Is bed fishing ethical?

[nascar2428]

Here in Michigan, the tournament guys lobbied hard for year round bass fishing in Michigan. The DNR relented with one caveat. Catch and Release from Jan.1st to the third weekend in May for most of the state. This in effect helps to protect the spawn and let us fish all year round. The tournament guys either had to change their format or remain complaining because they still have to wait until June to catch and keep bass.

[the reel ess]

1 hour ago, junyer357 said:

Bream gotta eat too, and get bigger so other fish can eat them. 

 

In a smaller fishery like a pond, you would want the bream to eat some eggs. You want the bream to be as nourished as they can be so they in turn spawn better and more often so they make more fry for the bass to eat. Then you should have fewer, but larger bass. How many times have you fished a place and wished the average fish was bigger? That would be the result if more people took bass off the beds or just took more bass in general. Of course, there are many factors that determine size. But the number of bass competing for the same forage is certainly high on the list.

[roadwarrior]

Hmm...

 

I fished Lake Fork during the spawn a few years ago. There were more than 1000 fisherman on the lake

for the few days I was there and probably 10,000+ over an eight week period.  Hundreds if not thousands

were specifically there to target spawning bass. Glenn and Keri both caught their Personal Best in an area

that had been fished by thousands around the time of our trip.

 

I don't target spawning bass myself, but I don't believe there is ANY impact on the bass population.  The

same goes for those that legally keep fish. Those fish are my babies, my pets. I don't eat them, but I don't

hold anything against those that do.

 

[greentrout]

I deliberately don't bed fish ... but I won't wag my finger at those who choose to bed fish ... have seen boats with platforms scouring the lake for visible beds with polarized glasses ... 

 

I consider it unethical to fish for bass on their spawning beds. They are locked into their nests; they will not leave unless driven off by a larger predator (usually man or a drastic, sudden change in water temperature). A big bass is highly vulnerable while spawning. Often spawners are easily seen...and easily taken. I've seen fishermen throw heavy lines rigged with grab hooks to snag big females on their spawning beds. While most would never resort to a such a lowly method of gathering a trophy, many believe it's okay to catch bass on their beds with artificial lures or live bait. I'm a fisherman and a researcher, not a preacher. All I can say is that once you really get to know the bass, bed fishing simply becomes out of the question.

 

Doug Hannon -- The Bass Professor

[The Maestro]

30 minutes ago, roadwarrior said:

 There were more than 1000 fisherman on the lake

for the few days I was there and probably 10,000+ over an eight week period. 

 

Sounds like my worst nightmare.

[813basstard]

We eat the bedding bass and guard the nest ourselves 

[tracker01]

Ethical, NO!

[TnRiver46]

6 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Male bass are rarely large enough to keep in the lakes here that have a minimum 18" length limit. I think more than anything our state is just terrible at managing bass. 

It doesn’t seem to slow your catch rates down! 

[TOXIC]

I travel to Michigan every year for the smallmouth spawn.  We go the last week in May.  Been doing it for 16 years.  Depending on the weather, the smallies can be in all phases of the spawn.  Pre-spawn, on the beds, or post-spawn.  If we time it right, they are in all 3 phases which opens the door for all sorts of techniques.  Like it or not we are catching spawning bass.  It is "catch and immediate release" season so there are no tournaments but plenty of fishermen.  You fish during the spawn because the fish are more predictable, larger and easier to locate.  While we don't spend all of our time "sight" fishing, we are still catching them off deeper beds a lot of the time.  One year we were early and were limited to catching the pre-spawn fish, they were still scattered.  Then on our last day we were in a shallow bay and the 1st wave of spawners came in (there are multiple waves).  The school that we saw swim into the bay had to contain 50,000 fish, the water was black with them as far as you could see.  They were moving in.  While bed fishing may be distasteful to some, it is in no way un-ethical.  Science has proven that it does not harm the spawn.  If you caught and kept every fish off shallow beds, there are literally thousands you don't catch in deeper water.  And as has been said, even though you don't sight fish, if you fish at all during the spawn, you are catching spawning fish.   

[Glenn]

Interesting food for thought: https://www.bassresource.com/fishing/spawning_bass_bed.html

 

[roadwarrior]

[Bluebasser86]

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

It doesn’t seem to slow your catch rates down! 

Those are just the days you hear about ?

[NHBull]

If you want to put the fishing bug in a kids head, bring him out at the spawn. He will be a fisherman for life and releasing the fish has no ill effects on the fishery

[Russ E]

9 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

What do you do about fish being kept to eat then? Bass are fair game for food around here and I've seen plenty of 4-6 pound fish go home in buckets or on stringers during spawning months. No laws against it, they were keeper sized, nothing to be done.

 

I'm also curious how many people that are staunchly opposed to catching a fish off a bed are going to ignore their PB sitting locked on a bed? The female doesn't do most of the nest guarding, so if I find a big girl willing to bite I'm going to try for her. It's pretty rare I can see many beds in our dirty lakes anyways.

I only know of 2 lakes around here that I could actually see the fish on beds.

9 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Male bass are rarely large enough to keep in the lakes here that have a minimum 18" length limit. I think more than anything our state is just terrible at managing bass. 

The number of 18 inch limit lakes surprised me when I moved to Kansas. it may make the average size bass caught a little larger, but I always wondered if the male to female ratio was out of whack. since most keepers are females.

[greentrout]

Some anglers opposed to fishing for 'bedding bass'

 

https://newschannel9.com/sports/outdoors/some-anglers-opposed-to-fishing-for-bedding-bass

 

good fishing ...

 

[Phil B]

I'm not trying to tick anybody off but I have a large pond at my house and it's full of bass, bluegill, Shad etc. I monitor the beds in the spring when the bass spawn, and I've seen bluegill team up and chase bass off beds to get at eggs and hatchlings. I've seen bass do the same to bluegills. I have fished the beds before and caught fish off them. If bass are released fairly quickly the swim right back to their bed with no ill effects. Predation is a fact of nature, whether it's man or another animal. Man is intelligent enough to make a decision on what he thinks is right or wrong. 

[greentrout]

2 hours ago, Glenn said:

Interesting food for thought: https://www.bassresource.com/fishing/spawning_bass_bed.html

 

In general Charlie felt that fishing for bedding fish would not negatively impact a lake. There are several reasons for this assumption. For starters even in a clear-water lake there are, in theory, a large number of bass that should spawn and never be subject to fishing pressure by being found by the fisherman. The exception here is if the lake is very small or there is extensive repetitious pressure in a small area. Those conditions can put real stress on the spawning population by having them either selectively removed if people catch and keep the spawning bass or simply put the bass under repetitious physiological shock from multiple harassment or hook sets.

[J.Vincent]

Bass season in Michigan opens in late May; all local or club tournaments occurring prior to open are paper tournaments. I think this is perfectly ethical and responsible, because it allows the Bass to get right back into the bedding area in a reasonable amount of time. I think tournament and non-tournament anglers should always observe the laws first and make harvesting decisions which allows them to sleep at night while also allowing the resource to thrive. 

[gim]

This is an interesting thread.  Lots of different views about it.  I don't personally spend a ton of time targeting bass on their beds.  Mostly because I'm not very familiar with it and whatever I try doesn't seem to work very well, so I don't give it a lot of my time.

 

It seems to me that the states people reside in plays a big role in whether they think its ethical.  The states that limit their seasons to protect spawning fish tend to have a more restrictive view, whereas the states that have a longer open season seem to be more open to it.

 

Up here in Minnesota, bass are not stocked.  They are a naturally-reproducing population ONLY and it takes a bass about a decade to get to 20 inches/5 pounds.  Harvesting them with regularity would decimate the population very quickly because it would take so long to replace them.

[WRB]

I have gone from it's unsporting to bed fish for bass to bed fishing for them to advocating no live bait during the spawn cycle to not intensionally targeting bed fish.

I grew up on a lake where our cabin was located on a spawning cove and bass spawned under our dock. It was illegal to bass fish until June opening day so I watched the spawning bass activity as a curious kid. I would drop a small round rock in the bed site and the bass would pick it up and move it or anything else that was put into a bed site.

The bass do not eat during the time they are on a bed, they guard it from all intruders.

Catching bed bass is as simple as finding a bed with a bass and dropping a lure with a hook into the bed. 

Fast forward to the late 60's when Florida strain LMB were populating San Degio lakes and I joined the Pisces bass club and started fishing club derbies and targeting DD size bass. To be competitive you needed to bed fish during the spawn cycle. Between 1969 to 1971 I logged over 100 DD bass, the vast majority were bed fish. It was like shooting fish in barrel and not skill driven, it was the ability to locate the bass on a bed.

I realized how unsporting bed fishing was and reverted back to my childhood days when I watch those bass. 1971 was the last year I targeted bed bass or used live bait for bass for ethical reasons. I felt it wasn't good sportsmanship, not a biological reason. You don't need to stop bass fishing during the spawn, just fish deeper for bass not on beds.

Tournament bass anglers are driven to bed fish to be competitive and I understand that. I choose not to do it anymore, it's my decision based on my beliefs and experience.

We all have choices.!

Tom

[N Florida Mike]

When I was in my teens / 20s , I not only targeted bedding fish but kept all of them ( as did most of my friends ) It was because we were taught by our parents to keep fish to eat because many of them had had a hardscrabble life and one mor fish on the table meant the little mouths at that table were fed again. I fished very heavily the small lake I now live on and caught and kept dozens of big bass but it never seemed to affect the fishery in a negative way. I grew up this way but in my 30s began realizing how beautiful these bass are, and realizing they arent quite as good to eat as a lot of the other fish we caught.

So I started catch and release of all fish over 17 inch, bedding fish or not.

That being said, I dont think it one bit unethical to bed fish. I do it but never keep them and release them asap. No harm, no foul . And Just because you find a bed does not mean its easy to catch the fish.

It does greatly annoy me now if people keep big bass esp. in a small pond or lake and off a bed. But its maybe hypocritical thinking, because I did it for years.

[stepup]

I mean taking a sharp piece of metal and sticking it through a bunch piece of there mouth and then yanking them from there home and then drowning them while we take pictures or RIP the hook out is pretty rough.  If you think bed fishing is un-ethical you should probably reconsider the sport as a whole.  

[N Florida Mike]

10 hours ago, stepup said:

I mean taking a sharp piece of metal and sticking it through a bunch piece of there mouth and then yanking them from there home and then drowning them while we take pictures or RIP the hook out is pretty rough.  If you think bed fishing is un-ethical you should probably reconsider the sport as a whole.  

That happens every time you fish, lol. So if that is your logic, then just give up fishing completely.