Removing bass from their beds

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tag Watson on May 31, 2011 at 9:29pm

You're dead on, Potter.  99.9%. 

Josh Potter said:

Most of the SM that are caught on beds are males.

Permalink Reply by Zach Chandler on May 31, 2011 at 9:51pm

Yeah man, I was just using that species and fishery as an example of a similiar more frequent event.  There are a lot of people out there that care for crappie just as much as we care for bass, not everyone grew up in same area as you.  I agree with everything else you said, good points.

Jeff Grimes said:

First of all, who cares about crappie.

 

Where I come from, Crappie are a pan fish and you can keep a lot of them and size doesn't matter.

 

Bass, however, I have always been a Catch and release guy...and the Natural factors such as floods and drought, I believe have been pretty devastating to the Bass spawn at times.  Those areas I spoke of before, that were exposed out of water, were areas where the fish had already made beds and laid eggs.  Of Course, some may not have, but a large number already had.  If you think about an area that is a mile long and 1/2 to 3/4 mile wide..and a rock shallow spawning area, that is a lot of Bass.

 

On the other note, the Yakima River is a big Spawning area as well.  What happened to all teh big females that were on beds ready to drop eggs....when the water rose 10-12 feet and was rushing at 4 times the normal rate bringing debris and extra muddy water down with it.  Not only did the eggs suffer, but the fish themselves may not make it as well.  We are talking the big ones too.....4-7 lb smallies.  Do you think that having  100 anglers fish for bed fish in a tournament, is going to impact the fishery more than Mother Nature does?  100 guys.......60 might Sight fish......those 60 guys might catch 10 per day maybe.  600 fish is a lot.  Out of those 600, a large majority have not spawned yet, and were caught guarding the bed.  Those fish can still spawn after being released.......I don't have figures or data, but I believe that there is a very small affect on the spawners from Tournament fishermen than everybody thinks.

 

Zach Chandler said:

Jeff, you bring up some interesting points.  The river dropping and elevating is a huge factor in fish reproduction in my opinion.  With the spawning flats being exposed I'm sure some of those fish have found other areas to spawn, but what will happen when the river is raised again.  A good example of how this affects fish is in Brownlee Res. with the crappie.  I've read that a good spawning year is what populates that fishery for the next 2-6 years until the water is at the right level at the right time again for a banner crop of spawners to reproduce.  The runoff dictates how much water is released and when it's released, sometimes there's not enough water for the majority of the crappie to spawn

Jeff Grimes said:

I am curious how you feel about the Rivers ( YAkima and Columbia) being so high and fast recently with all the debris flowing down them ....and in turn destroying numerous beds and spawning areas and blowing out which could result in a high loss of population.  Nature takes fish away from beds just as Anglers do.  I would venture a guess that the flooding has destroyed and affected way more bed fish than any number of tournaments could. ( this year) 

 

Also, asa result of the anticipation of flooding, the Columbia was dropped severely on the Wallula pool exposing huge spawning flats down below the Snake River....which I am positive that fish had already been in there bedding and such.  

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