fishing pressure...

[Red]

me and a buddy have been hitting two ponds really hard for about two weeks now....and each time we go the catch becomes less and less to the point now where on our last trip we didnt even get a single nibble....can a small pond get "fished out" that fast? should we leave it alone for a while?  we try tons of different baits and presentations but only a few of them seem to produce fish....can the bass get wise to a certain bait and not want it anymore?or do we maybe need to slow down and downsize the bait being presented? the best luck has been on trick sticks, top waters and cranks...jigs and spinnerbaits have only produces a couple fish and t-rigs have shown nothing.....normally i would just assume that the fish arent biting that day....but the pattern shows less and less each time.....any tips is greatly appreciated

thanks

Cliff

[Taliesin]

Depending on the size of the pond, it's very possible that they are getting overfished.

I have a pond next door to me that I could overfish if I went twice a week.

But it's only about 1/10th an acre (with at least one 2+ lb bass and 3 1+ lb bluegill).

[Raul]

Several of my uncles have dairy farms, on the land they have ponds used to transfer water from the wells to the irrigation system for the crops to run the food supply for the cows. I stocked or they already had bass, bluegills and tilapias in them.

Those ponds are my little honey holes not far from my home, besides, in practical terms I 'm the only person that fishes them and they all are off limits to anybody else ( my relatives don 't want anybody aside from the family in their land ), 10-15 min drive and I 'm ready to fish. At first when I began fishing the ponds I made a killing everytime I paid them a visit, you could even throw a bare hook and the fish would hit it, which is not strange since the fish had seldomly seen a lure. Since they are so close to my home I visit them frequently ( 2-3 times a week ) for a "quickie" after work, but me visiting them frequently has caused that the fish have become increasingly harder to catch, you can still have a good time catching the little ones ( 0.5 - 1 pound ) but the bigger fish are another story.

Now to catch a 3+ pound fish requires a lot of thinking and a lot of dirty tricks that I have learned through the years. I tell all this because me going to those ponds is like training for the times when I go to the lakes and it works, I catch fish when the rest of the people get skunked with the usual techniques and baits.

Consider it as training.

[IdahoLunkerHunter]

Fishing a particular spot can definately slow things down. I have a couple spots that the public have decided is now their bank spot. I still occassionally fish them but its slow. I only fish about 5 different lures on a regular basis in each of these spots. The fish might become a little aware of what is coming in front of them, but you have to remember that bass are predator fish. Sometimes they will not hit something because of the presentation or something feels out of place. I do alot of sight fishing and if I see a fish or some kind of structure I know there is fish there I will hammer that spot untill something bites. This seems to work most of the time for me. It might take upwards of 15 casts to that exact spot but most of the time something will grab it because it is invading its space.

[Sam]

In his book, Knowing Bass - The Scientific Approach to Catching More Fish, Dr. Keith A. Jones relates this information on pages 132 and 133 in the Hearing and Virbraton Detection chapter:

I quote, "Not only are bass equipped to instinctively avoid certain sounds, they also quickly learn to avoid sounds associated with unpleasant consequences.  Chapter 2 describes how bass readily remember experineces with past lures.  In that vein, a habit of overusing acoustic lures can haunt the anger.

One of  the drawbacks of sound-generating lures is that they tend to stand out like sore thumbs, especially in quiet waters.  Because their sound makes them easy to identify, these lures make it easy for bass to associate a past trauma with the memory of being hooked.

A bass caught on a rattling crankbait and then relased remembers its ill experience well.  The likelihood that the bass will ever respond again to a similar bait is now measurably reduced.

Many a story is told of rattling baits being initially effective on naive bass populations, only to quickly lose their edge after the bass catch on to the game. Buzzbaits are known to suffer the same short-term usefullness.

In nature, older, experienced bass may learn to simply avoid the distinctive sounds of anglers altogether.  Glen Lau, a photographer renowned for his underwater video work relates that while diving one day, he observed the response of a very large female bass to passing boats.  Boats motored by, their passengers systematically working the shoreline, ignorant of the hugh prize right beneath them, and the female would effect a casual retreat into the safety of the surrounding cover.

After the anglers left the vicinity, the bass would ease her way back out into the open until the next boat came."

This is why I throw Senkos and Zooms one day; a Chatterbait the next; and then back to the spinning and crank baits when I fish a pond.  I also try to use different rattling baits and buzzbaits just to be different from the sounds made by my coanglers.

Just food for thought.

[Guest ncbass24]

The same thing is happening to me. Me and my buddies fish two small ponds close to here almost every day, but in the past week or so we haven't caught but anything but a few dinks. We just decided to lay off them for a while, probly 3 or four weeks.

[GLADES]

In addition to bass becoming wise to certain popular lures under heavy pressure from fisherman, it might be possible that large older bass my also associate the sounds of trolling motors to bad experiences.

I am not an expert, but I have observed that most of my largest bass were caught when I was drifting or using the trolling motor sparingly.

In the straight canals of the everglades, I always keep the wind to my advantage.

KM

[Red]

well me and my partner are the only people fishing these ponds....and i always try to tie on something other than what he is using....as far as size goes, the biggest fish we have caught came one senko, jig and crank..but numbers goes to the senko for sure.....i appreciate the good info guys....gonna hit these ponds again tomorrow, it has been a few days....but due to lake waco being flooded and the huge storm that has been sitting here for the past hour or so....i dont think i will be able to access the lake anytime soon, so these ponds are my only choice for now...and i would rather be casting and not catching than not casting at all...i will let you know how it goes

thanks again

Cliff

[armesjr]

I have a stocked 6year old one acre pond in my backyard, that i have been fishing for the about the last three years.  What i have noticed is that every year i catch less and less fish.  I always catch more fish at the begining of the summer than at the end of the summer. My nice size fish to dink ratio, decreases every year.  The first summer i fished the pond, i caught a ton of fish on tubes, now they wont even touch a tube if you throw it out there.  So i def think that fishing pressure clearly has a major effect on the amount of fish you catch, and the size/quality of the fish you catch.