An Article on Closed Seasons

[Mike Clifford]

Learned a few things about bass spawning habits from this.

A really good read.

 

http://www.in-fisherman.com/content/closed-seasons-conservation-concern-or-needless-restriction/1

 

Perhaps Ridgway’s most astonishing finding, though, is the revelation that only about one-third of all adult smallmouths actually attempt to spawn in a given year. Moreover, the factors that determine which bass comprise the limited spawning cadre are established during the previous summer.

 

 

“What this means,” Ridgway says, “is that if you pull a bass off a nest, no rush of new fish are waiting to move in. Once the spawning decision is made, it’s final. Pull a male off his nest, and no one else will replace him.

 

 

“Furthermore,” Ridgway says, “if the population of larger smallmouth is fished down, smaller bass must be rushed into the spawning stock—ahead of their time—to assume the spawning chores in subsequent years. But smaller bass spawn later than larger fish, even when small bass are the only nesters left in a lake.”

 

 

The offspring that small bass produce are at a distinct disadvantage in reaching the critical size necessary to survive the winter starvation period. For all intents and purposes, bass don’t eat once a lake freezes. As a result, young-of-the-year bass must eat and grow fast enough in the first year of life—typically to the size of your little finger—to survive to the following spring. Thus every day’s delay in the egg-laying stage is another potential threat to survival. But the scenario gets worse still.

 

 

“Once the big bass population has been ratcheted down through harvest, small bass are forced to start spawning ahead of their time, thereby reducing their reproductive life span to just one or two years,” Ridgway explains. “Like the young-of-the-year, they starve to death during winter. Smaller nesting bass, 12 inches or so, suffer a high mortality rate—the cost of reproduction.

 

 

“Few of these fish survive to spawn twice. But, as the size of nesters increases, up to seven, eight, nine or more years of age, the return rate is much higher. Older bass don’t seem to pay a survival price in terms of reproduction as smaller fish do.”

 

 

[Paul F]

Thanks for sharing Mike... I had a lengthy conversation with a co-worker of mine over lunch just about a week ago about the effects of catching spawning bass. My argument was that they probably do not return to the nest, And apparently I was partially correct.

 

Usually out of principle I will not fish for them while they are spawning but now I have solid evidence as backup. For whatever reason, In all these years I have been fishing I never really thought to read up on the effects, I just figured it was unsportsmanlike and left it at that.

[Scott Ferguson]

I think the point of the article is that when you remove a spawning bass, another bass will not move in to take it's place. If you catch and keep that bass in the fall or in the spring, you have one less bass that will spawn. If you immediately put the fish back, he may return to the bed. Keeping fish at anytime of the year potentially removes breeders from the system.

 

The overall catch and release ethic of most bass fishermen is why bass across the country are doing so well. Even with all the potential pitfalls the spawning bass are up against, they still get the job done without much help from humans. Compare that to the walleye fisheries that depend heavily on stocking. Walleye anglers are not as likely to catch and release fish.

[Mike Clifford]

I like the story about how they needed a technician diver along to keep the swarming rusty crayfish out of the nest while another implanted a radio transmitter in the fish.