COLUMN: CONSERVATION
FINDING BASS PART 1: HABITAT QUALITY
The first step in locating bass is assessing structure and cover
I
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TJ Maglio is a tournament
angler and outdoor writer
based in Minnesota. He
has a degree in wildlife
ecology from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and
has also worked profes-
sionally as a wildlife biolo-
gist and environmental
consultant.
20
n the last column, I dug
into high-level popula-
tion factors that impact
the relative quality of a bass
fishery and how to understand
why certain lakes and rivers
consistently produce more or
better bass than others.
As insightful as that conver-
sation is, not all of us have the
flexibility to choose from fish-
eries all across the country.
Most of us focus on a handful
of lakes, rivers or ponds in our
immediate vicinity.
Step one in catching bass in
your local fishing hole is finding
the fish, which means thinking
less about population dynamics
as a whole and focusing more
on the various factors that may
cause a bass to hang out in an
area at a specific moment in
time. In other words, by answer-
ing the simple question: Where
are the bass in this lake today?
The three most important
factors are 1) habitat, 2) food
abundance and availability,
and 3) competition. In this col-
umn, we’ll focus on habitat.
Forage availability and compe-
tition will be covered in
upcoming issues.
Habitat Generalists
If you can glean anything
from the proliferation of black
bass across the country, it’s
that they are textbook habitat
generalists. From heavily vege-
tated cypress swamps in the
South, to deep, rocky reservoirs
out west, bass can survive and
thrive in just about any habitat.
But on any given day, where
are they?
The answer isn’t clear, and
it’s certainly not static. You can
catch a bass in 30 feet of water
on a rock pile, and then ease
up shallow and pick one off a
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