Are BIG Bass Smart?

[Vyron]

Sorry guys about my english

If the "explicit content" of my avatar bothers u guys or the admins let me know and I ll change it.

[Raul]

I 've caught the same big momma 4 times in the same week in the same place, 2 times with a jig, 1 time with a reaper and 1 time with a worm so maybe she 's just stupid  :, actually the truth is that fish and the others that live in the pond seldomly see a lure, they have the right genetics ( Florida strain ), lot 's of bluegills and tilapias to feed upon, warm water ( the pond is fed by a well ) and no fishing pressure except for my ocassional visit.

Hey Vyron, I don 't see a problem with your avatar, nice lure.  

[SENKOSAM]

Bass barely have a brain, they don't need one. They don't think, they react. They don't "learn", they become conditioned

That pretty much says it all. If older and bigger bass are so smart, how come 15-20 lb. monsters get caught in southern California lakes every year? How come many 3-4 lb bass have been recaught? How come bass of all ages actually swallow rubber worms. (ick!)

Maybe the biggest bass in a lake feed at night and get no pressure from daytime anglers. Maybe their home territory is at 40 feet and see no lures from the majortiy of shallow water anglers.

Fish are stupid - (def.-  tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes), but have super senses that give them an edge over creatures just as stupid as they are.

Some of those creatures are human.

[GobbleDog]

"Are bass smart?" Relative to what?

They aren't smarter than people. Well, except me.

I doubt they're smarter than most animals, except bugs.

Compared with other fish, who knows. A bass does look a little smarter than say a 2" minow.  

[Matt Fly]

We must have been looking at this all wrong.   Texas has always ranked in the lowest percentile concerning the quality of education.   The schools our bass goes to are run by liberials, thus they must be dumb.   A joke.  LOL    Find out where your state ranks in education, he who has the best schools must have the smartest bass.  

Are your bass drop outs too??????  

[GobbleDog]

Southerners are the smertest people on the planat. And so are our feesh.

[senko_77]

i dont think bass are smart, i just think there conditioned.  not to lures but to there food.  its like a child, at 3 or 4 we would eat everything, because we havent been exposed to food that long, but, now, you dont see adults going around underneath the sink, drinking the cleaning stuff, or putting there hand on a hot stove.  when a bass is that big, it probably been alive for over 10 years, so, there experience of the food they eat is much higher than a small bass, that makes it easier for them detect a flaw in your lure.  the reason those guys are catching those lunks in cali, is because those lures look so real.  you could almost mistake one for the real thing.

[Cephkiller]

Maybe there's something to this.  According to this site: http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm

California is ranked 46th = a LOT of big bass

Numbers 1,2 and 3 are Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts = enough said

[srv1990]

Sorry guys about my english

If the "explicit content" of my avatar bothers u guys or the admins let me know and I ll change it.

Much easier on the eyes than some of the other "mugs" out there... LOL... j/k.  By all means keep it  

[Cephkiller]

If the "explicit content" of my avatar   bothers u guys or the admins let me know and I ll change it.

IF YOU DON'T PUT SOME CLOTHES ON THAT FISH, YOU ARE BANNED FOR LIFE!!!!

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Bankbeater]

I think it depends on how smart the bass is in relation to other bass, and how the smarter ones get conditioned to their surroundings.

[Rattlinrogue]

I don't think big bass are smart.I think they are just experienced from all their lifes experiences in their particular environment.They've seen it all and through managing to survive,they've become wise to the ways of anglers and their prey.

[-Drums-]

They aren't smarter than people. Well, except me.

hahahahahahahahah.....LOL!

[Rattletrap]

I think the older they get, the more leary they get after seeing lure after lure. I wonder sometimes if they start equating a trolling motor sound to danger?

[RoLo]

As usual, members of the forum provided a lot of interesting and thought-provoking responses.

Reading your responses actually reinforced what I already believed. Since there is no definitive

answer though, I can only add to the speculation. Let me quote a couple of noted authorities:

I'm sure many of you recall the late Buck Perry, the man dubbed the "Father of Structure Fishing".

Some of Buck's theories were eventually proven false, but overall his premises had sound footing.

Buck coined the controversial phrase, "No Bass Ever Had An Original Thought In Its Life".

I agree with Buck, I too believe that fish are creatures of instinct without the power to reason.

In addition, we can't ignore the fact that fish are cold-blooded animals, a form of life that is not normally associated with intellect. Nevertheless, highly developed instincts' are nothing to pass off lightly.

In certain situations, our instincts can be more effective than our intelligence. For instance, a con artist

may be far shrewder than his prey, but if the victim's instincts tell him to bypass the deal,

there will be no sale.

Another notable bass researcher is Doug Hannon. Though I disagree with many of Doug's notions,

he has done subjective research where opinion played no part. He directly interviewed and

indirectly researched as many anglers as possible who landed world-class bass (over 15 pounds).

He found that almost without exception, the largest bass were taken in water shallower than 5 ft deep.

This doesn't apply to the deep oligotrophic impoundments of California-grown Florida-strain bass.

Nor does it apply to smallmouth bass, which relate to deeper water then bigmouth bass and prefer

a higher oxygen content (current).

There's no question that big bass living in shallow water are highly vulnerable to being caught.

But that may help to explain why 99.9% of bass never exceed 12 lbs in weight, so they are

commensurately rare. Of course we can better our odds by targeting private waters,

or by targeting public waters with no approach road (e.g. some lakes in the Ocala Nat'l Forest).

We could also focus on public waters with inaccessible areas (e.g. early days at Rodman Reservoir)

or accessible areas with impervious cover such as floating rafts of hyacinths (e.g. the Withlacoohee River

before the Dunnelon Motel became the Angler's Resort).

      Not surprisingly, large bass are most vulnerable to natural bait. Berkley tank tests have shown

that bass become visually conditioned to certain lures. It was discovered that bass become conditioned

most quickly to crank plugs, which they tend to reject after repeated exposure. In contrast,

bass showed practically no defense against plastic worms, which they continued to hit regardless

of repeated exposure. In all cases however, the memory of bass wasn't much better than Trilene XL,

so the conditioning was only short-lived. This Speaks Volumes! The ability of an animal to benefit from

past experience is limited by that animals memory span.

So...is a 9-lb bass smarter than a 3-lb bass? I don't think so. I've always suspected that trophy bass

are no smarter than your average adult, just a whole lot rarer. Fishing for run-of-the-mill bass

is sometimes very different than fishing for trophy bass. I don't believe this has anything to do

with wisdom, though I admit that it's more fun to think of it that way. More realistically, the difference

is most likely due to differences in lifestyle. One thing we know for sure, record-class bass are rare

and world-class bass are as scarce as hen's teeth. I can certainly understand how their Scarcity

can create the illusion of Intelligence.

[Peter E.]

RoLo I am in complete agreement with your last post and I am glad we (all Bass Rescourse Members) have this forum so that all of our members can so easily express their ideas, experience, and questions. by the way Vyron I would be offended if you took that avatar off.

Peter

[Chris]

When I fished ponds, rivers and lakes in Florida where you don't really have any hard bottoms or rocks and drop offs of any sort. Your focus for trophy hunting was the weeds emergent and submerged. Some days they would be deep in the stuff other days they would be on the edge. When the average depth of a body of water is less than 8 ft deep the bass are kinda limited to where they can go to feel safe. They find safety and seclusion in the thickest part of a weed patch. In Florida if you can find two or more forms of vegetation in a given area that has some depth you struck gold. In the deeper underwater weeds anything green and growing or where two kinds of weeds grow together and start to intermix that's your high percentage area. If you can find a place where the weeds grow the thickest it should hold a better fish because it is producing more oxygen. Now you head up north to where you have good water clarity, hard bottom, rocks, roadbeds, humps, deep water, food fish that live deep like perch, walleye, and trout... things change fish move deep. If a Florida lake had the same elements those fish would move deep also but the main food fish is shad and shiners and in most cases the lake lacks that deep structure for them to use outside of what someone put there or any deep weeds. I don't think it is a factor really that the fish is smarter but like others have said your fishing for the smallest percentage of the fish population. I have caught trophy fish on a wide verity of lures but two things that where the same with all of them. I put the bait where they live and I made the bait look and act real. If you fall short on either factor you also lower your percentage that you will catch a trophy. It isn't brain surgery but it does take a little more thought than telling yourself you want to catch a trophy this year. I would agree that plastics are a bait style that would catch a trophy with more constancy than lets say a crankbait. You need to ask yourself why? I have caught big fish on both but why would one outshine the other? It is because you are forced to fish a worm slow, and it can be fished in any cover and at any depth. It is fished on the bottom for the most part and it can be perceived as many different forms of forage to a bass. It is a eye contact bait that has fluid motion with No Warning Signs That It's Fake if worked right. You have other lures in your box that can look real but it takes more skill to make it look that way. A worm is different anyone can make it look real because of the fluid motion built in.

[Matt Fly]

Rolo, the majority of the 15 lb fish were caught in the spring, ie..... shallows equal spawn.   The same in Texas and I would imagine Fla also.    Most trophies in the top 50 in Texas fall victim to pre spawn and spawn.  

Most lake records are caught in the area of the dams,  some of the deepest waters are located near the dam areas.

Saying 99.9% don't ever grow over 12 lbs, ???ok,    Well, the greatest % of the bass fishermen are bank beaters.    And if half would fish off shore structure, I'm sure those numbers of trophies being caught would grow on some lakes.

[George Welcome]

Some facts:

We catch the majority of our big fish post spawn and in the summer

We catch the majority of our big fish with artificial bait: the same bait over and over

What it takes to catch a big bass: location and the right cast - other than sight fishing which there is very little of down here

One could wish that genetics were an important factor because if it was one would only have to add sunshine and food to get big bass - unfortunately, it is far more complicated a soup mixture than that.

How a bass reacts in a tank and how they react in the wild can only be compared through assumption and conjecture.

Obviously there is no way to rate the brain power of a bass without wild conjecture - until one talks to a bass it is wild conjecture.

Bass in the wild are pretty much impossible to study with anything more than some very primitive guesswork. Repetitive shocking will show a hint of the population but does nothing to answer the whys.

If there were any answers that had any kind of a footing they would be able to replicate bodies of water such as the Stick Marsh. The reality is, and any good biologist will tell you, they can't because they just don't know.

In the meantime, until the come up with something substantial, keep casting, because if it falls in the right place you just might have that lunker you sought. Our customer did yesterday.

[Matt Fly]

There have been numerous studies done in central and southern bodies of water with electronic tracking devices studing the patterns of large fish.    Similar facts on T-Bend and their tagging efforts have already given important data.

Too much money has been spent on designing new lakes, lures, electronics, and genetics to say its "primitive guesswork".

If you saw this weekends episode of Gone fishin with Jerry Mckinnis,  you saw some of todays youth using modern education to create the perfect bass fishery,  nothing primitive and no guess work.  Science at its best!!

Texas Top 50 Bass,  http://www.ets-systems.com/lakefork/top50.htm

You can be the judge of when these fish were caught, most being  PRE Spawn and spawn.    Only 5 of these fish were caught post spawn, month of may, june.

Nothing primitive on those numbers or guess work on these facts.

Sorry George, don't dispute your expertise, but my facts for my state and beliefs differ.  

[SENKOSAM]

I keep seeing this correlation of IQ or smarts, to age. I know quite a few adults that got dumber as they got older or stayed dumb regardless of age. Just because a fish ages and experiences many negatives in it's life, doesn't mean it grows a few more brain cells to accomodate the memories or that it can refer to a long term memory to avoid specific negative stimuli for more than a few months. Animals with brains are born with a finite number of brain cells. Using more of those cells in one's lifetime is relevant to higher forms of mammal intelligence, not fish's. At best, a bird can mimic-learn via positive reinforcement, but not solve complex problems and neither can bass.

Probably the perfect test of a fish's memory (which is 99% of an animal's primary intelligence) would be to cast the most attractive of all baits-(soft plastics), to a 5-10 year old bass that has been caught multiple times. Repeat this for the next four years and see how many times it strikes that lure.

Older large bass that strike lures, are perfect examples of a bass's stupidity, regardless of age. Hannon has stated many times that his large fish record was due to stealth and finesse. I don't know if I buy the 400 fish over 10lbs claim, but wouldn't be surprised if many of the fish were the same fish caught different times during their life times, from the same private waters.

Genetic-learning was brought up. It doesn't exist for humans, so why would one think it exists in cold blooded animals? Does the theory of evolution explain how intelligent animals evolved or does it only imply that the smarter animals outlived the dumber or less physically evolved ones. In the case of the evolution of fish, fish haven't come a long ways in a thousand years.

The oldest bass are probably those that stay in locations that see the fewest lures or no bait of any kind. Expose that fish to a few finesse,soft plastics or deplete it's forage base and I guarentee you I strike at any age (not necessarily a catch, but a strike.)

[George Welcome]

I'll say okay Matt to your right to opinion, but the discussion was centered around the question of intelligence.

Tracking proves they move around, not that they will reject a bait through some method of learning.

I would think that a good deal of the big bass caught in Texas are never reported just as they aren't here, so the chart is cute but not of tremendous value. Who is ets-systems?

I don't watch the Jerry McKinnis show so I have no idea what they were building. However, if it was a lake that will support open fishing and they can get the population up to the levels of a Lake Fork or a Stick Marsh then they need to contact all of the fisheries departments  in the country a teach them what they don't know. Remember, most of us are interested in fishable lakes, not 3 acre back lot ponds.

The concern is with bass in their natural enviornment. They are going to act quite differently than those in Ray Scott's private 55 acre pet pool as an example.

[rocknfish9001]

Go HERE and check your own IQ and see how you compare against your adversary!

This doesnt really relate to the subject, but i got a 115 3 times.

[Matt Fly]

That cute chart can be found in 100's of areas.  Is it correct, well not since the guy caught the new lake record earlier this year on Amistad which will be the #27 spot in Texas.   What it does say,  fish over 15 lbs that has been reported, are caught primarilly in the pre and spawn time frame with the fall topping 2nd or 3rd spot and not post spawn.   Nothing primitive about facts.

We have to learn to try to interpret their behavior on our terms.  That is done with tagging efforts, the same fish being caught more than once,  will tell how old, when let go, growth, area of original release, area caught second time.  By the way Toledo Bend is a little bigger than that guys 55 acre pond, like 75 miles long and 184,000 acres.   The fish that have been tagged and released and caught again taught me more on big fish movements than Doug Hannons under water bass films.

Shocking allows us to take DNA samples.   What does this tell us,  Glad you ask, primitive guesswork from my state Biologists said that last years sharelunker from Fork was stocked 9 yrs ago.  DNA from the shocking survey said her momma was a sharelunker also, 10 yrs ago.   See what primitive guess work showed.   A sharelunker from a share lunker, genes, the study of genes.  What else can shocking and DNA tell us.  The life expectancy on that body of water with those current lake conditions.  The ratio of native bass to stocked bass, the percentage of offspring, 50/50 cross, the blood line is 30% native and 70%fla.  Science is doing more in Tx, and I appreciate that.   The genes from a sharelunker are showing up, its working.   Course you guys have seen the results posted the last few weeks.  39.66 lbs on 5 fish, 1 tourney, 28.22 on 5 Sat.  

George, my facts aren't opinions, they are facts based on scientific study, study of fish habits, and common sense tells us, the best chance to catch a hog is when she is fulliest of eggs, and easiest when she spawns because 90% of the lake is remove from the equation.   Doesn't say much for smarts for the fish.

ETS is just a web the guides and merchants use to post info on lake Fork.    

Every piece of the puzzle, shockings, taggings, electronic tags that track fish year around, gene studies, are they schoolers when juvies, are they schoolers as adults?   Did they leave an area?, Do they spawn in same creek every year, same cove in the same creek, same creek, same cove, same stump?  

If we went to Fayettville County power plant lake, 2400 acres, you catch 40 bass, I'll bet you half of those bass have 3-4 hook marks in their mouths.   They get caught that much.    Is it stupidity?  Or survival, don't eat, don't live!!!!!

[Phishn_Phool]

I know the ones I am fishing for are wayyy waaaaay too SMART ;D