Today Made No Sense

[Th1317]

Shad everwhere today, right on a flat full of stumps, adjacent to a channel bend. Textbook, right?

Literally could not get a bass to bite at all, nor did i see any indication that they were in the area feeding. I decided i'd throw a tube jig and squarebill up shallow and managed two 3's.

 

I noticed among this massive school of shad there were a lot of really large spotted and longnose gar, it seemed like there was a dense conceration of them for sure. I'm wondering if the larger gar might discourage the bass from feeding in the same area. Personally i would think the two species would feed collectively considering the proliferation of forage today. I dont know. Ive heard of instance where stripper can domintate a structure and will drive of the largemouth.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Todays conditions:

 

Air temp: upper 80's

Water Temp: 82

 

-Overcast

-moderate wind

-Throwing red eye shad, 5xd, kvd 1.5, war eagle spinnerbaits, fat alberts, flutterspoon, smk colored tube, gunfish/spook, senkos

[BassinLou]

With that much bait around, the bass probably have there bellies satisfied for the moment.

[basshole8190]

Happens to me on a river i fish a lot pull up to a spot catch a few fish where bait are present then gar show up and the bite dies off i think the bass know the larger gar will eat them so they retreat

[AK-Jax86]

I've lost a few lures to gars cutting them clean off. I didn't even know they had them at this one spot I was fishing with my boy until I saw it cut my line clean about 10 feet from shore

[RAMBLER]

Sounds like you were fishing in some of the same places I fish, in Florida.  Never caught a bass where there is a concentration of spotted gar.  When I see a bunch of them, I just keep on going and look for another place to fish.  I've caught bass where there are long nose gar, mainly because there are long nose gar every where. 

I was out on a river, today and caught 7 bass, none big but they all bent my rod.  There were long nose gar sucking air off the top the entire time.

[Khong]

If you spot Pike, Gar, or Striper then you should move on.   Especially if LMB are not the Dominant species there.  

[Bluebasser86]

With that much bait around, the bass probably have there bellies satisfied for the moment.

There's such a thing as too much bait in my experience. Sometimes there is just so much food around that they don't have to move for their food and about the only way to get them is to drop a slow moving bait right on their heads. Catchable sized bass aren't afraid of gar (unless they're alligator gar) in my experience either. I can think of two instances off the top of my head, one was a 6.5lb largemouth, the other a 5lb 9oz largemouth, where a cast was made at a school of surfacing gar just trying to get one to bite for the fight when a large bass bit instead. 

[Th1317]

I would say that LMB are the dominant species in this waterbody. In fact, it holds man trophy bass. I guess for the majority of summer the bass were really slamming these schools of shad all day long, so today just struck me as odd.

 

We've gotten rain recently, which has kinda tinted the water in an otherwise gin clear lake. The bass might have just been more actively feeding up shallow due to this.