BASS
BEHAVIOR WITH DR. KEITH JONES
Why Old Baits Catch Bass Today
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Keith Jones, director of fish
research for the Pure Fishing Laboratory in Spirit Lake,
Iowa,
has been studying bass for over 16 years. He’s
an expert in the field of bass behavior. Jones’
scientific research involves finding out what factors
will make bass attack lures and baits.
If a bass can remember its encounter with a particular
lure as this research at Pure Fishing tends to show,
we now can understand how a hot and highly-productive
lure one year may not catch as many bass the next year.
If in the third year, a large number of anglers fish
that same lure in the same area, then that lure’s
ability to catch bass decreases. “Let’s
look at a worst-case scenario,” Jones says. “Fishermen
want to know if a generation of bass has seen a particular
lure and wised-up to it, then how long before
that entire generation of bass is replaced by another
generation that has never seen the lure? The longest
documented lifespan of a bass is 20 years, and this
was an exceptional bass. However, the average lifespan
of a bass is 10 years or less. I believe that 99.9%
of all bass in a particular body of water will die within
10 years. Then you can fish with a lure the bass haven’t
ever seen, and it can be as productive as the first
time it was ever used.
But,
a more-realistic evaluation of when a lure can become
effective after the bass have already seen it may be
within three to five years. The lure the bass haven’t
seen in awhile generating more strikes than the hottest
new lures that the bass see every day makes biological
sense. In other words, the more frequently a lure is
fished in a population of bass, the less likely the
bass are to continue to hit that same lure. Any time
you introduce a lure that the bass haven’t seen
before, even if it’s an old lure, the more likely
the bass are to strike that lure.”
TOMORROW: WHY AREN’T
OLD LURES REINTRODUCED?
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