While I’m in agreement with the concept of active/inactive bass, I personally don’t buy in to the popular belief that “inactive bass” are uncatchable. Bass bite for a variety of reasons and hunger is only one. Bed fishing is an easy example to visualize because we can often see the response. The vast majority of those bass are not active or neutral, yet we still catch them. Sometimes it may take slapping the bass across the face with the lure to trigger a response. Granted, a bedded fish is somewhat of a “captive audience” which affords us the time to work the bass, but IMO that doesn’t change the fact that we can elicit a response driven by something other than hunger. The same non hunger reaction is also likely true for some neutral/inactive bass caught when banging your lure off of a bush, ripping it out of vegetation, banging it off a dock post, etc. I also believe where they are spending their inactive periods may influence their catchability. It may be more difficult to elicit a non-hunger response from an inactive bass suspended in open water v. one with their belly in the dirt, in the center of a brush pile, etc. I don’t believe all (or even a moderate percentage) of inactive bass are catchable at any given time but IMO, the overall uncatchability of inactive bass is shorthand for I had a bad day on the water, so it had to be something other than my approach.
I’m with @Catt on this one…there are always fish willing to bite somewhere whether it be hunger, anger, curiosity, opportunity, etc. I would also suggest that a much larger percentage of our catches than we give credit to are represented by bass that were in a more neutral or non active mood. We see it everyday when we fish behind other boats or even as co-anglers in the same boat. I believe advancements is forward facing sonar are proving that many bass that might have previously been considered “uncatchable” are in fact potentially catchable under the right conditions and presentations. Just my opinions.
