Alien Influence On Largemouth Bass
Bass may sometimes travel in schools, but they go to school, too, especially during the summer. In bigger impoundments like Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake, a lot of them have even attended a few Tournament 101 lectures for extra credit. We have taught them well. They"ve learned about our worms and our creature baits and all those wobbly things with fancy paint.
Of course, they haven"t all paid attention. You can still throw the same old things and catch some little truants and juvenile delinquents with battered lips. But if you want to catch some mature fish with diplomas and broad shoulders, you might want to "think outside the box." The standard tackle box, that is.
Look at it this way: For a bass to survive, they must learn to avoid predators. When they"re little, most everything out there-even larger members of their own species-are predators. It"s tough being a bass fry, and the majority of them don"t make it past fingerling size because everything thinks they are finger-licking good.
The few that do reach about a foot long develop enough strength and length to discourage the biggest aquatic predators. At this point they"ve got it made. Nothing with fins can pick on them anymore, and survival-which before was so complicated and menacing-now comes down to the simple task of getting enough to eat.
The tables have turned, and they become very confident and aggressive, attacking anything that is small enough to fit inside their expanding jaws.
This is about the time our buddy the bass starts learning about alien predators from another dimension. These weird-looking creatures fly about in UFOs that skim across the surface at amazing speeds, and they fool him with stinging things that look a lot like food.
He could have sworn that easy meal was a minnow.
At first, he doesn"t associate them. But it doesn"t take him long to learn that the things that bite him back and jerk him around with violent force-and these strange alien monsters-are somehow connected.
This connection becomes pretty obvious when one of these beasts sticks a thumb in his mouth and rips a hole in it. That"s gotta hurt. He can"t see as well as when he"s in the water-but he can see. This alien is huge. Besides that, he"s extremely ugly and menacing. Doesn"t look like anything he"s ever seen-not even the biggest, meanest, ugliest catfish. At this point, he"s sure he"s a goner.
But somehow he slips away.
He doesn"t know if he did something to escape, or if they just tossed him. He doesn"t know a thing about the complicated concepts of catch-and-release or length-limit restrictions. All he knows is that suddenly he"s flying through the air and splashing back into his world.
At any rate, he"s as exhausted as he"s ever been in his life and he doesn"t ever want to go through that again. So he heads down to the most secluded place he knows to catch his breath, so to speak, and think this whole thing over. This was the most traumatic episode of his life. Totally unexpected.
Just when he thought he had outgrown all the dangers of his environment, these alien predators show up-and they mean business. This was worse than that big, old, white bass that chased him around when he was a kid.
He may not feed again for days, and when he does, he"s not about to bite anything that looks like that minnow with supernatural strength.
What he doesn"t know-yet-is that these alien beings are extremely cunning.
A few weeks later a gangly-looking crawfish (jig "n pig) passes right in front of his nose and he gobbles it up without thinking, because he dearly loves tasty crawfish.
Lesson number two.
By now he must realize that these alien beings are the most formidable adversaries of his existence. If he is to survive, he must become selective about the things he sucks into his gaping yap, and any time he sees these ugly aliens or hears their strange space ships hovering about-he better hide.
It"s not like it was. Years ago if a bass made a mistake, he wore a coat of cornmeal. Today he wears educational scars. It"s anybody"s guess how many times a bass is subjected to these hard and dramatic lessons before they reach legal length. A 15-inch bass is three or four years old and has gone to summer school a few times. But it doesn"t end there.
The most proficient fishermen today release all their fish, all the time. Every weekend they gather in large groups and, after they subject them to extended periods of stress, they slide even the biggest bass down long tubes similar to water slides. What a lesson that must be.
Besides, it really is true that big bass often get away before an alien can bend their lips and look them in the eyes. So, by the time they grow to over five pounds, most bass have earned the equivalent of a PHD in Alien Predator Techniques.
We aliens spend a lot of time trying to figure out the natural habits and habitats of largemouth bass, but our most important consideration these days may be the affect unnatural fishing pressure has upon the educated feeding habits of the species we love to fool and fight and flop back into the water.
Author: Ron Kruger
Ron Kruger has been an outdoor writer/photographer/editor for over 30 years.