Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations F1 vs Florida Bass

Guys please give me your view. I have read the stuff that says Forida bass and not as aggressive and harder to catch on artificail lures. I have a new 5 acre pond that has been stocked with the coppernose and the fatheads. In June it is schduled to be stocked with Florida Bass. Bob Waldrop, the owner of Tyler Fish Farm in Tyler Texas stocked the forage fish and is stocking the bass. He breeds and raises F1's and Florida's, so it makes no difference to him, but he believes that the Forida's will average 2 lbs bigger when mature and are as aggressive and will bite lures the same. What do you guys think, and whick would you stock if you were me? Thanks in advance for your insights, i have gotten great advise from you guys. Oh, the pond is in North East Texas.

Darrell Stringer

Darrell, I would rely on Bob Waldrop's advice over all others.I have found him to very knowledgeable.

He has literature that documents that pure florida bass are no more difficult to catch than F1's or northerns.

The problem with catcability of LMB is they become hook shy after being caught and released many times in small pond that have ample forage base and feeders.

I am presently experimenting with a HSB (Hybrid Striped Bass) program to determine feasabilty of changing from a LMB predator base to HSB in our N.E. texas ponds.

Also we are introducing tilapia to relieve pressure on BG's. Refer to Meadowlark's (Larry Hartley) excellent article in the current issue of Pond Boss Magazine. Thee are numerous posts on the subject on this forum - search the archives for additional information.

George Glazener
N.E. Texas 2 acre 1/4 acre ponds.

george, thank you very much.

darrell stringer

George, I've never heard anything neagative about Waldrop but Lusk and others disagree with him about Florida agressiveness. F-1's are supposed to be non hook shy but, in theory, I have them and they won't bite either.

Dave, it’s not about Lusk or Waldrop – it’s about studies that TP&W conducted in conjunction with others that disproved the “hard to catch theory”.
I’ll attempt to retrieve the literature from Waldrop if it is an issue.

george, if you have anyway to find out how to get that information, i would very much like to see it. thanks.

George, certainly no issue. Lusk posted once that he noticed that Florida bass minnows didn't mop up on the forage he provided like the natives did.

In my own case, I have 2 approx. one acre ponds.
One is stocked with natives from a neighbors pond and another with what I was told were F-1's off an Arkansas fish truck. Actually, I have no idea whether they really are hybrids. However, I know they will hardly bite anything and the known natives are a lot more willing. Of course, my 2 ponds don't exactly represent statistical sampling.

Darrell, Ask Bob about it when he delivers your fish. He looked it up for me one day in his office when I was picking up fish. I should have taken notes, after I had raised the same "hard to catch" issue.

At the time he was the only one in the area that was actually hatching and raising pure Florida strain LMB. He personally caught them in Florida and transported to his hatchery.
Everyone else was buying their fish from fish haulers.

Also intersting - his coppernose bluegill were also personally caught in Florida and transported to his hatchery, and has produced large BG's exceeding 1.4 lbs in our pond.

As far as I know Tyler Fish Farms and Overton Fish Farms are the only ones actually hatching their Florida bass, but I haven't been in the market so don't know for sure.

Darrell,

Here's another vote against pure Florida strain LMB. In a previous discussion on this topic, George posted the link to that reference and it does indeed say that the Floridas are not any worse than the northerns, but my experience just doesn't agree.

In my ponds, the Floridas are virtually uncatchable, but they are also accompanied by BG which are on artificial feeders. Two years ago, I introduced native northern to the Florida pond and so far have not seen any tangible benefits.

In a pond with "pure" natives, the LMB are very catchable, but there are also no feeders for the BG.

So, this year I'm going to get the answer...is it the Florida strain or the feeders...by stocking F1's with BG in a "new" 2 acre pond with no artificial feeding. All ponds will also have Tilapia.

I suspect that the answer for me will be to move over to HSB as my primary predator and sport fish in my larger pond(3.5 acres) and continue the F1's for diversity in the 2 acre pond. In fact, thats the direction I'm going.

Bottom line, the LMB has been very disappointing in "catch and release" ponds with artificial feeding. Whether the strain type contributes to that is debatable.

It is not debatable, at least for me, that the HSB with ample forage is the far superior choice for "put and take" pond fishing, without doubt.

Darrell just a thought. F-1's are a cross between a Florida and a Northern . So there are 3 types of LMB that could be under consideration. Pure Floridas , pure Northerns , and F-1s . The reason for picking the F-1 strain is to get the best [hopefully] traits of both the Florida (size and life span] and the Northern [ aggressiveness and cold tolerance]. With out going into the studys and theories often discussed about the genetics of pure strains ,crosses,and recrosses and various options ,you should consider what you want your pond to be and select that type of LMB. If in doubt you should consider some of all three types.With an adquate forage base you shouldbe in good shape and have all the benifits of each strain. Let us know what you choose and your reasons.

My (early) F1 experimental observations:
My two acre pond was stocked with fatheads, shiners, bluegill and channel cat the summer of 2003. In the summer of 2004, I had a huge forage base and I stocked 150 northern LMB and 30 F1 LMB I bought from Dunns fish farm in Arkansas. I clipped the pectoral fin on the F1's.
I like this experiment because the bass were stock in the same pond, at the same time, (no variability caused by different pond conditions).
Recent observations:
I handfeed the fish Game fish Chow every evening and I can see the bass eating the floating food as agressively as the bluegill. (I don't see any catfish eating?)
We have lightly fished for bass this month, using artifical lures and caught (sampled) about 20 bass. The fish had never seen a lure and could be caught on every cast!
50% of the catch has been the fin clipped F1's. I have been pleasently surprised that the F1's, not only survived the winter, but the are about 2" longer and appear more aggressive than the northerns, since they only account for 17% of the initial stocking.
Maybe the F1's are growing faster because they were pellet trained and they continue to binge on pellets?
Maybe the F1's will learn faster than the Northerns?
Future plans are to cull the small bass and catch and release most of the original stocking.
So far, I am pleased with the F1's. I will report again next year.

Gainesjs,

Interesting data, but the real test is in recatching the fish...which ones "learn" and retain the fear of lures. Is there any difference between the strains in learning?

Yep,
I agree. The bass learning curve is the million dollar question.
Just hard for me to believe that southerners are alot smarter than notherners!

Well...here is a data point...I got a lot smarter when I moved to Texas 40 years ago from Springfield, Missouri (great place).

I wasn't born in Texas but got here as fast as I could.

For the record, we stocked native (northern?) LMB three years ago last fall - pure floridas two years ago, so we should have some F-1's from this years spawn.

My conclusion to date is that fishing pressure causes hook shy LMB, and with a strong forage base and autopmatic feeders, are more of a problem than the type of LMB.

I'm leaning toward replacing LMB with HSB as primary predators, with BG and tilalpia forage and supplemental feeding when required.

guys, what does the automatic feeders have to do with the bass not biting lures? and if the feeders do limit the biting of LMB, does that apply just to florida's? i may have misunderstood the comments about auto feeders.

thanks.
darrell stringer

Darrell, for the most part LMB are rarely feed trained but come to the feeders to clobber the voraciously feeding bluegill. I don't believe the feeders affect LMB biting. I guess it could be said that they get used to eating easy prey and don't get as hungry as in water without feeders.

Darrell,

I'm the one on this forum that has most often said that artificial feeding negatively affects the bass' disposition to take artificial lures. Yes, I believe that is the case and am trying to prove it one way or the other.

Here is my reasoning and by way of explaination I will say again that my writings are based on first hand experience, not text book or scientific studies...thats just a statement of fact and not meant to be negative in any manner.

Okay, here is what I have observed. On a 3.5 acre pond stocked with pure strain Florida bass and artificially fed, the catch rate consistently declined over a 3 year period to where it is now virtually impossible to catch a bass. In my other ponds, without Florida strain bass and without artificial feeding, I can readily catch bass any time on flies and lures. I can catch Florida strain bass on live baby BG around the feeders of the 3.5 acre pond, of course.

My question became, was it the Florida strain bass or the feeding or something else? The bass are present in the 3.5 acre lake...I can see them. I can catch them on live BG. They feed voraciously on unsuspecting BG when the feeders go off. I can see and more often hear the "gulp" of large bass consistently taking BG at the feeders.

My first conclusion was to blame the Florida bass strain. I introduced natives (Notherns I suppose) to the 3.5 acre pond two years ago without any apparent effect yet. Maybe it will still help.

George and others have offered evidence that it is not the Florida strain...so I'm confused. Others have said I'm just a bad fisher person, and without bragging please let me assure you that is not the case.

So, I'm leaning heavily to artificial feeding and of course fishing pressure as the likely causes of very poor bass fishing.

In fact, I'm on the verge of proclaiming that catch and release in small ponds with Florida bass and artificial feeders does not work. I'm moving toward a put and take HSB fishery...but I'm also trying one last experiment this year with LMB.

In a 2 acre pond, newly renovated, I'm stocking F1's with tremendous quantities of diverse forage fish including Tilapia and no artificial feeding at all. There will be no fishing on this pond until fall. I hope to get answers to my questions this fall and next spring.

In the meantime, I advise you to read what you can and make an informed decision. LMB do take BG at the feeders without question. Also without question, that food supply coupled with catch and release causes lure/fly shy LMB. Whether Florid bass are worse or not I can't conclusively say. Whether any LMB is suitable for small pond catch and relaese fishing with artificial feeders, I can't say for sure, but am now very skeptical. That statement of course flies in the face of great pond theories and will probably be dismissed as unscientific, but for me it is what I have observed, nothing more, nothing less.

Quite a few years ago, several of us used to sneak into a local power plant lake prior to it opening to the public. I have never experienced such outstanding bass fishing. We even took people who had virtually no experience and they caught tons of feisty bass on rubber worms. Finally it opened to the public with a limited number of boats per day. Within 60 days bass were very tough to come by. I have no idea whether they were natives, Florida's, or F-1's. I am convinced that fishing pressure educates bass very quickly.

It may be that the HSB is the best fish for small personally owned bodies of water. Do they also seem to get educated?

At Sea World, fish and aquatic mammels are taught to do amazing tricks by using positive reinforcement. They feed the critter when it does the trick. It works, the fish learn to do tricks.

When you catch a fish, it was just biting something swimming through the water. Next thing it knows, it is hooked in the lip, dragged through the water, (despite desperately fighting against it), pulled out of the water, handled in an atmosphere foreign to it, in which it cannot survive. I would say that is negative reinforcement. So they are smart enough to learn not to bite lures.

Then Zoom comes out with a new lure that has never been seen before and it works well, so all the fishermen buy it, the fish learn it, and it don't work so well... Yes, fish may be dumb creatures but they are trainable, through positive or negative reinforcement.

Nother subject, Floridas vs. F1s
Floridas are pure strain. F1s are crossbreeds. The F1 is a half / half mixture. So if you stock them, when they breed with each other, or with existing fish, you never have F1s again. F1's grow bigger than any other bass. (My opinion, that is why lakes like Lake Fork are not yielding the size bass they once were. The F1s are all gone, now we have all mixtures. So none grow as large because there are no F1s.) There are big ones, but not as big.

So, if you stock F1's, you will have however many you stocked, and no more. But if you stock native bass and Florida bass, or add Florida bass to your existing population of natives, they will produce F1s and continue to produce F1s until enough time passes that they die off and F2s, F3s, F4s... are produced and breed together.

Back to the original subject, all will learn to avoid hooks. Some better than others. Just like humans, there are those who are smarter than others. Depends on the amount of fishing pressure (read negative reinforcement) that they encounter. Floridas are thought to be "smarter" than natives, so learn to avoid hooks faster. But they do grow bigger. You have to decide what you want. Lots of action from smaller fish or less action, but when it happens, WOW!

Dave,

Speaking for just my HSB....they do not get educated, they get consumed by me and my friends. Its a put and take operation, the HSB never wise up, never overpopulate, never "stunt", and best of all never become lure shy.

Nick,

How about lots of action from really large fish...HSB. Takes a little patience to grow them, but man what a fish.

In the ponds with hard to catch Florida bass, has anyone tried to catch them at night?

Man , All you guy's amaze me !

You you all seem to have so much knowledge and experience . I've been feeding for about 3 years and have some great bluegill and C-Cat , but have not grown are caught Bass in great numbers or size . will stock Tilapia this week and see what happens !

Next will try adding some Florida's .

Then if no big improvements , after listening to all you guy's i will give the HSB'S a try !

I can't offer a lot but will keep on listening .

Keep on talking . Harvey

what is the issue on auto feeders. why are lmb (f1 or florida) more lure shy if you have auto feeders for the bluegill?