Educated fish and Catch-and-Release

Here's the question?

Are fishermen educating fish about what’s edible and what’s to be avoided. Anyone who fishes heavily fished waters can tell you that fish get good at avoiding lures – Is it due to Catch-And-Release? Its true Catch and release preserves fish stocks, but does it make it harder for the average fisherman to get strike. Is every fish we throw back a bit warier of the lure that caught it?

A few thoughts on the matter:

If so, a lure that is especially popular will have a group of the fish population that can differentiate between that lure and food, in spite of the vibration, sound and action closely mimicing baitfish. One solution may be to use lures that make natural sounds and vibrations and that the fish haven’t associated with being hooked. Ever wonder why some of the most used and once productive lures become non-producers in heavily pressured water? A color change using the same lure may not be enough to fool a fish into striking. Fish normally hear or feel a lure before they see it. Even so if the sound and vibration of the bait are associated with an unpleasant event like getting hooked the change may not matter at all.

What do you think...Do fish learn to avoid lures? Does Catch & Release produce a lure smart fish?

*excerpt from an article by woodenlures.com

When Bass are feeding heavenly and competing for the food supply, I don't think it matters much. When they are not, now this is where the problem lies. You must have baits that hold all the senses that fish especially the huge Bass are looking for to fool them. It takes everything you can produce in sight, sound, vibration, smell and the subtle techniques that others are not paying attention to which helps to sew up the deal on getting one to bite.

To answer your question about do they get accustom to the same old baits? Yes they do and the easiest example to show this is with a captive audience in a pond. Provide them with a new subtle bait holding all the senses and you will have a great time for several trips. As time goes on and a couple of trips later it is over with. You have to come up with something different to offer them and the catching will pick back up again.

This is why I would go as far away from where others would be fishing to throw my spinner baits. New water and new fish become very important and with the pressure today with 100's of more boats on the water this becomes almost impossible. Deep water structure has become your best ticket.

They learn to avoid lures.

I'm probably not paraphrasing 100% accurately, but there was a study where fish were caught by lure in pond A and placed in new pond B. Fish were then caught by net in pond C and placed in a new pond D.

The subsequent fish strike/catch rate with the same lures was significantly higher in ponds C and D when compared to ponds A and B.

I read a similar article in IN-Fisherman about a study done looking at catch rates on ponds.

It showed that they sure do respond to pressure by being less likely to bite.

That was looking at the population as a whole.

The most interesting thing to me when I read that...There were some fish that got caught over and over again and did not seem to mind.

And another group of individuals that never got caught at all, not once.

So there is some variance at the individual level.

back in the mid 80s there wasn't but a handful of us in on the wacky worm and it was scary how many bass you could catch on Toledo with it.as the word finally got out gradually the bite went down then dramaticly. it still catches fish but not close even on the best day to what it was.nature has a way to ensure survival.

If you have ever studied psychology then you have heard of conditioning and conditioned responses. B. F. Skinner and Pavlov and a many host of others have done studies using animals like rats and dogs and..... Studies show that even the simplest minded creature can be conditioned to respond to a stimulus in a positive or negative way. Mother nature does this in many ways. Have you ever wondered why some creatures mimic poisonous creatures? It is simple really. Look at butterfly's, some have a bitter taste (poison) and when the predator eats one they dislike the flavor. So the next one (it might take them a couple) they come across they let slide because they associate the color pattern with a bitter flavor. Now other species that do not taste bitter are on the menu. However those that resemble the bitter one tend to be left alone and are able to bread and reproduce, now we are getting into genetic traits. Then you have a species that mimic / resemble say the Monarch but are not and are allowed to thrive because of a conditioned response with in the predators. Now lets take this to the large mouth bass. The bass (as a population) when caught and released will tend to be conditioned to certain baits or sounds in the environment (sonar, TM....), all depends on the individual fish, and will start to shy away from that stimulus. But this is just my opinion and the way I look at it. I could be totally off base here. Like Donald said above when they are in a competition mode and feeding I am sure all of this goes out the window because their predatory responses over ride the conditional response, and that could be why guys like Keith Combs say crank as fast as you can to produce that reaction bight..... But again this is only my opinion.

Caught the same fish 3 times off her bed.

bed fishing is different. they aren't trying to eat, they are protecting their nest