A number of fishermen are wondering why it”s so easy to catch bass using minnows or other live bait and so hard to catch them using artificial lures or plastic worms.
For example, the local fishing guides have switched almost exclusively to jumbo minnows for the simple reason that their clients can catch fish. Let”s face it, a client doesn”t want to pay $400 for a day on the lake and not catch a fish. He/she wants to catch a lot of fish. Most of the guides say their clients are catching 10-20 bass per day using live bait, but only a few bass when they switch to artificial lures.
Another good example has been the number of fishermen having success using live minnows or shad at the docks at Library Park in Lakeport. The live bait fishermen have been loading up on both bass and catfish whereas the fishermen using artificials have been struggling to catch two or three fish in the same area.
Fishermen have known for years that live bait will catch three times as many bass as artificials, but many don”t know why. Today”s modern technology has resulted in most of the lures closely resembling the real thing. For example, the modern swim bait mimics a live minnow down to the smallest detail. Yet, a live minnow will still catch more fish than a phony one. There is a reason that bass tournaments don”t allow live bait and it”s simple. Live bait catches more fish.
Bass locate their prey several ways, the primary method being sight. However, they also have excellent smelling abilities and they have a lateral line that runs down their side, which senses movement.
In an experiment done a few years ago, researchers released minnows into a tank that was holding several largemouth bass that had been “blindfolded” with eye patches. The bass were able to easily locate the minnows through the vibration alone and intercept them one by one. This could explain why a bass can feed so successfully at night or in extremely dirty water.
One reason live minnows are so effective is that a live minnow suspended under a bobber probably gives off some kind of distress signal or odor which the bass intercepts. Studies have shown that a bass can instantly pick out an injured or sick minnow out of a school of minnows. This could be nature”s way of not only providing an easy meal for the bass, but also keeping the minnow species healthy by culling out the sick and weak ones.
One local guide told me he located a school of bass and as soon as he dropped a live minnow down, a bass would grab it. However, when he used an artificial minnow or plastic worm he didn”t get a bite. The bass would swim up to the artificial lure, look at it or even nudge it and then just swim away. But it was just the opposite for a live minnow — the bass would aggressively attack it.
Of course, it”s not just live minnows that are effective on bass. Live crawdads are equally effective. Years ago I did a simple experiment. I observed a bass on a spawning bed and cast an artificial replica of a crawdad to the fish. The bass ignored it. I then tossed a live crawdad to the same fish and he gobbled it up. I repeated the experiment several times and got the same results. The bass would ignore the plastic crawdad but grab the real thing.
Another factor is that bass are considered one of the smartest of all fishes. In a controlled experiment, bass were placed in a large tank and were exposed to a number of lures. Initially the bass would readily strike at a lure but after being hooked a couple of times the bass would ignore the lure. That could explain why the fishing gets so tough right after a major tournament. This is especially true at Clear Lake because of the number of tournaments held on the lake.
All this goes to show how little we know about one of our favorite sport fishes. Whoever can design a lure that a bass will consistently take as a live minnow or crawdad will have a gold mine.
