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For example,
the human race can be found inhabiting nearly every place on this
earth--Eskimos in the icy
northern wastelands, Arabs in the deserts, Seminole Indians in the
swamps, Tibetan tribes in the mountains,
various races in the jungles. You name it and somebody lives there.
Deer are similar. Some live in the
swamps, others in the mountains and they do not seem to make any
great effort to all gather in some happy
climate where the livin' is easy. Porter thinks that fish are that
way, too.
Now, we all
know that the various types of bass differ in their preferences for
real estate. Smallmouths
like deep, cool, clear, moving water with lots of rock and gravel.
Kentucky bass seem to favor about the
same features as the smallmouth, except that he doesn't care for the
current and the surrounding water does
not have to be nearly as deep. Largemouths prefer warm, stained
water and normally hang out at a variety of
depths. Although there are always exceptions, smallies and
kentuckies generally do not vary their patterns
very much. However, the old largemouth seems to live just anywhere
he darn well pleases and can be found
most everywhere in a given body of water.
To get
straight to the meat of the issue, that log book I was talking about
indicates that the largemouth
bass can be found extremely deep, extremely shallow and at many
places in between in the same lake on
the same day. Through a system of tagging we have used, it also
appears that a group of bass does not
move too far from their selected area and has a tendency to be
rather "homebound", for the want of a better
word.
The records
show that a bass that was caught in more than 20 feet of water was
never caught again
shallower than 12 feet. Conversely, a bass that was caught in, say,
four feet of water was never caught
again deeper than 12 feet. A very interesting fact (and I call it a
fact because it happened too many times
to be mere happenstance) was that bass that are found in a shallow
area of heavy cover, such as a large
weed area or zone of standing timber, never seem to stray far from
it. At best, a strong weather change
may drive them out to the first breakline off the cover zone. But,
more often than not, they just seem to go
into the thickest part of the cover and enter a semi-dormant state
until the weather stabilized again.
In one large
weed flat on Lake Guntersville (Alabama), we marked a total of 37
different bass with yellow
tags. In the next year, we caught over 30 fish, some twice or more,
with the yellow tags (continuously
releasing them). On a few occasions, we caught the yellow-tagged
fish out on a drop in 10 or 12 feet, but
never deeper.
About 500
yards away from that weed flat is a long bar that runs in off the
river channel edge and swings
back to parallel the channel. The channel is a bit over 40 feet deep
at that point and the top of the bar is at
about 22 feet. From this quarter mile stretch of structure, we
placed red tags on 25 fish. My records show
that we caught a red-tagged bass on 26 occasions, never shallower
than 15 feet and never more than a
hundred yards from the bar. I am at a loss regarding where or when
these bass spawned, since we never
found them shallow.
These
findings held throughout the year, in all the seasons. In the
Winter, the weed flat fish moved out
to the edge of the weedline in 10-12 feet of water where, at this
depth, the weeds continued to live throughout
the cold part of the year. These fish could still be caught from the
weed area but were extremely inactive until
the warming trends began in February. Incidentally, we never caught
any of the yellow-tagged bass anywhere
but in, or near, that weed area.
We ran these
tests on three other areas of two other lakes and the results are
about the same. What
value is this data, one may ask ? I suppose the real value is that
it adds some to my understanding of the
habits of the fish, something I'm constantly trying to do (mainly
because I don't like them being smarter that
me!). Seriously, though, it has helped my ability to find fish.
The theory
of bass being linked to a general living area tells us that, if they
are not where we expect them
to be, they are probably NOT TO DARN FAR AWAY. Therefore, if we
apply a bit of our knowledge of
structure and use a map and depth finder properly, we should be able
to find the critters. As the guy on TV
said, "It works for me".
Another
interesting item is the change of location due to a weather change.
Now, we've already said that
the shallow, weedbed fish either moved out to a drop just past the
weedline or went into the thicker parts of
the weed growth. Well, how about those bass out on the deep
structure? I'm glad you asked! Weather had
little effect on them, except in the early Spring. At that time, a
good, strong cold front would push them right
off the bar--but NOT deeper. They would suspend somewhere around 20
to 50 feet horizontally off the river
channel side of the bar and generally at the SAME depth as the bar.
Why, I don't know. Maybe it had to do
with the fact that the moving current was less subject to change
caused by the weather than the still
backwater. It beats me. However, I do know that they were there
because they could be seen on the graph
and caught on a vertical jigged spoon.
During the
past 14 years that I have been in Florida, I have noted this same
"home area' instinct. We have
marked hundreds of bass in the Farm 13/Stick Marsh and continue to
catch them time and again in the
same general areas that they originally came from. Biologists with
the Florida Game & Freshwater Fish
Commission also indicate that their electro-shocking and fish
marking programs clearly show this same
'home area' trend. In fact, some of the biologists believe that the
'home area' syndrome starts with the new
spawn crop and where the schools of freshly hatched bass first take
up an extended residence.
For the
young-of-the-year hatch, this is usually an area with enough cover
to provide small food chain
substances and protection from the larger predators. It may well be
that bass lives out its life without ever
straying far from the original area of his birth.
In tracking
these movements of bass, especially out on deep structure, a graph
is really a help. There is
one little trick that you should know, however. Remember when all
the books said you could mount your
transducers INSIDE the boat if you had a place with purely
translucent fiberglass between it and the water?
Those guys didn't have a graph when they told us that. The way to
get the super clear readings on the graph,
complete with all the "hooks" and other fishy indications,
is to mount the transducer OUTSIDE. That's a big
10-4, Vern, baby. With the investment you've put in that recorder,
you want the best out of it. You put that
thing outside, for sure. If you want to prove it and you've got a
compatible transducer up on the trolling motor,
plug that front transducer into your recorder and see what you've
been missing.
The
summation of what has been said herein is that bass may well be
`homebodies', living out their lives
in a selected portion of a body of water. Some appear to prefer the
shallows, while others like the deeper
zones. It certainly would help answer the questions about why bass
can be found at a variety of depths on a
given day and why there always seem to be bass on certain structures
year-round. But, there are a lot of
questions remaining to be answered and that's part of the fun.
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