Skinny bass question

[Olebiker]

This is a picture of a bass I caught a week ago. Check out how skinny she is.

Would a bass be that thin simply as a result of having just spawned? The lake I caught her in, Lake Carr, seems to be full of baitfish and doesn't seem to have a lot of small bass.

[wilsonm1]

not sure :-/.........

[BassinBoy]

Yes I believe so.

[fishinfiend]

Is it possible that the fish could have sustained a serious enough injury, from a previous angler, to prevent her from eating for a couple weeks, which resulted in being underweight?

maybe it has self-image disorders or  it just has a big head and the body is the right size for its age   ;D

[Paul Roberts]

Some ideas:

-I've noticed from photos that a lot of bass in FL can be really thin like that. I always assumed it was due to heavy competition for prey.

-In my ponds (in CO) as bass start to run out of appropriate food for their size. They hit 16 or 18 inches, get skinny, and disappear.

-She could be old.

-Could also be water temps being too high and individual bass not catching enough food to keep up.

-The last option, her stomach might be impacted with a plastic bait she swallowed. Search "skinny bass" and look for the thread about this, from a couple months back. In fact, there might be an article in the articles section on this.

[Gatorbassman]

I talked with Bob Lusk extensively about this a few weeks ago. He had a client who had caught a bass that was that skinny but all his other bass were fairly healthy. Bob had his client put the fish on ice and overnight it to him so he could preform an autopsy on the fish. When he cut the fishes stomach open he found the problem. The bass had a large soft plastic lure lodged in the exit of the stomach. This prevented the bass from getting any nutrients out of the food he ate.

This is why whe shouldn't toss our used soft plastics overboard.

Something like this could be the problem with that fish. I've never seen one that skinny after the spawn.

[WRB]

Why do you think this is a female bass? Big head and skinny body could indicate an older male bass. Fish, like every animal, have different body shapes for various reasons, they don't necessarly come out of the same cookie cutter.

Bass don't loose a lot of body mass from spawning, maybe up to 10% of their overall weight. The bass in the picture has lost or never had any body mass and that would indicate a heatlh issue, eating disorder or a fish just getting old and ready to die.

WRB

[Team9nine]

She's a goner...

another site

-T9

[crazy4bass1]

She's a goner...

http://www../multi_boards/doc.asp?message_number=23672&ini=d:\asp_ini\mb_5.ini

-T9

what are you talking about?  

[Branuss04]

I talked with Bob Lusk extensively about this a few weeks ago. He had a client who had caught a bass that was that skinny but all his other bass were fairly healthy. Bob had his client put the fish on ice and overnight it to him so he could preform an autopsy on the fish. When he cut the fishes stomach open he found the problem. The bass had a large soft plastic lure lodged in the exit of the stomach. This prevented the bass from getting any nutrients out of the food he ate.

This is why whe shouldn't toss our used soft plastics overboard.

Something like this could be the problem with that fish. I've never seen one that skinny after the spawn.

+1. I"m a firm believer in this.

[teenyweeR]

Personally, I do not think it is a good idea to throw any trash into the lake. In this case the fish looks to me like it just may be way old. I have caught similar fish in water that also produced healthy bass.

I also agree that there could be something she swallowed causing the problem. I once found a huge bass (10+ lbs) floating in a lake in Ark. She had hit a crappie that was too big for her to swallow and it was lodged head first in her stomach. The real sad part was that fish was weighed in a tournament that same day.

[Bob Lusk]

A bass which looks like that did not lose weight due to the spawn. The weight a female bass loses from spawn is just the eggs which she laid. The males lose a little because they don't feed while they defend the nest.

This fish has lost flesh due to the need to metabolize it. That means the fish is undernourished or starving.

Here's where it gets complicated.

It might be starving due to blockage or injury to its digestive system. I've seen fish such as described above, where soft plastics blocked the intestines. I've seen hooks imbedded in the gullet, blocking the throat. I've seen hooks become lodged at the beginning of the intestines, minimizing the route food can take further.

It might be old age. Once a bass reaches its maximum age, it deteriorates and starves to death.

It could be a disease, although not likely. I have actually seen tumors that I suspect were malignant in the gut of bass.

It could be parasites, although not likely. Maybe four or five times in 30 years I have figured out there to be so many roundworms and intestinal parasites in a bass that the parasites actually digested more of the food than the fish did.

The other, most common, problem is lack of sufficient food.

Fish don't lose that much weight quickly. It can take weeks or months to lose that much body mass as flesh.

The bottom line is this...when you see a fish so seriously underweight, that fish is usually dead and doesn't know it. Can it regain its weight? Sure, but something would have to drastically change. The "problem" would need to be quickly corrected for that individual fish to stand a chance to recover and thrive.