Male Bass Guarding Eggs?

[CrazedL.IFisherman]

I was re-reading my "Largemouth Bass in the 1990's" book while at work which was written by the in-fisherman crew with the lidner brothers being the most known. This book is like my Bible and i read it over and over again. The section about spawning talks about the well known occurances. How the males watch over the eggs and fry. They said spawning occurs typically in 1-4 foot deep beds, if thats the case when cold fronts come in do the male bass leave the nests for deeper water like normal or do they rough it out and stay by the nest through the bad weather?

[CJ]

If Rolo post on this thread,pay attention!

[Gatorbassman]

If the eggs have already been laid then typiclly the male will stay with them no matter what.

[Rob G.]

If the eggs have already been laid then typiclly the male will stay with them no matter what.

Furthermore sometimes they are really easy to catch and become almost a nuisance if the females are still relatively shallow.  It sometimes is difficult to catch the larger females because the male are so efficient at hitting anything and everything that is presented near them.  Prespawn is almost the opposite sometimes.

[T-rig]

They will stay no matter what to protect their young !

After they abandon the nest will then eat the young they protectet so fiercly.

What an irony!

[Low_Budget_Hooker]

He's in the home stretch, don't blow it now!!  He's spent the last 3 weeks defending his territory and escorting as many females up there as possible in hopes of having some quality food, I mean, offspring,lol come from it.

Leaving once he's found a sweet mama to drop her cache in his spot would be crazy.  He would have wasted the last month.  They ain't movin'.

[CJ]

A buck nor a female will flee to deep water overnight due to a cold front.I don't believe a buck would leave a bed for anything until the mission is complete.

It has been believed that bass flee to deep water due to a cold front.Studies have shown that this imediate migration is unlikely.The largemouth bass has a gentle swim bladder that has to adjust to the depth/pressure.

Shallow fish tend to hug up tight to cover after a cold front and will become less active.Deep fish however are not effected as much during a cold front.

[Catt]

 There are few experts more capable of unlocking the mysteries involved with the spawning ritual and debunking the myths than Ken Cook. And it is by borrowing from his insight, as well as that of other spawning specialists (pros like Shaw Grigsbyand Guido Hibdon), that the average angler can begin to lock onto the spawn with consistent success.

The key is gaining an understanding of the behavioral basics and timing of bedding bass.

 We act like we know that the males precede the females to the spawning areas, explains Cook, a six-time B.A.S.S. tournament winner. But I don't think that is true because both sexes seem to get very aggressive and very food-oriented during what we call the pre-spawn stage. The come out of the cold winter and the water warms up and their metabolism kicks in. Both sexes really become aggressive as feeders.

 Then there seems to be a time frame in which the females become less interested in feeding, but the males continue to bite because they pick up the aggressiveness of the spawn. Both are focused on the spawn right on through the spawning period. The females kind of back off of feeding and become less aggressive as the hormonal changes in their body take place as they prepare to actually lay their eggs.

 Conventional knowledge indicates that the male bass builds the nest, fans it out and guards it (zealously). Generally, a good male that is aggressive and active will attract more than one female to his nest and spawn with each of them. Along with that, an active female will spawn a number of times and, in most cases, ina number of different males' nests. She moves down the shoreline making it with different males. The male sits in one spot and waits for more females to come by. I think that is sort of a hedge (on the part of the female) against an infertile male spoiling the hatch of a good fertile female. So she spread her eggs around and he spreads his fertility around. That ensures a higher success rate for that spawn.

 That is important knowledge for fishermen, because most people think that once the female leaves the bed, only the male is left. It is true that the female only guards the nest for a short time before moving away, but other females will come to that nest. The other thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a long, drawn-out process. Once the water reaches the upper 60 degrees, which is ideal, it only takes about three or four days for the eggs to hatch. I think the male will spend about six weeks on the beds as the females rotate through, but the whole spawning season happens over three full moons, bringing a new wave of spawning with get full moon period.

 Cook emphasizes that understanding the spawning habits of the female bass will significantly improve your chances of catching some of the biggest bass of the year. He believes that the female often moves on and off of the bed to deposit more eggs (hatchery studies support this claim). Few females drop all of their eggs at once. Instead, they expel a portion and then move off to a nearbybreakline, bush or grass edge.

     

 It is this sporadic purging of eggs and the ability to spawn with different males on several nests that keeps the annual spring bedding season from being severely impacted by large tournaments. Texas Parks & Wildlife Department biologist Clarence Bowling says studies have shown that a female (when handled properly) will simply locate a bed and an available male in the area where she is released and complete spawning.

GET A LOCK ON THE SPAWN By Tim Tucker

[Sam]

Catt,

Fantastic article.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

I have seen baby bass in the late summer from a late spawn.  I would not have belieived it had I not actually seen the babies jump out of the water.

It was on the Mattopani River in Virginia where I saw the late summer bass fingerlings.

My friend, a very successful tournament fisherman, told me that he has seen the late spawn babies before and he was not surprised at seeing them again last year.

Nature works in wonderous ways.

[justfishin]

Good stuff Catt. I was curious. When I used to fish for big female bedding bass ( I gave this up a long time ago ) the females always had a " bloody tail " or a least thats what we called it. The lower portion of the tail would always be worn away and sort of bloody. I know the males sweep out the nest but, I always wondered if the lower chunk of tail seemingly eaten away was due to the bucks nipping at it to get some kind of reaction from the doe? Any ideas?

[Pa Angler]

That explains why a Bass clored lure works so well Bass are cannibals and if I remember correctly so are Walleyes I wonder if that's not true of all fresh water fish.