hawgenvy

Floridanus, for sure. Yes, it is not so obvious in that photo but it does look just like that "in person," a pale almost irridescent turqoise blue under the lower jaw and on the operculum. Will eventually have a photo of my own that shows it well. And aavery2, do you have the reference for your quote in post #41?

Beats me. One would have to figure out how to test it convincingly with live bass, design such a test, have facilities, time, energy, and funding to carry it out, and then actually carry out such testing, reach a conclusion that has statistical significance, reproducibiity, and, ultimately, practical usefullness, and then publish the results. That's why bass science is so scarce.

Agree, but that still could be better.

Thanks, aavery2. I think bass science will be more and more important to anglers, conservationists, fisheries management, and lure and tackle manufacterers. How about producing a braided line color (blue?) that is more invisible to fish, for example?

Paul, I've been meaning to get a good photo of the bluish chin, and may try to snap one with my phone this afternoon that I can post, if I catch an exemplary specimen. However, if you look at the rotating photographs on the current home page of Bass Resource, the photo for the article "My Fish Won't Grow" shows some of the pale turquoise that I'm referring to, under the lower jaw of that fat bass the guy is holding. See it? It is subtle in that photo, but in some other fish it is more pronounced.

According to a passage in the wonderful book (which I highly recommend to scientific-minded folks among you bassers), KNOWING BASS, The Scientific Approach to Catching More Fish, by Keith A. Jones, PhD (Lyons Press, 2002): Dr. Don McCoy of Univ. Kentucky "found that largemouths ... quickly learned to distinguish between colors falling in the red and green sectors of the spectrum but struggled to differenciate shades of blue. This suggests that bass color vision is relatively good from red to green but weak in the blues and violets. According to McCoy's findings, bass have their highest color discrimination capabilities around two areas: yellow-green (wavelengths measuring 540 nm) and yellow-orange (610nm). In these areas they could distinguish between colors differing as little as 5 nm". Now, this does not tell us what baits to use when, but there are other passages in the book that address lure selection based on science. Clearly water depth, water color, water clarity, and time of day all play a role in color vision. Contrast between bait and surroundings are important, and of course odor, low frequency sounds, and lure vibration and water movement detectable by the lateral line system are all factors that combine to determine if and how a bass bites a bait. And then there are factors that are internal in the bass, like how hungry the guy is. I am glad there are good scientists out there learning more about bass biology and behavior. I have noticed lately a seeming increase in the subtle turqoise blue coloration on the underside of the jaws of LMB that I have cought over the past two weeks, wondering if it has something to do with mating behavior. I guess it is odd since they supposedly don't see blue well. (Where I live in S Florida, spawning season starts soon.) If anyone has noticed this blue color and understands what it might be, please let me know! Happy catching!

Has anyone noticed that in the past couple of weeks the LMB -- possibly just the males -- have an increase in the subtle turqoise blue coloration under the lower jaw? Is this present all year and I'm just noticing it more? Is this a change that has something to do with spawning/mating behavior?

Senkos for the past two weeks. I mostly use the Strike King Zeros cause they last. Orange or the Dirt color.

Fished two evenings after work in the past few days and caught a bunch of 1 pounders in a golf course pond from 5-6 pm using a small Zero senko on an 1/8 oz shaky head that I kept moving to keep it off the gunk on the very bottom. Don't ignore areas away from the shoreline as nice numbers of aggressive small bass in schools can be roaming anywhere this month. Caught about twenty this evening. Fun on light tackle. Bigger fish expected next month that will suck in your chunkier baits. I'm not really that experienced, but this is what I've been finding. Also, some ponds are very good and others are not, so keep searching. Good luck!

My friend Steve and I bank fished a private golf course in Boca Raton last evening: no bites at all on assorted hard and soft plastics from 5-6 pm. We did see bass that we could not catch exploding bait they'd herded to the shoreline. I guess the bass just liked the real thing better. At 6 pm the shore blitz stopped. And now we noticed some subtle ripples 60 feet out. Then, wudya believe it?, we caught ourselves 26 two-pounders in just half an hour, right from the middle of the pond, using Srike King Zero senkos on shakey heads, wiggling in our retrieve fast enough to keep the baits at around a depth of two or three feet through the school of bass; and with this we pulled the little piglets in sometimes two at a time. Okay, I admit they weren't big bass, but they made us smile. I clearly recall many smallish bass schooling far from shore in Novembers past. Usually got them before with crankbaits. This time the salty orange Senko was Today's Special on the Halloween menu.

Agree with Google Earth. Try residential ponds, or golf course ponds if you can get access. The bass fishing will generally get better after the first week or two of November and can be excellent through June in such areas, based on my experience fishing ponds around Jupiter and Palm Beach Gardens. Access is the key, given the number of gated communities. Look for nongated communities with two or three story apartments. People will usually be friendlier to unknown faces there. But you could still be asked to leave. Anyway, If you know anyone (or get to know anyone) who lives on one of the numerous golf courses in the area, you are going to have a great time wrestling some huge bass this winter and spring from the bank. Look for areas with shoreline vegetation and pads. Also, catching snook and small tarpon with lures in the St Lucie on a rising tide can be a blast. Good luck!

Down here in Palm Beach County, where I do mostly bank bassing on Golf Courses, residential lakes, and canals, for the past few weeks the evening bite is coming earlier, now between 4 and 6pm, and there are more bites -- yet still mostly dinks with a couple of two to three pounders in the mix, just enough to keep the addiction going. As this is my first year of dedicated bassing in 20 years, I am anxious to know when the bigger fish will start to move into the areas accessable to my bank casts. The past May and June were spectacular for aggressive and big fish. I hope it approaches that at some point in November. Or December? Any thoughts?

In South Florida most of our banks are highly vegetated, even the approachable areas have submerged veggies like milfoil and hydrilla by the shore and muddy algal bottoms, so gotta be weedless. I like: 1) Zero elastic senko style worms, green or orange, on small Alien Shaky head jig -- shake and hop but dont drag the bottom unless you're trying to harvest algae 2) Weightless Zoom flukes fished slow on flouro, esp when bite is tough, but say bye-bye to hooked lunkers in heavy lettuce unless you stay towards fairly open areas. 3) Gambler EZ Swimmers green or blue on #50 braid burned across pads and through weeds then dropped into holes. 4) Zoom Horny Toads texposed burned across and around green with #50-65 braid. 5) pegged brush hogs, otters, plastic craws dropped through bad salad with long heavy rod and #65 braid

Had a pet LM bass in my aquarium in S Fl about 20 years ago; he was maybe 8 inches long. Used to test which baits he liked best by dangling them outside the glass, and he was always into anything red. Once he surprised the heck out of me when he jumped to grab a plastic worm out of my hand that was still 4 or 5 inches above the surface. He swallowed it in the blink of an eye. He pooped it out a couple of days later and was fine. His favorite was live goldfish, of course. He could eat 10 of them. When he went for fish #11, #10 would swim out of his mouth. He repeated this over and over again until finally he had them all swallowed. I mostly fed him dried tubifex worms. I taught him to go through a plastic hoop to get fed. Eventually I started raising the hoop out of the water and he would jump through it like a miniature porpoise. I got to the point where the hoop was 1/2 way out of the water, but soon after that point he died, perhaps of humiliation. Never had a pet bass since. Poor Fred.

Golf course bank fishing is a favorite of mine, and I wish you success. My most poductive tactic is to fish parallell to the inevitable wooden retaining walls. There are always aggressive bass along those walls. I usually cast a fluke, toad, or swimbait or a jig'n'pig past the wall and retrieve it about 6 inches from the wall. Pause for a sec whe you hit a piling. When you move it again: kaboom! Also the bigger and deeper the wall, the fatter are the fish. Is it a municipal course? If you can, tell the name?

Drove my car out yesterday after work to take a look at the boat ramp and canoe rental area in the Loxahatchee Refuge west of Boynton Beach (Lee Rd off 441). It was raining (of course), the water level was swollen all the way up to the planted grass by the ramps, and there was a fairly good southward current in the rim canal. The only other human there was a serious fellow at the other end of the ramp area. He had one of those enormous white camera lenses and was taking multiple portraits of a blue heron standing in tall grass at the water's edge. He must have a way with birds, I figured, because he was crouching merely 15 feet from the heron and it stayed there posing for him in various flattering positions for at least 20 min. With that lens he could have counted that bird's nose hairs, were she to happen to have any. Since I was far enough from him, I made a couple of casts from the bank with an EZ Swimmer, aiming for some weed edges and then made another few tosses along the edges of their big square floating dock just for the heck of it, but got bit only by mosquitos. There was a sign there up on the dock that had a feisty fish painted with a red slash through it meaning "no fishing," but I tossed my bait to the dock anyway since it was just me and the bird watcher out there. Later I joked to myself that maybe the sign meant they don't allow any fish in these parts. I backed my car out slowly rather than go around the regular way, so as not to spook the guy's heron and ruin his day. Maybe I'll go back in a month, when things are dryer and cooler, and I can try my luck luring bass from some random vegetation in the everglades from one of their rental canoes ($32) or kayaks ($25).

Though not an engineer, and though probably very naive on the matter, it occurs to me that an objective measure of sensitivity might favor rigidity, whereas castability requires flexibility. Selection for sensitivity may be selection against castability. Nevertheless, I admire you brave scientists for attempting the feat, and wish you success in coping with the many variables.

Yesterday evening, hot and humid, my son and I bank fished the stained water in a long, lonely south Florida canal. The bass were coralling tiny baitfish, balling them into tight circling whirlpools, but only occasionally busting the surface or causing them to leap. Were the bass eating them or just toying with them? We wiggled Senkos (black, green, white) through the mass, made weightless flukes walk across their heads and then fluttered them slowly into the fray -- to no avail. We burned soft toads and swimbaits across the whirlpools, or slowly hopped them through the chased bait schools.The bass were way too busy, or their bellies were too full, to pay any attention our fake, pathetic offerings. It was as if we and our lures were invisible.

Hey Bucktail, you'll be less than an hour drive from Lake Okeechobee! Lake O's a world class bass lake, with all kinds of boat rentals and guide service available. Also, November is usually a darn good month for LMB there. Check out the Roland Martin Marina, Scott Martin Guide service, and Slim's Fish Camp in Belle Glade. If an hour's too far or you're just gonna go banking, go to Lake Osborn or stroll the myriad canals in the area. And like Snookalot said (above), don't forget our fiesty salty critters. Those jacks in the inlet will knock your socks off. I've caught 'em over 40 lbs. there and they fight like tuna. Snook, too, are there. Riviera Beach is right by the inlet. slimsfishcamp.com/lake-okeechobee-fishing/ www.rolandmartinmarina.com/ http://scottmartinchallenge.com/guide-services/

Fellow anglers, What's better, the Double or the Single? Anyone out there think that for fluorocarbon line (at bass fishing line diameters) it is worthwhile to use the Double SDJ vs. the Single? Is there evidence the Double is stronger? Does the complexity of the Double preclude its use? (In low light, or when I'm rushing a bit, the Single is rather easy but the Double gets my fingers in a tighter knot than the line!)

A couple of times over the past month I've tossed some plastics at midnight. I got bit -- by bugs. Maybe one night I'll try 2-3 AM? I suppose I'll have better luck staying in bed and dreaming about catching bass.

Catching some lately from the banks in S Florida on Zoom Super Flukes, usuallly on watermelon red. Some are three to four pounders. Most are much smaller. The fluke is clearly a more subtle bait than what I usually use (salt-laden toads, big swim baits, grotesque creature baits.) So the 5" fluke is more appealling, it seems, to finicky summer bass. Eventually, I'm successful, and when I grab a bass to twist out the hook, his body is suprisingly hot, and the angry fish smells of pungent steamed algae. I'm dying to look in his stomach to see what he's stuffed himself with but I can't figure out how to do that without killing him. I see here and there in the evenings schooling bass busting frantic schools of what I thought might be shad -- but the few times the bait got chased to shore where I could see them, they looked like little dark green minnows -- a lot like my green fluke bait. Maybe they are green just from the top and are shiny silver gems from the side. Who knows. Last evening at seven I caught a few bass by tossing my fluke into the boiling mix, and though full of energy, the bass, unfortunately, were little quarter pounders. I was able to throw five or ten times a white and yellow spinner bait with golden willows beyond and then through the school. With that I finally caught one little bass, no longer than my nose. I miss those big easy pigs from the post spawn days of early June. Where are those glorious pigs now? Gone, or lazy? Or are their stomachs already full, or are they off in some hidden, secret deep spot? Someone please tell me!

How about the Roland Martin Resort and Marina on Lake Okeechobee? Check out the website! I have not been to that particular joint, but in February South Florida is about the only place on the east coast that will probably have sunny 75 degree weather. And the bass fishing on the Big O is awesome! The resort has hotel rooms, a restaurant, bass fishing guides, and they supposedly rent tricked out bass boats for $250/day. Boat and guide is around $400. They have some cheaper boats, too. There is nothing else to do in Clewiston FL besides fishing, eating very basic food, drinking beer, and, maybe, wild pig shooting. But you are only an hour or so from great inshore and offshore salty fishing on both the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts. And you're two hours from Mickey Mouse heading north, or Miami Beach heading south, and three to six hours from the Florida keys. You can supplement your bass fishing with redfish, speckled trout, tarpon, snook, pompano, permit, bonefish, and all kinds of offshore stuff (think dolfin, sailfish, wahoo, snapper, kingfish, sharks, etc, etc). And great beaches both coasts. http://www.rolandmartinmarina.com/

You are correct that it is stomach and intestines, bloated from bacterial gas. Must have been deliberately butchered to be seperate from the rest of the animal. The brown thing under the surface could be a liver, but I'm not sure. The white netting looking stuff may be omentum after fatty component decomposed? Clearly from a large animal. Could be from a pig.

1) Texas rig (or Texspose) 4/0 EWG on 40-50 lb braid 2) Pull toad so it bubbles over open water, around cover, over lily pads, across weeds, or along shoreline 3) After top water explosion, stay calm, count to 3 and reel down just till you feel pull of bass, then do a hefty hook set 4) Reel in angry bass 5) Big smile 6) Release fish