Lunker! by Bob Underwood

[Nick]

More of a comment than a question.  If you haven't read this book written in 1975, it's a great read.  The author spent over 1700 hours logging bass behavior through scuba observation. Very informative behaviors observed.  In the barometric pressure discussion, I remembered his ideas vaguely so  the search was on, and today I found the book in our public library. It's about 250 pages!

[Stickling]

Since ive read you post ive looked for the book and looked. Its not at my local library or walmart. Im gonna try waldens books soon. Can you type some short excerpts?

[Nick]

Remember, Underwood saw these thing while accumulating over 1700 hours of watching bass while scuba diving, not interpolating from just fishing.

O.K. p.71 paraphrasing....To have a concentration of bass, his order of important musts are cover, food, proximity to deep water.  To him temperature doesn't mean much except during the spawn: As long as the temperatures don't affect a bass' health, it was not a factor on where bass were located.

colors of lures:  bass show a preference of one or more colors that may change during the day.  Bass will strike a variety of them on a given day, but one or two shades will predominate.  Color is second only to the action of a lure given that it is presented to a school of bass. In different sections of the same lake on the same day, different colors were preferred by different schools of bass.

position of bass:  the great majority of the time bass schools hover over some type of cover, not in it.

moving in or getting active:  He reports that bass have great periods of inactivity.  Anglers can fish through schools for hours without tempting the bass, then they begin to show restless motions, get agitated, and they will strike.

Without fail the quickest way to put bass off the feed is if a fellow bass was injured, "skin broken outside the mouth area" and then released back into the water frighten the others.  The remaining fish will swim away from it.  A fish hooked in the mouth and released will not put the school of bass off the feed.

Most effective depth to get a strike on a plastic worm was swimming it just off the bottom.

Adding scents to baits (in the 70's) such as an anise extract, did not increase strikes nor did placing rattles in hard lures of plastic worms.

The larger the bass, the less dependent on cover for camoflage it is.  Smaller bass need cover for protection, not so for larger predators. Larger bass only needed cover for concealment when actively hunting.

He found no appreciable difference in night fishing as it corresponds to moon phases taking data on 92 nights.  #1 rule at night is the same as it is in day.  Locate the fish.  Then you can catch them.  (duh)

On a falling barometer, bass and baitfish seek a greater depth. No appreciable difference on numbers of fish caught on falling or rising barometer. Larger bass in a school became more aggressive in the lower barometer (cloudy) days.

In shallow water, less than 8 feet, outboard motors will frighten the fish, though they get back to normal within minutes.  Idling a motor in shallow water does not frighten them until it gets very close.  Come in fast to an area and  stopping suddenly will scare them away.

[JT Bagwell]

I saw this book a couple of weeks ago at http://www.amazon.com

I don't remember the price though.

JT Bagwell

[roadwarrior]

You can click on JT's message and go direct to the site.  Several used books offered at $1.47, new is $24.99 plus shipping.

[Stickling]

thanks guys i think ill order it