Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations pellet eating LMB

I think several things are happening together or interacting to cause your bass to not readily bite fish lures. This is a wide spread problem in ponds and lakes that are fished frequently. I think some of this common problem is directly related to the size of water body and the amount of fishing pressure it receives. Pellet eating bass may enhance the lure avoidence problem.

PREFACE. Bob Lusk and I had a very short discussion late this summer about learning versus conditioning of largemouth bass and other sport fish. The two words have different meanings, but for this discussion I will use learning and conditioning interchangeably and to mean basically the same thing.

NOTE: Cecil Baird thinks possibly that the bass you initially stocked in your pond may have been at one point raised on pellets since they readily started eating pellets later in life. As Greg Grimes said above, in his experience and in my and several other fish raisers experiences, larger bass are quite difficult to train to eat pellets. Something is suspicious about mid-size bass learning to eat low protein catfish pellets.

I think the bass in your pond were exposed to two stimuli at the same time; fishing pressure and pellet feeding. Pellet feeding provided them a means to get easy meals AND fishing pressure conditioned these pellet eating bass to be cautious of non-pelleted food. From my experience in smaller water bodies and even in larger waters, fishes� avoidance of lures develops proportionally as catch and release increases. The main negative thing that I think eating pellets does to your bass is it keeps them fat and lazy; see info below.

SOME FACTORS TO CONSIDER
1. Genetics. If your bass are normal then some of your bass are genetically and individually smarter fish. Some strains or groups of bass may have higher percentages of innately �smarter� fish. I think this may be evidenced by your bass having learned to recognize that fish pellets are an acceptable and easy meal plus their current unwillingness to bite lures. Typically bass are easier to train to eat pellets the closer the bass is to 2� long. Lots of bass larger than 12� typically refuse to accept fish pellets. When a bass over 12� readily learns to accept fish pellets I think this fish is atypical, and it is different or unique for some reason. If I can apply human behavior traits to these fish then I will call them very starved or hungry, very dumb or very smart, very inquisitive, or very �open minded�. TX Parks and Wildlife researchers after a study of LMbass catchability concluded that individual bass vary in willingness to bite. They discovered that a certain percentage of bass in each population were uncatchable. Offspring from lure avoiding bass produced larger percentages of lure avoiding young.

2. Hunger. Generally a well fed or full bass usually is not as aggressive as a hungry bass. Exceptions occur. A bass that is well fed and has a full belly is often not interested in chasing more food because this is �hard work�. I think full plump fish are more content and less aggressive than a hungry bass with an empty belly. As a general rule, the more hungry the bass, the more aggressive or brave it becomes. I think many animals exhibit this behavior.

3. Satiation. Well fed, pellet, eating bass soon �realizes� that food is regularly or easily available on a daily basis. These fish become conditioned to feeding at a certain time and on a certain type of food. They get lazy. They soon recognize pellets as basically the easiest thing to eat. I think this is similar to trout fisherman having to match the hatch in order to catch feeding trout. Fish can get quickly conditioned in a form of tunnel vision or narrow minded as to what they recognize as current food items of choice.

4. Conditioning. I think most all fish can be conditioned to recognize lures as things to avoid. In each population some fish are conditioned very quickly (smart), many are average and some get conditioned very slowly (dumb). Practicing catch and release reinforces conditioning of the fish to avoid lures. They learn at different rates but most I think can learn fairly quickly. How long do you think it would take your dog or several dogs to learn to avoid a bone with a treble hook hanging on it, if you hooked him once or twice and pulled him around by the jaw? Some of those dogs would learn just from observation to avoid you and the bone having a string & a hook. The bass in my old pond could recognize a fish pole and feeding would pretty much cease. When well conditioned, I think some fish are smarter than the person trying to catch them because often the fish "wins".

I have observed several conditioned bass quickly approach and investigate a natural lure dropped into the water. As soon as the first bass recognizes it is a fake, it turns and swims away and the others almost at the same time do the same thing without apparently examining the fake food item. They realize from their conditioning that if the first fish does not want it they do not want it either or they need to be cautious. Compare this behavior to naive bass or several bass that recognize food as food, and then all of them are competing desperately to get the piece of food. When ice fishing in my pond for large yellow perch I can watch a cautious perch decide not to bite a dead minnow. Since my perch receive little fishing pressure, if I jiggle the minnow a little bit another greedy perch on the sidelines will quickly grab the easy �bait�.

5. Over fishing. The more frequently fish are exposed to lures the quicker they become hook smart and conditioned to avoid anything unnatural or that does not look like a real food item or a pellet if they are eating pellets. The frequency and duration of time spent fishing and the size of the pond all contribute to conditioning of fish to lures.

6. Water Clarity. In clearer water fish can get a better view of the lure or bait. The better a fish can see the lure the less likely it is to accept a fake.

Practicing Catch & Release - Frequently catching, releasing, and re-catching a limited number of trophy bass in a small pond becomes a problem. Fish �wise up� and quickly especially when they get "JERKED AROUND BY THE JAW" and have to "fight" for their life. Their instinct is to survive. Fish are probably able to learn better than many give them credit for.

When the fish are �hunted� or fished, then animal behavior, conditioning and AVOIDENCE of baits & each fishes� SURVIVAL SKILLS enter the picture. The more often the fish are exposed to lures & baits and are hooked, the more conditioned or experienced they become at avoiding being caught. By repetitively catching the same few confined fish you are training them to avoid biting things that are unnatural. The smaller the water body and the more often it is fished the worse this problem becomes.

One can �fairly easily� raise large bass or another type of fish in a small pond but placing intensive fishing pressure on them quickly trains them to avoid biting and recapture. So you are put in a catch 22 situation. You can produce trophy fish, but harassing them frequently with hook & line can produce fish that are more cautious and �hook smart�,and as a result are rarely caught, or even uncatchable.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED - Fishing in especially the small pond for the big fish should be done on a very limited basis IF one expects to be able to readily catch the larger, older fish whenever you do decide to fish for them. Using more refined fishing methods for the biggest fish can only work for a limited time. I have discovered that only occasional fishing (1x or 4x per yr) should be done in the small pond (less than 1 ac). The larger the pond or lake the more fishing pressure it can withstand before many of the fish become conditioned to avoid a certain lure. Mostly young fish are commonly caught in these situations. Change the lure and catch rate can improve until the fish get conditioned to the new lure, change the lure type again and fishing will improve, etc. Conditioned fish seem to learn to avoid a new lure faster than naive fish. With each new lure type presented to conditioned fish, this I think conditions the fish to get more and more cautious. I think a majority of the general fishing in a pond should be TAILORED specifically toward the smaller fish for purposes of management, thinning or monitoring of size, body condition, and numbers. Use small lures or baits and fish in shallow water during non-pellet feeding times and far away from the pellet distribution areas. The rare times that a large bass is caught, its body wt./condition needs to be assessed and recorded. A very important decision then needs to be made, return the conditioned fish or remove it from the gene pool.

Casual, recreational fishing and/or frequently (weekly or 2x monthly) fishing and or frequently trying to catch the big fish is counter productive and can relatively, quickly produce a population of large, hook smart fish. The smaller the pond the quicker this happens. When this happens, this will be evidenced over time by you more and more catching mostly smaller bass and more rarely catching the larger bass, but yet still seeing the big ones in feeding sessions. It can easily get to the situation that some of you have mentioned, �the bass will not bite on any lure�. The lure is probably something the bass has seen before or is too unnatural looking compared to what the bass typically eats that does not cause �jaw jerking� . In conclusion, the smaller the pond the less frequently it should be fished to minimize producing �hook smart large fish� or routinely replace old fish with naive or new fish.

Another option is as Double-Camp suggests, quit feeding the fish pellets, make them more hungry. In doing this you will have fewer and slower growing fish in your pond, but they may be a litle easier to catch; although maybe not especially if they are well conditioned to avoiding lures or unnatural items. I've seem large "smart bass" that are not fed pellets simply ignore all lures. She didn't get large by being dumb!