Good information

Cool video thanks

Plus #1.

Ken this is such a neat subject. I’ve always wondered what the effects of tournament fishing- catching them and hauling them 10 or 15 miles to another part of the lake to be released did to them. Do they go back home or just make a new home area? Those fish in the study, did they move 5 or 7 miles or did a guy catch them, haul them around and then release them? Who knows? I’ve caught some big sacks right around Monterrey. Did those fish move into that area or did I catch last weekends released fish? I have read some books on tracking bass also. This is great stuff! Thanks for your work!

If I remember correctly, they had tags on the fish, and asked anglers to report catches, so it is unlikely the ones reported in this video (except for the one that was caught way down lake) were caught and moved those 5 miles.

Great content Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Makes me wonder if similar to salmon, bass spawn in the same spot they were hatched. Could explain the 12 mile trip some are making to their "prefered" spawning areas. Like others have eluded, tournaments could be the cause of some of these long migrations after weigh in dumps but that would not explain why the fish wouldn't just migrate back to its normal home after release. Possibly spawn is the only instinct strong enough to initiate that far of a trip. Hard to know.

Not surprised. I know my Toledo lunker was caught in six mile after I caught it in Indian mounds and released in housen. So the fish went south instead of the mile back to Indian mounds. I know of several other tagged Toledo lunkers that were caught 10-15 miles away from their initial caught area and rereleased.

I believe most species of animals,birds and fish have a built in GPS or "homing instinct"......not only do we have birds like homing pigeons but there are many examples of dogs finding their way home from long distances ....I know of one example of a fish that traveled almost 14 miles......years caught a 4 1/2 bass out of a brush pile on lake Martin (Al.)...this fish had been injured or had birth defect that caused a indention on top of it's back plus splotchy markings around the indented area....fish was weighed in and released at the old piney Woods landing....two weeks later,caught the same fish out of same brushpile....this fish had swam almost 14 miles from the release area...
was told by a reliable source of a similar situation in south Louisiana where a fish was caught,weighed in,tagged and released.....month later this fish was caught again beside stump he originally was caught at.....and the fish had to swim 11 miles and make several turns through a series of bayous/canals to get back where he was caught...

This jacks with me because I would have thought the fish caught in Housen and released in 6 mile would have gone back "home", but to Todd's point there is so much forage and the water conditions are so similar in 6 mile to Housen that maybe he just thought to heck with it, I'll stay here. From the other fish he talks about it is apparent that most of them have some sense of where they are and when they travel where they are going, so they have some kind of "homing beacon", and some studies of released fish suggest the same, so no way to know if this fish was "lost" or just found a new girlfriend in 6 mile.

To David's point they are externally tagged with a phone number on them. Also if you saw my video the last year Greg Ostertag caught a 4 or 5 lber that had part of the tail, or something really distinctive about it, caught it up the Attoyac side near 103, brought it down and either weighed it at CB or Jackson Hill, and then caught it again later at the same spot up the Attoyac.

Ken, I wish you'd ask Todd if bass have any "scent" markers like a deer would leave. Or any kind of marking their territory like many animals do. Probably not possible, but if ya don't ask, you don't know.