Fishing For Bedding Bass

Georgia has some of the best bass fishing in the United States. We hold the world record largemouth and you can catch seven of the eight kinds of black bass here. There are many public lakes and rivers where you can go and catch bass all year long.

Each year Georgia bass clubs send in a Creel Census Report that documents club tournaments. Carl Quertermus at the University of West Georgia has been keeping these records since 1978 and they show an amazing consistency in bass catches. There might be a cycle on some lakes over a few years but overall the averages change very little.

Our bass regulations are very liberal with a 12 inch size limit on most waters and a creel limit of ten bass per person most places. Yet our bass fishing holds up year after year. But some bass fishermen call for changes in regulations even though state fisheries biologists study the lakes on a daily basis and recommend regulations based on scientific research.

One of the most controversial things bass fishermen do, and it is happening right now, is catching bass off the beds. Tournament fishermen target big spawning females and some have perfected tactics to catch them. This is the time of year those big females are easiest to catch.

Is catching bass off the bed a problem? At first glance it seems taking a big female off the bed before she can spawn or catching a male guarding bass fry soon after the spawn would cause problems. And it might mean the loss of that bed and those fry that year. But what are the long term effects of bed fishing?

First you must understand nature and reproduction of wild fish. To have a successful life and keep bass populations stable a female bass has to produce only two offspring her whole life. She must produce a young bass to replace her and one to replace the male. Not each year, but only one time in her life.

Even without catching bass off the bed almost no eggs will survive and produce a bass that will live more than one year if the population is stable. Nature does not work that way. If many survived they would overpopulate and starve. So even if you take a female off the bed and she does not produce any young after being caught, she may have produced offspring in years past. And there are always many other bedding females that can take up the slack.

What about the genetics. Many fishermen say it is bad to take a trophy bass off the bed and remove her from the gene pool. Although you may stop her from spawning in the future, her genes, if good, are already in the gene pool from successful spawns in past years. A ten pound bass has spawned many times over her life so her genes should be widespread.

Since almost all bass caught in tournaments are released alive after weigh-in many of the females will complete the spawn even after being caught. It depends on where they are in their egg laying cycle when they are caught. And the male will eat his own offspring after guarding them. It seems at some point his parent feelings run out and he starts feeding on his own fry. So if you catch him just before he starts eating his young more of them survive.

Sight fishing for bedding bass is what is usually condemned, but the same people blasting sight fishermen will often happily drag a Carolina rigged lizard through spawning flats to catch bass. They, too, are catching bass off the beds, they just don’t see them first.

If you don’t like bed fishing for bass, don’t do it. But be aware it has not had any impact on our public waters in all the years we have been tracking bass populations.