Fish are often referred to as dumb creatures. While some fish are dumb others are smart and use their brains to locate food and survive. Take bass for instance. They are considered to be one of the smartest of all fishes.
Bass locate their prey by several methods. The primary method is by sight. However, they also have excellent smelling abilities and they have a lateral line that runs down their side which senses movement. In an experiment done a few years ago, researchers released minnows into a tank that was holding several largemouth bass that had been "blindfolded" with eye patches. The bass were able to easily locate the minnows through the vibration alone and intercept them one by one. This could explain why a bass can feed so successfully at night or in extremely dirty water.
One reason live minnows are so effective is that a live minnow suspended under a bobber probably gives off some kind of distress signal or odor which the bass intercepts. Studies have shown that a bass can instantly pick out an injured or sick minnow out of a school of minnows. This could be nature's way of not only providing an easy meal for the bass, but also keeping the minnow species healthy by culling out the sick and weak ones.
Of course, it's not just live minnows that are effective on bass. Live crawdads are equally effective. Years ago I did a simple experiment. I observed a bass on a spawning bed and cast an artificial replica of a crawdad to the fish. The bass ignored it. I then tossed a live crawdad to the same fish and he gobbled it up. I repeated the experiment several times and got the same results. The bass would ignore the plastic crawdad but grabbed the real thing.
Another factor is that bass are considered one of the smartest of all fishes. In a controlled experiment, bass were placed in a large tank and were exposed to a number of lures. Initially the bass would readily strike at a lure but after being hooked a couple of times the bass would ignore the lure. That could explain why the fishing gets so tough right after a major tournament. This is especially true at Clear Lake because of the number of tournaments held on the lake.
All the local tackle shops carry live minnows and they cost about $25 per dozen. It' not unusual for a fisherman to use up to two dozen minnows for a day's fishing. It is also the reason the reason that live bait of any type is not allowed in any bass tournaments. All this goes to show how little we know about one of our favorite sport fishes. Whoever can design a lure that a bass will consistently take as a live minnow or crawdad will have a gold mine.
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