There is a very interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal about a species of deer in Europe that lives in the area where the Berlin Wall used to sit. The deer, generations later, still avoid the area where the wall used to be.

Here's the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125729481234926717.html

So the question in my mind is, do fish act like this? Part of me sure thinks that they do. Part of me thinks that it doesn't even take a generation. There are certain spots on certain lakes that have gone from being phenomenal, to being wiped out never to see a bass again. These bass weren't killed, but they were caught.

Sure something to think about!

It would seem there are two types of learning going on.

First, if you slowly start culling/killing the bass that bite lures, the population will tend towards bass that won't bite lures. However, since hardly anyone kills bass in California I don't think this factor plays a large part in increased fishing difficulty. Bass are caught, released, spawn, and their offspring are no smarter than the parents.

However, I do believe bass will learn not to bite lures very quickly during their lifetime, and other bass will observe this behavior and stop biting as well.

For example you cast a huddleston across a point with 10 bass sitting on it. One of the bass eats your lure and is caught. The other bass see the commotion but at this point haven't learned anything.

Come back a week later and make the same cast with a huddleston at the same point. The fish which was caught a week earlier will have a strong negative reaction. The other 9 fish see this reaction to the huddleston and make the connection between huddleston and danger.

In this manner over the course of only a year or two you can train all the fish in the lake not to bite huddlestons even though only a small percentage were actually hooked.

I suspect this is what has happened on many lakes. Under certain conditions the fish will overcome their fear and bite anyway, but as long as their are a few fish around to scare the rest, the wide open suicide bites aren't going to happen anymore.

How to fix this problem? Everyone should stop throwing a huddleston for 5 years :) The new bass born every year are a fresh round of unlearned fish, and will stay that way until a huddleston goes past and they see the older fish running for cover.

So... from this point forward... no more huddlestons!

Then again there are guys like Butch Brown that fish the same body of water for years. He has taken almost 900 bass over 10 pounds out of that lake. He told someone he has caught the same bass 35 times now...all on the Hudd. I doubt there are 900 different bass over 10 pounds in the lower lake. I bet you and Rob have caught the same fish a few times now.


Sure bass get smart and do learn. I still think they will bite the same lures again as long as it tricks them or they are hungry, territorial, etc; This is when you start rigging things different or change the appearance slightly. In my case go to lighter line and all of the above.

How many bass continue to eat crankbaits and plastic worms? How many have they seen in their years? What about jigs? These baits either fool them or draw reaction strikes.

I will agree that some bass do learn and will not bite certain lures again. I see it a lot at Lake Mission Viejo. Some patterns that used to be great now are much tougher to get bit on.

Time to start throwing the Osprey again :P

Wow thats very interesting. I always wonder that as bass fishing becomes more and more popular if this will shape the spawning habits of largemouth. It only makes sense that in pressured lakes from an evolutionary standpoint for the bigger smarter fish to spawn deeper and deeper... Away from sightfisherman. Maybe in a few hundred years large mouth won't even come up shallow to spawn, because the ones that did end up getting there genetics wiped out...

Big bass that get fished for on beds year after year start to spawn extremely deep. Last year I fished at Clear Lake during the spawn. It just happened that the conditions were flat calm and the water clarity was up to 12 feet in places. There were beds 100 yards off shore in 8 to 10 feet of water. Not just a few beds, but hundreds of beds.

If the condition was anything but flat calm and the water was anything but 12 foot vis, you would never see those beds. The bass that spawn out there were simply not going to be messed with on anything but the calmest, clearest day. At Clear Lake that's probably 5 days during the spawning season.

The beds at Dixon lake are also impressively deep - and I agree it has everything to do with fishing pressure. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say there are many bass at Dixon that spawn over 15' deep. I've only been there a few times but that lake is darn clear and those bass spawn darn deep.

I think bass fishing 30 years from now will be interesting, and different than it is today. Different in a tougher way for sure. The only thing that will change that inevitability is less fishing pressure. Whether that happens or not, only time will tell.

interesting read...reminds me of salmon and their crazy intuition.

I know nothing about deer (or female intuition for that matter) but... could other female deer have excreted some kind of stress pheremone over a period of time along the deer trails and electric fence? that in turn has triggered other female deer to do the same over the years?

I don't think most give enough credit to bass and they're ability to learn and evolve. As most know Florida strain by nature are not supposed to school up however you take away their cover,add some water clarity,and drop the water 20'- 200' and you force them into evolving.

And then there's the bass spawn...females know instinctively to return to the same area they did the year before but will pull off with the dropping water level,boat pressure,climate etc... I witnessed the same thing at Clear lake as Rob and at Pardee this year. Pardee had way fewer beds up shallow which could be attributed to either the pressure or extended spawn.

All I know is I tell myself the fish are harder to catch because most of you have already caught them!