This past Sunday on Twin Lakes, I lost a huge fat cow on a 5 inch swim bait.

My partner and I were trying to catch a nice male bass on a nest in 10 ft of super clear water. This guy looked to be about 18 inches or 3 lbs just eyeballin it. Now, when you add the fact that he was 10 feet below the boat on a nest, you know this fish was probably much bigger. We tried jigging for him, but all he would do was come up to the bait and stare at it. A half hour goes by, and not one take.

Then all of a sudden, we spot his wife, slowly cruzin about 6 feet away, circling the next. She looked at least 5 lbs or two feet long. I threw my swim bait out towards where we saw her go, and sure enough, I hooked up with her. I got her in about 12 feet from the boat, and felt her rising up to jump, so I stopped reeling. She came up and opened up her mouth like that lion does at the begining of the movies, and looked like she was laughin at me. Then she darted straight down, and "SNAP" off she went, never to be seen again that day. She broke my 14 lb vanish fluro clean off.

She was huge, and would have been my biggest bass yet.

+1

Made that mistake once. Vanish is exactly what the fish did every time I set the hook with that junk. LOL

Great article Rich.

Here is a huge smallie that Rookie caught last week when he was fishing a new lake. Unfortunatly he didn't have a scale with him when he caught it.. yeah, the smallies are getting bigger each year.

Well said Rich.

I'm a huge fan of the aggressive indescriminate feeding bass, but like you said, those are the bass most like caught and most likely caught the most often....and most likey end up being kept for dinner because of it.

I wonder if there might be any way to overcome that reality (in a perfect world) Maybe we keep bass caught on jigs and worms but release all the bass caught on aggressive presentations

Only my opinion again....but I think competiton breeds aggression too. In lakes with good bass populations they seem more competitive. We see it in smaller bass all the time, where the aggressive fish gets to the bait first. Throw a bait an equal distance between 2 bass and they just might be looking at the other bass more than they are looking at the bait. Whichever gets to it first wins. Obviously competition for food is much greater among 12" bass than it is with 24" bass for two reasons. First the 12" bass is limited on what food is available to them by the size of food that will fit in his mouth. Secondly it is surrounded by other hungry 12" bass too - not to mention every other crappie with a belly that is grumbling - so there's not time to be too selective and they need to act fast.

I find the same thing to be true in larger bass too if the population densities remain high. Problem is the bigger they get the less of them there will be to compete with, while they also become less and less limited by what will fit in their mouths. Still though, if you threw a bait between two 5 pounders....the instinct to get there first would still be present and your odds of catching one of those two are much improved in that situation than if either of those fish happened to be alone at the time.

The fact that the larger they get, the less of them there will be, is a given that we can't control(to a degree). Not to open a new can or worms here and debait slot limit management practices.....but the one issue I have with it, is that it results in more larger fish (over the slot) being removed from the population. I say in a trophy bass management lake, protect them all the way to 22" not 18".

In a typical CT lake/pond we have a relatively few big bass surrounded by excess forage, that don't even need to break a sweat to find a meal. In a few places I have found over many seasons (that shall remain nameless ) where good populations of larger than average bass exist, there is no panfish stunting. Actually the panfish don't roam the entire lake freely and they actually need to be cautious about where they swim. The bass need to work a little harder to find a meal and they will need to roam the shallows to do it. It is that competition for food that creates aggressive bass too. Where we have waters where there are so many panfish roaming the entire lake unchecked that a big bass can sit 100 yards off the bank in 15ft of water and accidently suck in a Bluegill while simply yawning......it is going to make for tough fishing.

Yes I exaggerate but only to make a point. We have lakes with excess forage base and a shortage of predatory fish according to the DEP......which in the simplist of terms means that it can easily support MORE large fish. Then why wouldn't we manage them for more large fish then?

Even if most people practice C&R on a particular lake and even if harvest rates are not significant from what they can tell - Legally or illegally, or accidently, every large bass removed or injured creates a void. Every 4-lb bass had a chance to be an 8-lb bass, until it's dead. I say set the management goals for "too many large bass" and see it we can ever actually get to that level