By TJ Maglio
PHOTO BY ROB MATSUURA
UNDERSTANDING
LEARNED BEHAVIOR
IN GAME FISH
CAN REVEAL BETTER TACTICS
FOR CATCHING BASS
ON PRESSURED LAKES
Oftentimes, critical thinking is what separates the
best anglers from all the rest. The most successful
of us spend ample time researching the most
recent articles and commentary, poring over fisheries
reports and aerial photos, and lingering long
hours at the ramp after a derby, decompressing and
yukking it up about what those “silly green fish” are doing.
Call it what you want – camaraderie, commiseration or
even amateur research – but it’s safe to say the majority of
bass anglers have spent at least the occasional drive back
from the lake (tail tucked firmly between their legs) pondering
what the bass were thinking.
For that matter, do bass even think?
It’s a fairly safe bet that they do; just not in the way
humans or even other more advanced lifeforms than fish,
such as apes, dolphins and crows, do.
How do we know bass think? We can tell by observing
fish interacting with their environments and how they
make the hundreds of tiny choices they make every day to
go about their lives; things like swimming up to hide under
a dock instead of the laydown next to it.
Take a bedding bass, for example. Why is it the fish
bites on the 15th pitch to the same spot, rather than the
third or 16th or 25th?
It’s because the fish made a choice to bite your bait on
that specific pitch.
Assume you fish a small lake or pond and you know
there are 500 bass in it. Why is it that you catch one on a
spinnerbait right away, proceed to throw it all day and
only catch a handful more? One bass ate it. If they weren’t
unique individuals making independent choices, it stands
to reason you should have caught all 500, right?
It’s the understanding of the mechanisms behind these
“fish thoughts,” as well as research on social interactions,
physiological oddities and their relative moods, that comprises
the frontier of fisheries biology.
JUNE-JULY 2020 | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING.COM | FLWFISHING.COM 51