Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations What's wrong with this bass?

Fish can get malignancies just like animals. This could produce a wasted fish like this.

OOPS! I posted after reading the first page of the the thread not realizing that there were 2 more including the answer. Fascinating!

OOPS! I posted after reading the first page of the the thread not realizing that there were 2 more including the answer. Fascinating!

Bob your theory about the bass eating discarded plastics reminds me of an article I think was published in Bassmaster magazine a while back. In the article the angler said he caught a bass with a stomach full of soft plastics all the same model. He figured an entire bag fell into the water and the bass ate them all.

Theo,

What is 'field stripping" a cigarette? Personally if I smoked, which I never have, I would take the butts with me and throw them away. I can't stand to see them on the ground.

Shorty,

I think they (cigarette butts) last a very long time too.

Cecil, field stripping simply involves rolling the remaining tobbacco out of the end of the butt when you are done. The military teaches it's grunts not to leave butts in the field, they are paranoid about the enemy being able to tell how many guys stayed somewhere recently by the stuff they left behind. This comes from my little brother who spent four years in the Marine Corps.

Shorty:

Good for you.

The guy I saw field stripped filter tips. IIRC (it's been about 35 years) he removed the paper from the outside, then split the filter longitudinally into several much smaller pieces. I would think those would have a harder time getting stuck in a fish.

Here you go Theo.

http://www.wasteless.org/Eye_articles/ciggarettelitter.htm

I once dated a girl that field stripped her baked potato. Seriously! We were enjoying a nice dinner with cordial conversation as she carefully removed the skin and ate it. The balance of the potato, the part that most of us mow down first, was removed from the plate as waste. Of course I had to ask. She told me that all the vitamins and minerals are in the skin; the rest is nothing more than starch and useless.
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She worked as a car-hop at a burger and shake drive-in. I can't recall her posture on plastic worms.

I have been out and just read this. I have a question. Do those plastics equate to filling the LMB stomach? What is the possibility that the LMB had problems and that the eating discarded plastics was its attempt to survive because it could not forage successfully ? That is was it a cause or a symptom?

That's a good point, ewest.

Field stripping a cigatette: Flip the lit end until the smoldering part leaves the butt. Then peel a piece of the paper all the way down to the filter. Shake out the tobacco, roll the remeining paper into a tiny ball and discard. Put the filter in your pocket or? for later disposal. USAF 1964 to 1968; Very few filters in those days.

Did she also clip the rose off of its stem, discard the rose and keep the thorny stem? Was her name Mortica?

It's funny you post that, Cecil. I've been using my cable box DVR to record Adams Family shows. Then I've been trying to convince my 3 year old daughter that she loves to watch them.

It's slow going, but she's coming around.

Ewest...for this fish, the plastics look like the cause, rather than the effect. From the autopsy, the fish was nutritionally deficient. Her organs looked fine, there were no obvious tumors or any lesions. It took a long time for this fish to deteriorate. I suspect it took longer than a year. It had obviously metabolized its flesh. Bone structure was normal. The air bladder was larger than normal, but I think that was an effect, too, rather than a cause.
When I cut the fish's stomach open, there were four plastic baits. One's head, the bait on the right, was beyond the stomach, lodged in the intestine, blocking the fish's digestive system. While the stomach wasn't "full" like it would be had that fish swallowed a one pound bass, it was still pretty tight. And the air bladder took up quite a bit of room in the cavity, too. I think this fish had favored the soft plastics, ate them, and those baits caused the fish to deteriorate.
I don't know if the mass in a fish's stomach sends some kind of "signal" to the brain whether or not to feed, I don't know what it takes for some bass to pass plastics. I don't know why this fish didn't pass these baits. But, it was pretty clear to me that the worms were in different states of decomposition and that they were in there long enough to disrupt this fish's life and digestion enough to allow the creature to go to a Wr of less than 50, and that's fatal.
I called the landowner to find out what kinds of baits these were. I next plan to get in touch with the bait manufacturers and show them the photos, and maybe ship the baits to them, so they can see.
While I don't think one fish is a symptom of a problem, it bothers me enough to pursue more knowledge. I look back on the handful of times I have received client observations about skinny fish, thinking those single incidents were "old fish" and wish I had cut into them, too. This situation is different, because this fish was only 5 years old, max. It was obviously pushing 6 pounds at some point and to drop to 3 or less is just wrong. Had the landowner called me to tell me of a skinny fish in a 10 year old lake, it wouldn't have struck the same nerve. You can bet it will from now on.
As I thought more about it when he first called me on Saturday, I knew I wanted to look at that fish. He sent it in an ice chest with blue ice on Monday, I got it on Tuesday and autopsied it Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. As I studied that fish, the one thing I couldn't get out of my mind is the effort it took to get that creature to 21 inches in 3 or 4 years. And then, for its demise to be caused by artificial baits...that bothered me.
As my thoughts continued to develop, I also knew this fish is an anomaly for this fishery. 35 acres of water, landowner has caught two skinny fish and many, many more that are healthy.
I'm still thinking of the consequences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YQgSQBvJQs

Had an idea but someone beat me to it.

http://www.fslures.com/product-info/problem-with-plastic.php

...sure did. check out the posts by EdRogers at the bottom of the page

I am hung up on the �field stripping a cigarette� senario.

It reminds me of a motivational speaker rolling doobies that lives in a van down by the river.

I was gonna guess a gastric bypass procedure, but I suppose I would have been wrong...

I've stayed out of this one since I don't know enough about fish physiology but have seen the problem. A couple of examples come to mind.

I have several very large green sunfish that I try to avoid catching. Heck, I like them and don't want to stress them. At the end of summer, like now, my water in one pond clears significantly. Trevor(Grandson and Pardner) and I were recently BG fishing and one of the large GSF was always first to the nightcrawler. I finally quit pulling it away and caught it. It was skinny and I thought it was old and having trouble competing for food. When I disassembled it, I found a piece of plastic worm like in the bass. That told me the fish was starving and desperate. I figure that your afflicted bass got stopped up and became an opportunist for anything that couldn't easily escape.

The GSF reminded me of mankilling tigers who have been injured and have to find easier prey. Once the first piece of plastic gets stuck, another piece washing around on the bottom looks like an easy meal.

I also used to fish a local neighbors 20 acre lake. One of his bass was blind in one eye. It was pretty easy to catch since it couldn't really compete. It was about 20 inches long but couldn't have weighed over 3.5 pounds. We finally retired it to a small forage pond where the pickings were easier.

I was indoctrinated to field strip in the army. Maybe we should bring the draft back .

Interesting post.

Is there a brand of plastic baits that are bio degradable after a short period of time in the water?

I am pretty sure that Gulp baits by Berkley are biodegradible.

Ditto for FoodSource baits as mentioned in Phil in MI's post above.