on a spawning female bass and help you catch them with livescope - like sight fishing deep.

 

There's a lot of things about the culture of bass fishing I like but bass are not deer or people. They are fish. They are definitely not trout. 

 

They are extremely robust fish that learn incredibly quickly how not to get caught and anything you can do to put yourself in a better position to catch them is better than paying somebody else $3000 to take you out on a boat to put you in a better position for you.

Why do you hate bed fishing?

I don’t.

next question

4 minutes ago, LrgmouthShad said:

Why do you hate bed fishing?

I don’t.

next question

How does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work ? 

5 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

How does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work ? 

It just does

8 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I end up paying my dues lol.  

 

Don't we all! I skunked a few times in March and April because even though I knew the water was too cold, I just couldn't wait.

 

47 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

They are extremely robust fish that learn incredibly quickly how not to get caught and anything you can do to put yourself in a better position to catch them is better than paying somebody else $3000 to take you out on a boat to put you in a better position for you.

 

Wait. I charge nothing to take people fishing. Am I undercharging?

 

Seriously, Pat, you are such a thoughtful, informed angler and whereas I don't shrug at sight fishing beds, I do mull your position.

 

 

How many fry does each bass have?

 

We hunt turkeys in the strut,  elk and deer in the rut.

 

 

In my state you cannot make repeated casts at fish on beds. So it’s really a none factor for me since it’s illegal. 

How many people have we heard say - 'I can't catch a fish to save my life and I've been fishing 30+ years and catching them with ease my whole life!'?

 

A whole heck of a lot is how many.

 

Bass have become fun to catch and popular to fish for and what once was a very small group of people fighting over a smart and robust fish they didn't fully understand - is now an extremely large culture / population of people.

 

The fish are not gone or overfished or poisoned or anything of the sort.

 

They learned how not to be caught when they got fished for 365 days a year instead of whenever you felt like going out on the lake.

 

I fish small ponds and lakes where I have caught the same fish multiple times and released it multiple times on multiple baits and I can tell you that the fish continue to spawn and continue to behave like fish as soon as you drop them back in the water. 

 

You want to know when fish are stressed out? 

 

Fish are stressed out in the middle of the summer when oxygen levels are low and they've been making babies for months and they're worn out and they're tired and they're starving and their bodies are hanging on by a thread and they've been fished for for months and all the well-to-do anglers decide that now is the time to Target them ethically LOL. 

 

I think that also you could get even more creative about your logic here very easily if you really want to be a person who is empathetic to the species. 

 

A kind-hearted conservationist like myself who catches and releases in 8 or 9 pounder who makes a mistake and bites probably increases her chances of survival on the whole for the year. If you consider that when I'm not catching and releasing her, somebody else is trying to catch and eat her most of the year.  Not necessarily directly but just indirectly all the time. 

 

People who catch and release spawning fish give them an education for free and then allow them to continue doing what they're doing. 

 

What it does is make the fishing tougher for people who go out once in awhile and expect to catch a fish. 

 

Again this all kind of goes back to - it's in the best interest of the tackle industry and the fishing guide industry and basically the industry as a whole to promote a narrative where black bass species are fragile and we need to fish as little for them as possible. Because that basically keeps them in business and us in the dark.

 

How many successful attempts to eradicate black bass are you aware of!?!?

 

Last time I heard Japan tried to sponsor eliminating the entire species from the face of the Earth in Japan - they accidentally produced a world record and guess what? They've still got black bass everywhere. 

 

I don't really think we understand how this works correctly as a community because we are worth a lot more when we are ignorant.

 

 

I dislike "intentional" bed fishing as it's bad for the future of the fisheries...  

 

Plenty of science to back that up as well...

 

Fortunately here, by bouncing back and forth between inland waters and the Great Lakes, you can focus primarily on pre and post spawn fish, or just go Trout fishing...

 

 

1 minute ago, Goby said:

I dislike "intentional" bed fishing as it's bad for the future of the fisheries...  

 

Plenty of science to back that up as well...

 

Fortunately here, by bouncing back and forth between inland waters and the Great Lakes, you can focus primarily on pre and post spawn fish, or just go Trout fishing...

 

 

 

People are catching bigger and more fish now than ever and people bed fish now more than ever. 

 

I am happy to debate this respectfully with you and I'm always eager to learn more - show me large mouth bass fisheries that have been damaged by bed fishing.  I'm eager to learn more and I'm always trying to challenge my points of view and think critically.

 

If anything - I'm under the impression that people don't keep enough fish every year for healthy bass and a lot of bass are stunted and unhealthy compared to what once was (our ability to catch them has greatly improved for sure).

 

I think up North - there was a LOT of wild stuff that happened in the Great Lakes historically that makes it a unique place to look at - and makes it easy to see why anglers are a bit passionate about this topic - but black bass species always seemed to fare well even during pollution and commercial fishing etc.  I just don't see them as at risk.

6 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

How many people have we heard say - 'I can't catch a fish to save my life and I've been fishing 30+ years and catching them with ease my whole life!'?

 

A whole heck of a lot is how many.

 

Bass have become fun to catch and popular to fish for and what once was a very small group of people fighting over a smart and robust fish they didn't fully understand - is now an extremely large culture / population of people.

 

The fish are not gone or overfished or poisoned or anything of the sort.

 

They learned how not to be caught when they got fished for 365 days a year instead of whenever you felt like going out on the lake.

 

I fish small ponds and lakes where I have caught the same fish multiple times and released it multiple times on multiple baits and I can tell you that the fish continue to spawn and continue to behave like fish as soon as you drop them back in the water. 

 

You want to know when fish are stressed out? 

 

Fish are stressed out in the middle of the summer when oxygen levels are low and they've been making babies for months and they're worn out and they're tired and they're starving and their bodies are hanging on by a thread and they've been fished for for months and all the well-to-do anglers decide that now is the time to Target them ethically LOL. 

 

I think that also you could get even more creative about your logic here very easily if you really want to be a person who is empathetic to the species. 

 

A kind-hearted conservationist like myself who catches and releases in 8 or 9 pounder who makes a mistake and bites probably increases her chances of survival on the whole for the year. If you consider that when I'm not catching and releasing her, somebody else is trying to catch and eat her most of the year.  Not necessarily directly but just indirectly all the time. 

 

People who catch and release spawning fish give them an education for free and then allow them to continue doing what they're doing. 

 

What it does is make the fishing tougher for people who go out once in awhile and expect to catch a fish. 

 

Again this all kind of goes back to - it's in the best interest of the tackle industry and the fishing guide industry and basically the industry as a whole to promote a narrative where black bass species are fragile and we need to fish as little for them as possible. Because that basically keeps them in business and us in the dark.

 

How many successful attempts to eradicate black bass are you aware of!?!?

 

Last time I heard Japan tried to sponsor eliminating the entire species from the face of the Earth in Japan - they accidentally produced a world record and guess what? They've still got black bass everywhere. 

 

I don't really think we understand how this works correctly as a community because we are worth a lot more when we are ignorant.

 

 

 

You forget to address the single biggest "issue" with fishing spawners...

 

What happens to the beds the moment the fish guarding it is pulled away? They get raided! LOL 

 

It's not just about the survival of the fish you catch bud... 

 

You are correct though, some fisheries can actually see a benefit from fishing being culled, especially if trophies are desired, but not all of them and not on a large scale...

19 hours ago, RocYak said:

I will definitely cast to bed fish a couple times if I see them, but I'm not a fan of working over a single bed for 20-30 minutes to force a bite.  I'm fine with others doing it, but its not my thing and just doesn't feel right to me.

 

Where I have stronger feelings is tournaments that take place during the spawn, and the bed fish are stuck in a live well for a day, then released miles from their bed.  I haven't looked for data, but I have to believe that has some impact on the overall reproduction rates on some lakes.

 

Exactly how I feel.  While I will make a few casts at a bed fish, since it's not a bite out of hunger or reaction, it's tougher for this guy.  It's a bite out of protection or agitation.  If it works, great.  I release the fish quickly like I normally would.  But I'm not going to sit there for half an hour trying.

 

Stuffing them into a live well while they're trying to reproduce goes against everything I believe in when it comes to conservation of a species.  I wouldn't disturb a doe giving birth to a fawn or a hen turkey sitting on a clutch of eggs, so I'm not going to purposefully interrupt the spawning process of a bass (or any other game fish either).  If there's a tournament during the spawn, it should be mandatory C & R.

8 minutes ago, Goby said:

 

You forget to address the single biggest "issue" with fishing spawners...

 

What happens to the beds the moment the fish guarding it is pulled away? They get raided! LOL 

 

It's not just about the survival of the fish you catch bud... 

 

You are correct though, some fisheries can actually see a benefit from fishing being culled, especially if trophies are desired, but not all of them and not on a large scale...

 

 

This isn't actually entirely true - a lot of times spawning fish are not caught anywhere near their bed and are not protecting the eggs directly but rather more indirectly.

 

Also generally speaking there are a few females and a few males around the bass spawning areas I find - it's almost never a pair like we see in pictures.

 

Also - each bass spawns many many times per year - not just once in the spring - that's a made up thing.

 

I agree if the recruitment in your body of water is bad - you need to figure that out but the chances of people sight fishing beds being the culprit is basically zero.

 

It's like people with a rod and reel aren't as influential as we'd like to think - there's SO many bass spawning that you can't see - the only ones that get sight fished are the ones stupid enough to spawn where people fish regularly and can see the bottom.

 

Don't sight fish if you don't want to!

 

But it ain't hurtin nothin.  Except for most people - it's probably a huge huge waste of a lot of time.

 

Bed fish aren't any easier to catch than any other bass - most bass you catch are aggressive because they got babies nearby or something like that.  They don't bite vision 110s thinking it's an alewife.

Just now, Pat Brown said:

 

 

This isn't actually entirely true - a lot of times spawning fish are not caught anywhere near their bed and are not protecting the eggs directly but rather more indirectly.

 

Also generally speaking there are a few females and a few males around the bass spawning areas I find - it's almost never a pair like we see in pictures.

 

Also - each bass spawns many many times per year - not just once in the spring - that's a made up thing.

 

I agree if the recruitment in your body of water is bad - you need to figure that out but the chances of people sight fishing beds being the culprit is basically zero.

 

It's like people with a rod and reel aren't as influential as we'd like to think - there's SO many bass spawning that you can't see - the only ones that get sight fished are the ones stupid enough to spawn where people fish regularly.

 

It's generally the males that are guarding the beds that are caught off the beds, once the eggs are already on the beds... Females aren't typically around long enough to be targeted on the bed...