Bass behavior from Jacob wheeler

[GoneFishingLTN]

Other than actually spawning – which we could already see – bass simply do not behave in all these certain ways at certain times like we have "learned" over the years.

 

> Literally every single day that I study fish on a forward-facing sonar, I learn something new about them that I never knew. What's truly mind-boggling is how much we actually don't know about bass.

 

> That's why so many young anglers are coming in and crushing in the sport these days – their heads are not full of a bunch of bass behavior myths. Their minds are clean slates learning what bass really do.

 

thoughts on this? 
credit to Jay Kumar's BassBlaster for this info

[Tennessee Boy]

Absolutely couldn’t agree more.  I think bass are opportunistic feeders that do what works on a given lake on a given day.   All of the rules out there come from anglers not bass.  My eyes have also been opened by using Live Sonar.  I’ve enjoyed watching bait fish behavior as much as bass.

[LrgmouthShad]

I think on my last outing on Shearon Harris, I should’ve stayed in an area where shad and bass were at times in 5ft or less. I told that to a guy at the ramp I met after who was fishing 15-20ft and who also didn’t catch and he was awfully surprised. I said I saw bass busting on shad and his eyebrows went up. 
 

Water was below 47 degrees but bass were busting on shad super shallow. 
 

I don’t know how to catch bass very well but I try and pay attention to what I’m seeing and sometimes what I’m seeing surprises me a lot

[AlabamaSpothunter]

If you are lucky enough to fish a major thriving Shad/other pelagic roaming forage based fishery, I think he's spot on.   Anybody would good down scan and side scan or Mega 360 can see the traditional rules don't apply at these places.     Big fish are under these schools of baitfish, getting them to bite is something that eludes me 99% of the time.   Not sure how fast FFS would change that, but I know it would once I can evaluate fish's response to certain lures being presented to them.     

 

If not, Bass still heavily depend on shallows for forage, and I think many of those traditional laws still hold true.   

 

Just my 2cents 

1 minute ago, LrgmouthShad said:

I think on my last outing on Shearon Harris, I should’ve stayed in an area where shad and bass were at times in 5ft or less. I told that to a guy at the ramp I met after who was fishing 15-20ft and who also didn’t catch and he was awfully surprised. I said I saw bass busting on shad and his eyebrows went up. 
 

Water was below 47 degrees but bass were busting on shad super shallow. 
 

I don’t know how to catch bass very well but I try and pay attention to what I’m seeing and sometimes what I’m seeing surprises me a lot

Caught 10 fish yesterday in 10ft of water or less as they were targeting thousands of Shad pushed up against a Dam bank's corner.    Feeding frenzy, fish launching themselves in the air, water temps were low 50s.   

 

Agree with your last sentence......not a great angler, but I try to spend more time on the water than other anglers, and by doing so I see things that go against convential wisdom quite often.   I mean I'm still catching fish strolling a flashback mini.     

 

[Woody B]

I believe one of the problems in cold water, with the bass we see on sonar under the balls of shad is shad die off.   It's my belief that the cold water affects the shad more than it does the bass.  When water temps get near, or below 50 the bass can basically eat lethargic shad until they're so full they throw up.    That's why jigging spoons "sometimes" works for the fish under the ball of baitfish.   

 

 

[T-Billy]

My last trip of 2021 I saw smallmouth busting shad on the surface in 38 degree water. I couldn't get bit on anything I had with me, and found myself wishing I'd brought my topwater box along. I certainly wasn't expecting to need it.

[WRB]

When you read the late Bill Murphy’s book In Pursuit of Giant Bass he states every time you think you know all about bass the green fish prove you don’t.

Murphy was working on what he called the last frontier suspended big bass off shore.

Bill learned from Mike Lembeck’s tracking studies groups of big bass located in mid lake suspended over very deep structure. These big bass came to join the group while others left the group.

Bill made a deep running swim bait using a CD18 Rapala fitted with a rainbow trout soft plastics tail rear section. Bill used this lure trolled on wire line through the big bass group and caught his 75 lb 5 bass limit at San Vicente lake. Murphy didn’t disclose this in his book and may have decided not to share what he learned.

Today Live Scope FFS is opening Bill’s frontier.

Tom

[immortl]

Interesting, this kind of fits with what I've been thinking in my head.  I'm getting back into bass fishing and just picked up a kayak and am planning on outfitting it with a full complement of sonar - down, side, and forward facing real time.  I understand there are varying opinions and I subscribe to each their own.  In my head, I think it'll be useful to help find fish, sort of like scouting for game on land.  I'll still have to figure out how to cast to them and how to get them to bite. I'm thinking it'll be a a great way to learn the bass behavior in my local ponds and reservoirs and am looking forward to it. I see it as a useful learning tool.  We'll see how it goes. 

 

[Tennessee Boy]

Wheeler’s original comment came from this article 

 

https://majorleaguefishing.com/angler-columns/jacob-wheeler-time-for-a-reset-as-2023-season-approaches/

 

The idea is that the next generation of anglers will learn from what they observe instead of learning from the myths they read.  It’s an interesting idea and a few may succeed and have a real advantage.  For most I think the allure of the myths is just too much to resist.   Most real world anglers spend much more time consuming bass fishing mythology than they spend on the water observing actual bass behavior.  
 

Josh Jones has been in the news a lot lately.  To me he’s an example of someone who has found their own way by spending a tremendous amount of time on the water observing actual bass behavior on live sonar.  It seems to have given him an advantage.  At the same time the bass fishing community has turned him into a mythological figure believing that he has found the secret to catching big fish.  They have formed a narrative around what this secret is.   In the end it’s just more mythology.

 

[Glenn]

3 hours ago, T-Billy said:

My last trip of 2021 I saw smallmouth busting shad on the surface in 38 degree water.

Yes, I had a trip on New Year's Day a long time ago where I saw bass busting on the surface in 41 degree water out in the open.  I tied on a buzzbait and...WHAM!  Caught 'em! 

 

Separately, I've long said that cold-water bass aren't "lethargic". Quite the opposite, in fact.  However, the reality is that much of the forage is "lethargic" during winter.  This is why slow-moving lures work best in cold water - not because bass are "slower" in cold water, but because you have to mimic the forage bass are preying on in order to look natural and get more bites.  

 

Bass don't read the same books we do.

[Deleted account]

13 hours ago, Tennessee Boy said:

I think bass are opportunistic feeders that do what works on a given lake on a given day. 

As are most things that hunt in the wild.

[Carolina Pines]

Whenever I see bass schooling up busting shad in the winter, I pick up my jerkbait rod and it's almost  guaranteed I'm getting bit.  It makes me excited just thinking about it.  If a warm front came through, they'll also hit topwater baits, paddle tail swimbaits, anything that looks like an injured / dying shad.  

 

Glenn is right, they're gorging themselves on dying shad because it's the easiest meal for them to get.  I've been doing very well in the winter throwing jerkbaits with 7-10 second pauses between twitches.  The bass in my profile pic (7lb-7oz) was caught just a month ago under these exact circumstances.  Stuffed full of shad, caught on a jerkbait.   

 

I went fishing this past Friday and the back 1/3 of the lake was iced over.  That's very rare in NC.  I still caught 6 fish, 5 on a jerkbait and one on a 68 Huddleston.  Slow bite but the fish were pretty decent sized 3 pounders, they were eating in 46 degree water.  

 

 

 

[TOXIC]

Yes, new technology is a leg up on information and opens doors that were inaccessible with current sonar.  We can now see offshore suspended fish but more importantly we can see other information.  Yesterday my fishing partner and I were in 45ft of water and with me on the beck deck, I had viewing access to a 12 inch graph split to downscan and sidescan and a 12 inch in 2D sonar that went to gps mapping when we were running.  My partner on the front deck had 3 graphs one 16 inch for sidescan/downscan, one 12 inch for 2D sonar and one 9 inch for Active Target or whatever lowrances front facing sonar is called.  In addition to seeing the suspended fish, he could see in real time how the fish were reacting to our baits.  Sometimes they would follow and veer off, sometimes they would ignore, sometimes they would nose down on the baits, sometimes they would scatter and sometimes they would strike.  Since his transducer is mounted to the trolling motor shaft he rarely could see my bait and I relied mainly on the downscan/sidescan screens.  Occasionally I could see my dropshot or blade bait bouncing on the bottom and could see always see the the fish but had no idea how they were reacting to my baits.  If we consistently got all the activity and no takers, we knew that the fish were not actively feeding even though they were there.  We then moved on until we found a school that would feed.  Happened multiple times. If relying on sidescan/downscan we would have spent a lot of wasted time trying to catch fish that weren’t feeding.  

[Team9nine]

19 hours ago, GoneFishingLTN said:

Other than actually spawning – which we could already see – bass simply do not behave in all these certain ways at certain times like we have "learned" over the years.

 

> Literally every single day that I study fish on a forward-facing sonar, I learn something new about them that I never knew. What's truly mind-boggling is how much we actually don't know about bass.

 

> That's why so many young anglers are coming in and crushing in the sport these days – their heads are not full of a bunch of bass behavior myths. Their minds are clean slates learning what bass really do.

 

I think the official Fact Check nomenclature for the highlighted statement is "Missing Context," or perhaps even "Half True"  I agree with his second statement above, but would again apply the 'Missing Context' label to that last statement.

[Tennessee Boy]

32 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

 

I think the official Fact Check nomenclature for the highlighted statement is "Missing Context," or perhaps even "Half True"  I agree with his second statement above, but would again apply the 'Missing Context' label to that last statement.

Here is the full quote concerning FFS from the article on the MLF website that I linked to above.   Wheeler is listed as the author of the article.

Forward-facing sonar reset

With the Bass Pro Tour going to a five-fish format, I’ve already heard some people say that a five-fish game will diminish the role of forward-facing sonar. Their reason being, guys who fish the bank for fewer (but bigger) loners will now dominate, especially since there are only 40 guys fishing per day and the bank will be wide open. It’s an interesting prediction, but as I’m turning it over in my head right now, I’m not buying into it.

I’ll dig into this a little more in a few weeks in a blog, but if there’s one thing that forward-facing sonar has taught me, it’s that everything we assumed about bass behavior that came from books, magazines and videos from years past is mostly false. Other than actually spawning – which we could already see – bass simply do not behave in all these certain ways at certain times like we have “learned” over the years.

Literally, every single day that I study fish on a forward-facing sonar, I learn something new about them that I never knew. What’s truly mindboggling is how much we actually don’t know about bass. That’s why so many young anglers are coming in and crushing in the sport these days. Their heads are not full of a bunch of bass behavior myths. Their minds are clean slates learning what bass really do. But we’ll dive into more of that later this season as well.

[Team9nine]

15 minutes ago, Tennessee Boy said:

Here is the full quote concerning FFS from the article on the MLF website that I linked to above.   Wheeler is listed as the author of the article.

Forward-facing sonar reset

With the Bass Pro Tour going to a five-fish format, I’ve already heard some people say that a five-fish game will diminish the role of forward-facing sonar. Their reason being, guys who fish the bank for fewer (but bigger) loners will now dominate, especially since there are only 40 guys fishing per day and the bank will be wide open. It’s an interesting prediction, but as I’m turning it over in my head right now, I’m not buying into it.

I’ll dig into this a little more in a few weeks in a blog, but if there’s one thing that forward-facing sonar has taught me, it’s that everything we assumed about bass behavior that came from books, magazines and videos from years past is mostly false. Other than actually spawning – which we could already see – bass simply do not behave in all these certain ways at certain times like we have “learned” over the years.

Literally, every single day that I study fish on a forward-facing sonar, I learn something new about them that I never knew. What’s truly mindboggling is how much we actually don’t know about bass. That’s why so many young anglers are coming in and crushing in the sport these days. Their heads are not full of a bunch of bass behavior myths. Their minds are clean slates learning what bass really do. But we’ll dive into more of that later this season as well.

I’ll be curious to read the future articles he mentioned, but I’ll probably get to hash it out with him over the phone before they’re ever published  I want to know how literally he intended some of those comments to be taken - lol

[WRB]

 When I wrote my Cosmic Clock Bass Calendar for a local seminar in 1974 none of the information came from books, magazines etc., it was my personal observations over a decade of of bass fishing. 

Seasonal periods were unknown then until Al Linder publish his In-Fisherman Study Reports prior to the magazine.

My method was using analog Dark Ind temperature probe w/ 50’ of wire with markers in 5’ increments. I caught bass and put the probe into the throat to determine the body temp, release the fish and lower the probe until it read the same temp as the bass body. Using flasher sonar I could determine the depth bass preferred at that water temp. It became obvious that water temperature controlled bass behavior because the bass are cold blooded preferring warmer water.

Black bass migrated from deeper water in the winter cold water period to warmer shallower water to spawn. 

Spawn cycle was the visual seasonal period that everyone could see and agree with. Staging was known by the days top bass anglers. It became obvious to me that the spawn cycle was in stages, not 1 migration depending on water temperatures. The 1st stage I call pre or before spawn, the 2nd stage was the bedding egg laying spawn period, the 3 rd stage was after or post spawn. The spawn cycle didn’t start with photo periods as everyone though but water temperature trigger the spawn. 

The summer period occurs when the spawn cycles are over and lasts until the water starts to cool around 68 degrees, then another migration starts as the Fall period. 

Fall ends as the. Water temps drop below 55 depress the start of the winter period.

That was my calendar in 1974. I am now revisiting the Cosmic Clock Calendar to update it nearly 50 years later.

To say today’s bass anglers don’t benefit or need history from pioneers like Buck Perry or trophy bass anglers like Bill Murphy or my Cosmic Clock is a very narrow view if you only see through the looking glass of LiveScope-FFS.

Tom

 

[Tennessee Boy]

2 hours ago, Team9nine said:

I’ll be curious to read the future articles he mentioned, but I’ll probably get to hash it out with him over the phone before they’re ever published  I want to know how literally he intended some of those comments to be taken - lol

I hope you’ll keep us updated on what you hear from him.

 

I agree that the bass fishing body of knowledge is important and should be preserved.  Do you need to know it to catch fish?  That’s a very hard question.  I don’t think anyone lives long enough to literally start from scratch and figure it all out on their own.  Discovering the value of a Texas rig all by yourself could take a long time.
 

There’s a difference between fishing knowledge and knowledge of bass behavior.   Buck Perry got where to fish right.  His explanation of why the fish are there was mostly wrong.  I think bass behavior is very closely related to the fishery.  What resources does the lake provide.  What other species are competing for those resources.  Every body of water is different in so many complex and unknown ways.  The bass adapt to their environment and individual fish may adapt differently.  Many lessons are learned locally and taught globally.  They don’t always apply globally and that throws a lot of people off track when reading about bass behavior.  Local knowledge always seems to trump book knowledge when it comes to understanding bass behavior.