Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass What are these LMB waiting for?

Hi -

I am new to your forum and have spent many hours reading through the various topics, searching, and enjoying the wealth of info and experiences found here.

I have a question: Can anyone give some insight as to what these largemouth bass are doing?

I speculate they are waiting for food? But what food, if they are waiting for food?

This pond is located in North Georgia and there are Channel Catfish, Redear Sunfish, Coppernose Bluegill, and Largemouth Bass in this pond. These bass cruise the entire pond along the shoreline, but really spend their non-cruising time in the deep end. Here they often line up along the shore in water between 18" and 3' deep, facing the shore as shown in the attached photo. There are dragon and damsel flies, bullfrogs, lizards and salamanders in and around this pond. I have tried to sit and wait watching to see what they are doing (IE if they move to a frog or a tadpole, etc.) but no luck thus far.

Has anyone else seen their bass line up like this? They also cruise in packs - between 2 to 8 in number per pack.

Any insight from personal experience or information is greatly appreciated.

Those are young bass. You are mostly correct. They have learned to wait for any possible food items that jump in from shore or swim out from shallow water. These types of food items are easy to catch and when the bass are in a group it is less likely the food item will escape. These bass are easy to train. Get some live food, either worms or small fish and toss it in in front of these bass. Some pondmeisters will catch excess small BG and trim off the tail or a fin and then toss the disadvantaged food in the water. One member here has trained his big bass to eat out of his hand. If you do this frequently these bass will quickly become your favorite pets.

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your reply. I really do appreciate it. This is my first dive into a pond and stocking / managing and everything is new.

If you saw these bass lining up every day would you be concerned there is not enough forage fish for them and so they are waiting for anything that comes in to dine on?

I stocked bluegill 3 years back, and they have successfully bred for 2 years before I introduced the bass this year. While we have noticed less bluegills hanging around the dock, they do come when we feed after a few minutes. Before the bass they were always everywhere, and now the large(r) bluegills are not so easy to spot and the smaller ones keep to the grass/weeds near the shore. I presume this is a result of learning that there are now predators present.

Also, what you said about feeding the bass got me thinking. They do hang around and tend to shadow me when I walk the perimeter. Not every largemouth of course, but whatever school is close to me. And probably for the very reason you said - feeding. I've put in worms and shiners and they eat 'em up (as do the bluegills and channel cats). So I now am wondering if somehow my doing that (maybe once per week on average) has resulted in them waiting along the shore like in the photo I uploaded.

Oh and they seem to love trout the best. Water clarity is now around 8 feet and so I can see everything. When I put trout in you can see the trout hug the bottom and the bass just cruise right to it, tap it one time and then inhale it or smack it sideways and run with it. I plan on using the GoPro to shoot some underwater video of this.

LMB in groups sometimes will pin schools of young of the year BG up against the bank before going after them. I used to see this at my dad's old pond, it was fun to watch.

In my pond bass pin schools of bluegill up against the bank so hard that during the summer we had birds eating bluegill that got slammed on shore during assaults.

My bass swim the edges of my pond in schools of 10-20 or so and will sometimes even make a fairly large wake swimming together.

It's a lot of fun to watch.

You might be able to feed train those LMB by tossing a pellet or 2 in the water in front of them.

I have LMB that follow me around the pond, looking for frogs or grasshoppers that jump into the water as I walk by.

basslover,
Welcome to Pond Boss...

Basslover - bass quickly learn where the easiest food is to catch. Evidently the food items along your shoreline and your occasional tossed offerings are some of the easiest and most productive for the size of bass you are seeing. Bass and most predators tend to take the easiest to catch prey - 'opportunists'.

Thank you everyone for your posts, much appreciated.

I've been amazed at these bass. I dropped them in the pond in May and their growth has surprised me with respect to both length and girth. Every single bass has a nice round belly. Think pregnant bulging bellies. I've fished some other waters and landed what I call emaciated bass just really thin and light weight.