are bass cannibals?

[George Welcome]

RW,

Interesting thing about size of fish in a school:

Some of you may recognize the angler. Without dropping names he came to the Marsh to get his biggest fish of his career. He caught the big one and the little one out of the same school within minutes of each other.

Did I mention: the bait was as you can see a Senko.

[RoLo]

In the strict sense of the word, largemouth and smallmouth bass are NOT innately cannibalistic,

that would better describe northern pike and bluefish. As Roadwarrior pointed out, the buck bass

will indeed turn on his own fry when his instinctive role as protector begins to wane.

Though it's rarely addressed, bass much prefer soft-rayed baitfish such as shiners, shad and trout,

to spiny-rayed forage such as bluegills, perch and bass. This may partly explain why bass adore

the profile of a worm, which has no fins at all. Be that as it may, bass are opportunistic feeders

and a hungry bass is not going to go without food, spines or no spines.

When I lived in Georgia, I had a tiny backyard pond that I stocked with bass I caught.

I fed them for entertainment, but they were able to eek out a living without my intervention.

One day during a hot spell (high metabolism) I walked out to the pond to count noses

and found that one of my 13" bass was missing. My immediate thought was "raccoon",

but then I noticed the tail of the 13-incher still protruding from the mouth of my 18-incher.

The victims snout was obviously bumped up against the end of his attacker's gut

Though it flies in the face of convention, I select lure colors solely on the basis of "visibility"

and never think about mimicking some pre-existing creature. I will say this,

if I were so disposed to mimic baitfish colors, I would not imitate the colors of a bass or bluegill,

but would imitate the colors of a succulent golden shiner or gizzard shad.

Roger