Well i thinkg i found your answer. The other day i was watching a fishing show. Some body asked how fast a fast a bass can swim. The scientest said about 7mph per foot. So theres your answer.

7 mph per foot?  I'm not sure I follow... :-?

Were that correct, the units for miles and feet would cancel out like so: (7 miles/1 hour)(5280 feet/1 mile)(1/1 foot)= 36960 hours^(-1).  Without either feet or miles in the numerator, this cannot be a measure of speed.  

Can you clarify this?  I've been curious about this since fish seem pretty speedy when they dart away from my lures  

Well iam not sure about hoiw true it is. But for every foot the fish is they said it can swim 7 mph. So thats all i heard.

Maybe acceleration????

They can reach 0 to 7 mph in one foot.

I've heard things like...2.5 times their body length per second

small fish can get up to around 2-3 mph and a large fish, like 20+ inches can get up to 12 mph.  Bass aren't built to sustain speed though...they're built to burst.  

Wut?

I think he means something like what KenDammit wrote. A foot long (12 inch) bass can swim at 7mph, a 24 inch bass can swim at 14 mph, etc... according to the formula. 7 mph for every 12 inches of bass --> 7 mph per foot

:-?

I saw the same thing on a Bill Dance episode a week or two ago.  I believe he said basically what phisher_d/kenndammit said; 7 mph for the first 12 inches, then another 7 mph for the next 12 inches.  After that he said a bass can swim an additional mph for every inch.  So a 27" bass could swim roughly 17 mph.  

I know that they can swim more than fast enough. You cant outrun them with a baitcaster if you tried.

I am not sure, but it seems to me based on the original information that if the bass were to travel at 7mph (per foot?) or at any given time for that matter, it would mean that a 12 inch bass travels at 10.27 feet per second. Seems close enough when you picture a bass darting away.

7mph = 36960 feet per hour

36960 feet per hour / 3600(seconds in an hour) = 10.266666... feet per second

I wasn't a math major but I think this is right?

I don't know the exact speed but I watched a special with KV and he said that even with his 7.1:1 reel he couldn't reel fast enough to out run a fish when they really wanted a bait.

scott

Thats a question for Dr. Raul.   Paging Dr. Raul please.  

i saw that on tv too its 7 mph for every 12 inches the fish is, but thats only crussing speed.

The temperature of the water that the bass is in probably has something to do with it too.  I'm not sure just how much of an effect it would have, but I don't think that a bass in 40 degree water would be able to swim as fast as a bass in 80 degree water.