jpurdue

Keith Jones wrote Knowing Bass in 2002 with information he acquired from the Berkley Fishing laboratory while working for the company. Since then the company was sold to Pure Fishing in 2007. Sometime after 2007 the book went out of print. I have reached out to Dr. Jones directly to get the full story, but I have never been able to get him to respond. I can only assume that Pure Fishing deemed the contents of the book to be the intellectual property of Berkley and forced Jones to remove it from print. Since 2007 Berkley has been sold two additional times with no re-release of the book. I doubt it'll ever go back into print. Luckily I got a copy back in 2006 for 16 bucks at Barns and Noble! My how times have changed! -Josh Alwine

Hey guys. Josh Alwine, author of High Percentage Fishing here. Sorry I'm always late to these parties. Anyway, great discussion. 1. The day of the week absolutely matters on pressured bodies of water. My data showed that your expected catches per hour is three times higher on a Wednesday than a Saturday. I'm not sure if this is because of extra boat noise on the weekended, decreased ability to fish effectively (best spots are taken and repeated hammered), or if it's just the sheer number of lures flying by the fish. My data of course doesn't determine the causal factor, but it did consistently show that "people pressure" mattered far more than any sort of weather condition. 2. Txchaser, I love your summary in points 1-4. I couldn't have said it better myself. Hopefully we start seeing more and more data emerge in the coming years. Right now the real problem is so little reliable data exists. 3. In regards to wind. Great question here. I wrote High Percentage fishing almost 4 years ago now. I self published the book with zero professional help of any sort. As such there are a few typos in it. My apologies here. When I published the book, I told my wife I hoped it would sell 20 copies! I think it's been the best selling pure bass fishing book in America since I published it! Anyway, back to the question. I had to go back in my old excel files to figure this one out. Two reasons the data doesn't add up to 100%. 1. In the weather data I gathered wind speed is sometimes recorded as variable. I ignored this data. I also capped the wind speed at 25mph I think. So that last column should really read 15-25mph. I figured with wind speeds above 25mph fishing becomes unsafe or impractical so I ignored that data as well. The key point is catch rates go up with wind speed. It helps increase oxygen levels, reduces light levels (gives predictors the upper hand), help conceal anglers etc... Hopefully that helps! Glad to hear you guys enjoyed the books. It's the best compliment an author can get!

Josh Alwine here. Author of High Percentage Fishing. The ShareLunker data was just a small drop in the bucket of the overall data I looked at. I wrote that book over three years ago, so I'd have to pull up the old files to tell you the exact number, but as I recall the ShareLunker data was something like 600 data points compared to the whole sample set that was over 40,000 catches. The rest of the data came from clubs, and other sources like the Toledo Bend lunker club. Data points were from all over the country as well. I won't bore you with the a bunch of statistical jargon, but with a sample set that size you can reliably draw some really powerful conclusions. All my data was adjusted for angling effort. By far and away, the most fish are caught on the weekends. However that's when the vast majority of people are fishing, so angling effort is also at it's highest. In terms of fish caught per angling hour though, weekends are actually the worst time to fish. If you are looking at the number of fish caught per angling hour, Wednesdays are the best day. The basic thesis of my book is that when you normalize all the data and then take all the variables into account, fishing pressure turns out to be the single biggest factor when it comes to the catch rates (fish caught per angling hour). In all but the most extreme cases it matters more than barometric pressure, lunar phase, cloud cover, etc... Anyway, that's the short version, I wrote a whole book on it if you are looking for more detail! Tight lines gents.

Minnow. Glad to hear you enjoyed the book and found it helpful. As an author there is no better compliment. I don't comment on here often, but I do drop in from time to time to check in on you guys. In regards to bass biology. When I published High Percentage Fishing, "Knowing Bass" by Keith Jones was still readily available in the open market. His book so thoroughly covered the topic I thought I would be doing readers a disservice to cover the topic at any great length. Of course I had no idea that book would become so scarce. I'd love to track down Dr. Jones and find out the story, but with a last name like Jones, I've been unsuccessful. If anyone knows his contact information I'd love to have it. In regards to Smallmouth, trust me I'd love to write this book. I've thought about it at great length. The trouble is that I have been unable to find any large reliable databases of catch information specific to Smallmouth. They are just too different an animal to draw any conclusions from my Largemouth data sets. Without the data anything I'd write would be personal conjecture, which is no different than anything else out there already written on the subject. The scientist/engineer/statistician in me wouldn't be happy with that book. Love your quote by the way. Chance does favor the prepared mind. I'm a firm believer we should do everything possible off the water to stack the odds in our favor on the water. Tight Lines. -Josh

Private water fishing is just one aspect of the sport. Certainly not for everyone, but very interesting in its own right. Still plenty of giant fish caught on public water and still plenty of great anglers pursuing them on both public and private. Lunker Lore looks at both, without trying to pass too much judgment on how a man chooses to chase his favorite sport fish. The world has changed and will continue to change. I'm just excited to see what's possible with giant largemouth regardless of where it's caught!

I'm the author of Lunker Lore. The big fish out of Jalisco is over 7lbs. Those fish are only 3 years old though. In then next 1-2 years it'll be producing DD's. Camelot bell has gone through some major changes. The owner created a new lake. In 2016 he moved 75 DD bass from Bell to the new lake which he calls the "wolf pack lake." It's roughly 60 acres. The biggest fish moved was just north of 16lbs. That fish could push 18+ now. He also stocked a few giant males as well and the offspring from the first spawn 1.5 years ago are topping 4lbs now. Lots of exciting stuff in the world of private water going on. Obviously catching private water fish is much easier and I think there should be separate records, but it'll still be neat to see what some of these guys are ultimately able to produce on the top end range. It's been a while since we've seen a rash of some truly giant fish. Public or private, the world is due!

The whole point of using statistics is that it eliminates personal bias. Most fisherman have that in spades. Believe me, I would have loved to have been able to statistically proved a lunar connection or that certain barometric pressures increased bite rates. I looked at tens of thousands of data points from multiple species from all over the country. It's just not there. They are myths. Beat me up on my writing, but don't beat me up on making the data fit my agenda! The only one I have is catching more and bigger fish! In all seriousness, you've got an impressive list. Reading those will make put you in the top couple percentile for fishing knowledge. Hats off! Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to me to explain the data or methods in greater detail. I don't frequent this site all that often, but there are lots of ways to reach me. Tight Lines! -Josh Alwine