Originally posted by Bruce Condello:
Here's a quote from Doug Hannon, who is widely regarded to be one of the premier authorities on largemouth bass. It appears in the most recent issue of In-Fisherman and may apply to hog growers like Cecil Baird, and others who like to grow fish extra big.
This in regards to California largemouth that reach twenty pounds:
"The balloon-like proportions of these fish indicate adaptive specialization at its extreme limits. Just as coyotes have adjusted to susbist on garbage and poodles in the Los Angeles suburbs, California bass have adjusted to feed on stocker rainbows. Staying close to this food source, which has a preferred temperature around 54 degrees F., keeps these bass in the cooler fringes of their environment, which in turn triggers the fat-storing mechanisms of a pre-winter metabolism. As a result, an 18-pound California largemouth is no longer than a 10-pound Tennessee bass, just a heck of a lot fatter".
Comments?--especially the part about stimulating the "fat storing mechanism".
Questions and thoughts:
1.) Doesn't adaptation take at least a few generations of natural selection vs. just planting a fish? Are these fish reproducing?
2.) What are Doug's academic credentials? Is he a self made scientist or does he actually have any training as a scientist?
3.) I don't see anything to back up his fat metabolism theory. Any lab analysis of these fish? Anything concrete to back it up? If not it's just a theory and theories are nothing more than glorified opinions in my opinion.
4.) How do we know the extra fat isn't just due ot the high oil and fat content of the rainbow trout and nothing more? Maybe the KISS principal applies here? As a taxidermist I have to soak the skins of salmonids in a degreaser before I mount them. Not so with most other fish.
5.) Could the cooler water they are alledged to hang out in cause them to live longer vs. a quick metabolic burst and short life span?
6.) Are these bass really hanging out in the 54 F. water all of the time or do they just go down there to feed on the trout and come back up to a more favorable temp? I've seen this in my own fishing. I've seen warmwater fish gillnetted in surveys that were far below their optimum temps after smelt in very cold water.
Just a few feet may be the difference between the layer the trout hang in vs. the epilimnion. I have a lot of experience fishing for rainbows in stratified lakes, and have seen the trout layer shrink to only 2 feet in thickness.
I do not lack any respect for Doug Hannon but I guess when it comes to theories I need proof.
BTW, I could have sworn I read in an an outdoor magazine a few years ago some of these largemouths are F-1 intergrades in California. Maybe the author was wrong? Or maybe they were talking about the Texas program?
