Observations From My 2 Florida Largemouth And 2 Crawfish In My Aquarium

[RSM789]

I know how the hatcheries do it but

I'd be interested in what you did to pellet train them

 

The bluegill in my koi pond was a typical bluegill, he would eat whatever he could fit in his mouth & we didn't have to train him.  He is quicker than the koi, so he beats them to the pellets.

 

The bass seemed to learn the pellets were food by being around the koi.  As I mentioned before, he doesn't hammer them like he does the goldfish & earthworms, rather he slowly goes to the surface and slurps them koi-like.  He won't make the effort to eat one pellet, but if there are 4 or 5 stuck together, he'll glide over them & eat them.

[RSM789]

...On day I sprung for a few dozen shiners, and set the bag of baitfish on the bottom of the pond in a few inches of water.

My plan was to grab one or two minnows at a time, and pitch them into the pond, but the bass had other plans.

They could see the shiners through the clear plastic bag, and the 17 incher blasted the bag with such meaningful force

that the bag busted and released all the shiners at once. His mouth also contacted my hand leaving a visible cut,

so you might say it was my most intimate moment with a bass ...

 

I had a similar thing happen with a bag of goldfish.  The goldfish sometimes get stuck to the bag if you try & pour them in, so I had the great idea of setting the bag in the water & letting them "flow" out.  The bass immediately grabbed the entire bag & pulled it from my hand.  Luckily he didn't swallow it & I was able to grab it from him and dump the goldfish out quickly.  Now, I pour them into a bowl & pour the bowl into the waterfall at the front of the pond.  This scatters the goldfish & gives them a fighting chance to find some place to hide.  They never do however...

 

Another time, I tossed a nightcrawler towards him, but it landed on top of a lily pad.  He grabbed the entire lily pad in his mouth to get the worm, tore the stem from the bottom & was swimming around like he had a lily-pad-cigar hanging out of his mouth.  He is a vicious dude.

[Slade House]

could wild largemouth be trained to eat pellets?  what are the disadvantages and advantages to pellet feeding. i know that pond king makes a pellet feeding system 

[starcraft1]

Thanks for the great info. The jig part I had a good idea about (the color patterns {crawdads - crayfish}).

 The "training" of bass I always wondered about, not ever doing it myself.

 As for the transporting of bass in Calif., I had a experance with this. I caught a 8 lber. and called our local game warren and was told it was only legal if the fish was concidered a "trophy" sized bass. Trophies (in Cal.) are 10lbs. and over. Because of what I was planing to do with the bass they would look the other way.

 As far as the private water to private water? I'd call ahead to find out. Could result in a hefty fine. I know of a hatchery near Anderson, Ca. (N.Cal. near Redding) That raises Fla. strain & N. strain for sale to stock ponds and small lakes. "You still have to have the wardens inspect the water(s) prior to planting". This statement came the hatchery.

[BassObsessed]

could wild largemouth be trained to eat pellets?  what are the disadvantages and advantages to pellet feeding. i know that pond king makes a pellet feeding system 

 

They can. Some of the ones in my pond learned from watching the other bass, bluegill and turtles tearing up the pellets. There's alot of pros and cons to pellet feeding . I don't know all of them but the obvious is they get bigger much faster and it's interesting  at my pond to watch 3lb bass eating pellets right along with the bluegill. Some of the gills are over a pound in a pond less than an acre. BTW what's up Slade? I met you at Casitas in January when I was fishing with Doug.

[BadBassWV]

Maybe some one can answer? Did Ray Scott have a private pond, I think he put feeders on his lake that I assume dispersed pellets to feed his fish? Some of the older shows would show him fishing on his lake and catching some very nice fish. So I would say a bass would get accustomed to eating what ever it needs to survive in certain situations.

[Slade House]

2 new observations from this weekened after feeding them lump live nightcrawlers for the first time.  If this is old news to you, no problem, but it was an "a-ha" moment to me..  

-a night crawler as it falls downward underwater does so in the style of a weightless wacky rigged worm, each one bends in the middle on the way down and as it wiggles it resembles one too.  

-out of all the live fish (goldfish and minnows) and blood worms, nothing fattened these bass up quicker  or bigger than a few nightcrawlers.

a crayfish slicing up a nightcrawler is horrifyingly awesome to watch.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Do you have the crawfish and the bass in the same aquarium? I wonder why the bass aren't eating them?

 

Edit: just reread that they were still baby bass... carry on.

[Mattlures]

A lot of guys think bass are dumb and cant tell the difference between a jig and a crawfish. Throw a jig in your tank and cover the hook. Hop it around and see how long it takes for the bass to learn its not food. You can try it a couple days later. The more you do it the longer the bass will remember. After a few times they wont hit the jig at all. They will still always eat real crawfish if they are small enough for them to eat. My point is bass can learn the difference. They will even learn not to eat real food if they can see a hook in it. You can learn a lot by watching captive bass.

[hawgenvy]

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.

[hoosierbass07]

 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.

 

 

  Wow.  Sort of cool and freaky too.  lol. 

[Paul Roberts]

 to learn its not food.

This is key.

 

Keeping critters is well worth doing. I've had tanks up to 200gal and a 133gal stream tank.

[Fish_Whisperer]

about 4 or 5 months ago I brought home 5 baby bass (florida strain) from the lake and put them in a 75 gallon aquarium.  3 of the 5 died  (2 died from the severe beating  and starvation from the dominant one preventing them from eating) and 1 had no chance.  A Friend of mine brought home 10 and 7 died.  

, and  here are some observations from the last 4 months . These are just objective observations I've made without bringing prior knowledge into it.  conclude from it what you will.  

• They will not eat any dead prey , period.   
•  
• They love to suspend vertically in tall grass at night , (head down, tail up) .  
•  
• They love to hang out on the other side of cover from where their prey is. When they feed the like to push their prey up against the glass.  
•  
• They love a tube they can swim through much more than anything with leaves or limbs.  (A perfect bass habitat would be big black corrugated pipe with holes along the sides they can swim in and out of over a tree). 
•  
• If they didn't see it on the fall , they won't notice it on the bottom for a while, and won't come to investigate it just sitting on the bottom.  
•  
• When they eat fish , they will sometimes have 2 or 3 at a time inside their mouth.  Also when they eat fish many times they eat it and then spit it back out and seem to only consume it again if its still alive.  So if they swallow a fish and spit it back out and its dead , they tend to just leave it alone.  
•  
• The dominant fish will nip at smaller fish to keep them from feeding (even if they're not actively feeding).
• when they're feeding , they're feeding. and when they're not they won't eat anything even if it dances on their head.  alot of times they rest motionless on the bottom when they're full.  
•  
• Crawish will move , then freeze, then move , then pause. especially if they fall from the top of the water to the bottom, when they hit the bottom, they freeze. 
• When they move without pausing its usually when the bass are actively feeding or just finished actively feeding.  They also don't like the daylight and tend to only come out at night.  They find one spot inside cover and tend to stay in the same cover spot and not move around.  
• crawfish are lighter on the bottom than the top , so if you have a 2 color crawfish bait, go lighter color on the bottom.  
• They match the color of the water around them

They're behavior and physical appearance match the behavior and physical appearance of the bass at my lake as the moon phases and seasons change.  

that's all i can think of right now, i wish i had a webcam to just keep on the tank 24 hours a day because its really peaceful to watch them.  

Something like a couple of 55 gal plastic drums with the tops and bottoms gutted and bolted together with large holes throughout the sides?  

[PersicoTrotaVA]

Keep it coming guys, I'm gonna dig the perfect pond with all this info!

[Paul Roberts]

Slade House, do your bass sleep? What do they do at night? And, do they use the pipe to rest in?

[BuckMaxx]

Very cool. I was watching a show on shark week about great white sharks. A lot of similarities between the two. Great info!!

[Fish_Whisperer]

Any updates?

[RSM789]

Nothing major with my bass, although he (she?) did follow a dragonfly around for about 30 seconds the other day.  The dragonfly was about a foot off the surface, zipping around & must have caught the fish's attention.  He followed along under the dragonfly, apparently waiting for it to get lower to take a shot at it.  Lucky dragonfly went up to the waterfall section of the pond to dip into the water, so he lived to see another day.

 

He is getting bigger, almost the size of the largest koi.  I'll see if I can get a picture of him, I don't think it will turn out.  He really blends in with the natural colors of the bottom, he doesn't stand out like the koi do.

[Comfortably Numb]

To the OP, do you know about cycling an aquarium? The high levels of amonia and nitrites prob did them in.

 

I have had Bass, Crappie and Bluegill in up to 150 gallon aquariums. Neat to watch but you will go broke feeding them shiners, goldfish, worms etc.

 

Mine were like puppies and always at the front of the tank when I walked by and begging to be fed. They are eating machines and would eat till there was no more.

 

I could fish in the tank too. Cast any bait and they would be on it as soon as it hit the water.

 

Here's an old vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPZmgMRyDnk&list=UUF12IUaBYvTWQx2OUVd5woA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCb0aWa1XUU&list=UUF12IUaBYvTWQx2OUVd5woA