Damn, what a hog! He's not missing any meals. Congrats. 👍
No worries, I didn’t take it that way. But you do make a good point — spawning bass should not be treated any different than spawning trout.
I mean it’s clear that targeting spawning fish and immediately releasing them usually has no significant effect on a bass fishery. It’s been happening for decades and every basically major event for every major tournament trail in the spring is won targeting spawners. I believe for certain events on the elite series during the spawn they don’t even bring the fish back to weigh in, it’s just catch weigh and release (like MLF is). Point is that it’s been widely accepted since forever and as long as they are immediately released I personally don’t see an issue with it. I find more of an issue with the way many tournaments are done, I think B.A.S.S. should do what MLF has been doing. Although I have fished my fair share of local tournaments so I can’t really judge them for that.
Yea I know it’s old news really and I’m not ferociously against it. When you see ten boats at a creek mouth, especially guides and kayaks running up the creeks hammering 100+ fish it seems at least questionable to me.
The potential harms associated with bed fishing were first mentioned over 50 years ago (Kramer and Smith 1962). The principle concern associated with bed fishing is that if a nest-guarding bass is captured, predators will consume the unprotected eggs and fry. If substantial numbers of eggs and fry are lost to predation, then the abundance of juvenile bass produced that year may be low. Prolonged reductions in juvenile production could in theory lead to decreases in overall bass numbers because too few new bass would remain to replace the adults that die due to natural or fishing-related causes. Much of the research on bed fishing impacts has been conducted on the sister species of the Florida bass, the largemouth bass, in northern portions of the United States (Illinois) and southern Ontario (e.g., Philipp et al. 1997). Until recently, it was unknown whether impacts at the individual level, such as the loss of a single nest to bed fishing, scale to population-level harm. That is, does the number of juveniles in subsequent years decline as a result of the loss of one or a few nests?
Not worth the effort for the tiny males. But when I see a big female hanging around, I’ll fish for it until it eventually bites. They aren’t necessarily hungry while spawning, you just have to drag something over their bed until they get pissed off and try to remove it. Unfortunately the males usually bite first and spook the female. That is, if you can find the female. Sometimes they are only on the bed for an hour or two and that’s it.
I can think of only two or three fisheries in PA that would make serious largemouth fishing more interesting than other types of fishing at least for me. When I am fishing for largies it’s almost strictly with big 7+ inch long glidebaits (which somehow hasn’t stopped me from catching the dinky 1.5-2 pounders and also hasn’t increased my catch rate for the big ones.) Although I think a bunch of 10 inchers in a farm pond would be the perfect introduction to fly fishing for bass for me.
