Why bass might be getting harder to catch

I speculated at length on this topic in my book High Percentage Fishing. Interesting to see some some actual research come out about it. A 20 year long experiment showed certain bass within the same population are genetically much more difficult to catch. These genes can become dominate in a fishery making it tougher and tougher over time.

https://www.post-gazette.com/life/o...sburgh-Pennsylvania/stories/201906130067

I agree. I call this the Predator and Pray Genes.

- The Predators get smarter over the decades of how to best catch pray. This is about ambush points and working the edge of light.
- Pray gets smarter over the decades of how to avoid being caught. This is about hiding in thick cover and working the shadows to become invisible.

Its all about avoiding the 20' contour line..

There are many more people on the water now than years ago. Pressure is affecting fishing. When the tournament fishing fad subsides things might shift back the other direction.

Hey thanks for sharing!

*** very insightful stuff here ***
so --- what y'all are saying is that the fish in the USA are genetically "smarter" than say the fish in Mexico or South America or the Small Mouth variety in Minnesota.
AND --- that now,,, Fork and Toledo Bend & Sam Rayburn fish have run off all the fish that don't have the "they won't catch me genes" and are populated with a bunch of smart fish that are much harder to catch.
***REALLY***
Tell the PROS that when come fish Fork or Toledo Bend
Tell the guys that who just weighed in back to back days of 30# fish down at Falcon in their little club tournament...…….or wait ….. maybe they caught them dumb bass on the Mexico side.
Maybe -- just maybe ---- the REAL fishermen still catch fish and there are more people fishing that don't have the right "genes" to catch those fish that do have the right "genes"
JUST MAYBE !!!

Post of the week. Lol

I'm not sure you understood the article. Nobody said bass would become impossible to catch. They said they could become harder to catch. And they have a 20 year study to back up their claims. Not to mention they just make common sense. So the fact people continue to catch fish is no surprise. The fact someone weighed in 30 lbs in a tournament is no surprise. Their argument is if this "genetic" change weren't happening, everyone would be catching even more and weighing in even more.

Their main recommendation by the way was to ban harvest and possession during the spawn. The fish that are genetically easy to catch get pulled off beds and their genes don't get a chance to proliferate throughout the fishery.

Evolution! I've thought this for years. I know fish stories will always be just that, stories. But when you have pictures and multiple witness accounts to backup how great fishing trips used to be back in the 80's-90's (and even before as well) then it sometimes makes you wonder where all those fishing days went!

Evolution of a gene pool takes thousands of years. Not 30. Haha.

I always thought it was from all of the catch and release. They're getting smarter

Macro evolution in nature takes thousands or millions of years. Micro evolution with massive amounts of human influence can happen in a couple of generations. This is particularly true with a species that reproduces in large numbers every single year.

Everyone is right here there are no wrong answers. It is all speculation. Even in a study if you can bare to read to the end to get to the disclaimers you will learn all the factors that cause a study to fall short in certain areas. A fishing study can only be accurate and put out the numbers if all the variable are the same everyday and the same on every lake. We all know that in the underwater world that is not possible. All the variables change with the weather and lake conditions which all cause the study to be flawed. All studies must be controlled to be accurate.

We tend to use the word "Smarter" too freely on species that live in an environment that makes it impossible to measure this degree of smartness. These species have a simple life and are adapting daily as that life depends on Food, Survival and Spawning.

This is why I feel that Mexico fishing is so much better than U.S. lakes and it is not because they are Dumber.
- There is a very limited number of different species of fish in Mexico lakes. Not as much completion for the food sources. Bass are at the top of the food chain.
- There are very limited numbers of Rough Fish that destroy the Bass eggs and eat the fingerlings. The Spawns really mean something down south.
- Netting is a good thing; as it takes out most of the rough fish along with smaller Bass. Management has learned here in the U.S. that the small fish must be taken out to produce quality Bass and that is not going to happen except in the private sectors.
- Netting Tilapia in Mexico is a huge industry and provides many jobs. Bass benefit from this as their food source is quadrupled with the Tilapia Farms.
- Mexico is about using the lakes to provide food sources as an industry and this works great to produce the Big Bass fishing industry.
- U.S. is about providing recreation. Management stocks every species of fish in all our lakes so you can catch a fish of your choice like; Small Mouth, bluegill, carp, crappie and catfish. This one factor alone holds us back in producing lots of large Bass with all the cantabile and nest robbers.

Bottom line.......its this!!!!!!!!

There are no wrong answers...maybe... wrong mindsets, absolutely.

What I mean is this... To just be one sided on the argument and not take into account the scientific data is asinine. Mr. Harper, you are in my opinion, one of the go to experts on this forum...and someone I admire greatly... that being said, I believe you are being too kind.

Let's call a spade a spade... people want to only believe what they want, not look at the information objectively. And, to me, this thread is a microcosm of what is wrong, at times, on this forum.

Jpurdue... thanks for bringing an interesting topic to this Forum... something I have never thought about before..

Agree.

Having no grass in a lake does not make catching bass a piece of cake either

Articles like this have been out for years-if you catch and keep bass you are getting more "dumb" ones than "smart" ones and the remaining bass will get harder to catch.

But with most fishermen putting everything back, I don't see that you will alter the gene pool. What I have also read is that there are some bass that
never get caught and some that get caught repeatedly.

I shared this article last week, I found it interesting . It's not stating that all bass are harder to catch just from there research that some were caught multiple times where as about 11 % didn't get caught at all. Someone else posted on my original post that TPWD had done a similar study. Think there were a ton of lures thrown in 1992 , I was there and there was. But Mr. St. Clair fish on a minnow in deep water still holds true.

I know one thing.....I use to be able to catch A LOT of fish on buzzbaits at night on Fork. We had a bunch of 30 fish nights on bb. If you can catch one now on a bb it's a miracle

They explain this in the article. It's mostly got to do with tournaments/harvest around the spawn period. Bass that are easy to catch are going to get pulled off their beds in far greater numbers than bass that are hard to catch. While they are sitting in a live well for 8 hours or taking a grease bath, their nest is getting ravaged. Thus the tough to catch fish will spread their tough to catch genes to a much greater extent.

I haven't noticed a decline in the amount of bass I catch now as opposed to 30 years ago. I do fish less for bass now than I used to back then but when I fish for them now my catch rate is about the same as far as I can remember. Actually, maybe a little better as the years go by and I learn new techniques and my skills have improved. Some good days some bad but that's been the same for 40 years now. I really haven't noticed any difference other than all lakes seem to go thru up years and down years production wise. I think it's more about adaption than evolution. As these fish adapt to old baits/techniques so must we. They get used to seeing certain baits/techniques, we use new ones.

thousands of years doesn't help some

Just remember this ....

When a big, DUMB (easy to catch 13+ pounder) is donated to TPWD, it’s DUMB (easy to catch) offspring are raised to fingerling size and RESTOCKED with a great chance to mature be JUST AS DUMB at their momma. This surely offsets any mutations that may occur in a gene that makes them “hard to catch”.

This is a ridiculous thread. Lol.


The article stresses “data”. Data is interpreted any way you want to interpret it. Scew it. Whatever.

JPurdue-

Excellent point and makes sense. I don't fish for spawning bass on purpose but thats a whole different conversation.

Interesting thread.

The smart ones probably have scar tissue in their lip!

What about this topic has made you so angry? What is your conclusion of the data that was presented?

After over 30 years of bass fishing I have to say, either I've gotten really good or the fish on the lakes I visit are dumber then rocks.

Not angry at all. I just don’t fall for the hype. It’s possible to take just about any data and arrange/support that data to sway conclusions in either direction. It’s only as good as the agenda being pushed.

Unique study but I am not sure I buy into it based on other things that we know to be true. Like statistically the biggest fish in a school or area bites first. But certainly I am glad this was posted to read and read again and think on what they are saying.

I don’t think that quality Bass are hard to catch , there’s just a small % that can . I have no numbers to prove this but from what I have seen on Lakes and Tournaments there’s always a few who can catch quality Bass . Most will drive around , beat the banks or potlick . It takes real skill to find and catch bass them .

Might be?

Are the species the same as 20 years ago? Ie Toledo Bend 20 years ago still had a lot of NA strain, 30 yrs ago they were the stocked species. They were easier to catch and I think the pressure then was greater there than today. Florida strain is now dominant. The study makes sense but just wonder if strain in the study is consistent

Interesting thoughts, article.

No hype man. Just a study. If you read through it you'd see this data can't be misinterpreted unless the people who conducted the study over 20 years were intentionally faking the data. If a fish was caught it was tagged. If it was caught again that tag # was recorded. After a few years they drained the lake. They counted the number of tagged and untagged fish. It's about as binary as you get. Some of the fish managed to never get caught. Other got caught and recaught many times.

No conspiracy here. Not saying our fisheries are going to collapse. Not saying folks won't still have amazing days on the water. Just suggesting a few minor data based changes that might make our lakes a little better over the long haul.