Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations How fast do fish get "wise"????

:D

Okay, I check on this post this morning, then go drive tractor for 3-4 hours hauling round bales. Not the most intellectually challenging way to spend time, so my mind wanders. I was thinking of trying to put together info on fishing rates and catchability into a spreadsheet to see if it could be mathematically modelled, was willing to get as involved as far as 4th order Runga-Kutta analysis, when 3 things stopped me:

1) Those darn bumpy fields hurt my keester,

2) the implied threat to JHAP's fragile sanity (or whatever he exhibits occasionally that passes for sanity), and

3) the immensely huge amount of data that would be needed even to obtain a partial solution for one species of fish, in one size pond, in one climate.

Just considering the phenomena of uncaught fish being deterred from biting by another fish being caught, look at all the different ways these fish could be alerted to problems in piscatorial paradise:

-sight (seeing the other fish caught)
-sound (hearing same)
-smell (the presence of fear-o-mones in the water released by the struggling fish)
-taste (blood in the water)
-touch, i.e. lateral line sense (feeling the arrhythmic vibrations from the distressed fish)
-social affects (Uncle Charlie doesn't show up for the snooker game after stating he was going to bite a purple worm)

and I'm sure I've missed some.

To even have a chance of truly grasping the facts of this problem, we'd need to have a series of identical ponds at the same location, with identical fish populations, and then vary items such as food supply, fishing times and rates, fishing methods, etc. Maybe study 6 to 12 such ponds for a year or two and you might have a solution valid only for that species in that size pond and that particular climate - next to worthless for trying to imply anything about different species, different size waters, different fishing methods or duty cycles, given the variations we have in those factors.

Like Cody says, it all depends.

P.S. If fishing the feeder is wrong, I don't wanna be right! I hand feed over about 20% of the area of my pond, and for the last 2 months that's the only place I've fished, for an average of 2 hours per week. BG Catch rates (that's what I've been targetting) have stayed high, and even the average size BG caught has stayed about the same (Although size variation is down, as larger fish have gotten harder to catch since the initial spawn completed, and smaller fish seem to be getting eaten. So I'm catching mostly 6" - 7" BG now, instead of 4" - 8" BG 2 months ago. That's OK, I can handle letting the big BG have the rest of the Summer off. And who needs 4 inchers?) So 2 hours per week must be under the magic threshold for BG, for my pond.

But don't worry, JHAP, that's as intricate as I'm gonna get.