20 Yr Experiment SHOWS Why BASS FISHING May Be Getting HARDER…

Bass fishing seems to be getting harder and harder every year. Some people might say that lake conditions are getting worse or others may say that the fishing pressure is getting bigger. This 20 years study shows why exactly fishing for bass may be getting harder.

BASS HAT: https://finnfishing.com/products/bass-hat
IG: ty_berger
Science Daily Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414153532.htm

As we know largemouth bass owe a lot of their longevity in size to their parents genes. This is why we see organizations like the Texas Park and Wildlife invest so much time, money and effort into their ShareLunker program which helps to breed big bass

In an experiment spanning more than 20 years researchers also discovered that vulnerability to being hooked or caught is also a heritable trait among largemouth bass.

It’s important to know before I talk about this research experiment, all this information can be I have gathered comes from the Science Daily article “Born to be caught” which I will link in the description below.

This study was done on a 15-acre research impoundment run by the Illinois Natural History Survey. In this strictly controlled environment, certain anglers reserved certain blocks of time to go fishing. Every fish that they caught was placed into a livewell so that the fish could be measured, tagged and then released back into the pond to be potentially caught again.

The researchers kept tracked for 4 years of every fish that was caught in this 15-acre impoundment and after 4 years of documenting every catch the lake was completely drained and the bass were collected alive.

Roughly 1700 bass work collected from the lake and the results from the study are a bit staggering.

For instance, one bass was caught three times in the first two days of the experiment, while another bass was caught 16 times over the course of one year. However, one of the most interesting parts of the experiment was that 200 of the 1700 bass had never been caught even though they had been in that lake for the entire four year period.

The research did not stop there. Researchers then labeled the 200 fish that had never been caught before as LV bass, or Low Vulnerability. On the other hand, Bass that had been caught more than 4 times over the course of the four years were labeled as HV bass, or High Vulnerability Bass.

These bass were then separated and placed in two separate research ponds. The LV bass placed in 1 pond to produce a line of LV Offspring and the HV bass placed in another pond to produce HV offspring.

The two lines were then marked and raised in common ponds until they were big enough to be fished. Controlled fishing experiments after that clearly showed that the HV Offspring were more vulnerable to angling than the LV Offspring bass.

This selection process was repeated several times over the course of 20 years and as predicted, vulnerability was found to be a heritable trait.
Not only was it a heritable trait but vulnerability actually grew larger between the HV and LV Bass. The LV bass continued to be harder and harder to catch while the HV bass actually showed a small increase in catch rates over time.

The researchers did not speculate as to why certain bass were High Vulnerability or Low Vulnerability to begin with but in my personal opinion I simply believe that some bass are smarter than others, just like people.

BassFishingHQ is dedicated to teaching people how to catch more and bigger bass. I will go over different bass fishing tips & techniques that will put more fish in the boat or on the shore. Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned tournament angler, my goal is to help you catch more bass.