Bass Travels

[tatertester]

I have always wondered just how far largemouth bass travel during the course of a typical year.....I know smallmouth are more nomadic, and I've read that largemouth tend to be homebodies, only moving several hundred feet during a typical season.......Do northern strain bass and southern strain have different movement patterns?.....Do bass in impoundments act differently than in natural lakes?....It would seem that the smaller area that a bass travels, the easier to locate and catch them.  

[Choporoz]

Someone more adept with the 'search' function than I will have to chime in with some links.....But I've seen a couple links posted here on BR to studies about bass released from tournaments; one in OK and one in Northeast somewhere, I think.  I found them fascinating -- what I took away was that some bass are homebodies and some are Magellan.  I think one fish was caught 10 miles from release site.  Most stick around.  What I found most interesting, however, was a conclusion that while bass might haul bass up and down the shore, the vast majority don't ever seem cross the main channel.  Afraid of heights, maybe?   Or they just stay on their own side of the tracks, I guess.

[WRB]

You can look up largemouth bass tracking studies, several available.

It's a myth thinking LMB stay within a small area, they move around, how far depends on the ecosystem size, the nature of the individual bass, the prey they prefer, they are not all the same.

LMB rely on their swim bladder to maintain neutral buoyancy at a particular depth range, so they tend to travel horizontally within a comfortable depth range.

During the summer there is usually several groups of bass at different depths, all moving around from location to location, staying close to their food sources. If the food is good in one specific area, the bass tend to stay in that area until the food is gone or moves.

Where I fish the LMB go into feeding areas and move back out over deep water and suspend there to rest. Our reservoirs tend to fluctuate several feet in depth (10'-50' or more) seasonally, the bass must move and they do.

In small quarry lakes I use to watch bass cruise around the perimeter in small groups of 2 to 3 bass all about the same size in each group. These bass would stop at a good ambush area and stay there for awhile, then move on to another area, other bass would come along and repeat this behavior, they shared feeding areas depending on size of the bass. This was a daily routine. I believe bass set up similar routines on big reservoirs, traveling within a "home range" that could be a few hundred yards or a few miles, depending on the prey source, seasonal period, density of the population and fishing pressure.

Tom

[flyingmonkie]

Someone more adept with the 'search' function than I will have to chime in with some links.....But I've seen a couple links posted here on BR to studies about bass released from tournaments; one in OK and one in Northeast somewhere, I think.  I found them fascinating -- what I took away was that some bass are homebodies and some are Magellan.  I think one fish was caught 10 miles from release site.  Most stick around.  What I found most interesting, however, was a conclusion that while bass might haul bass up and down the shore, the vast majority don't ever seem cross the main channel.  Afraid of heights, maybe?   Or they just stay on their own side of the tracks, I guess.

 

Yay!!! Somebody actually reads my posts!   I too found this study fascinating. Doesn't answer all of your questions, but shines some light on them. http://www.seafwa.org/resource/dynamic/private/PDF/GILLILAND-144-149.pdf

 

I would definately subscribe to Tom's school of thought above...