Fishing for Bedding Bass - Benign Past Time or Cause for Concern?

It’s March, and the signs of spring are popping up everywhere in Florida. Days are longer, temperatures are warmer, and trees are beginning to bud. Birds, flowers, and bees are becoming more active, and with the warming temperatures, underwater activities are heating up too. More specifically, Florida Largemouth Bass (Micropterus floridanus) are beginning to move into the shallows as they seek to begin their spawning season.

If you’re an angler this time of year means the potential to target bass that are both highly vulnerable and readily accessible, with a legitimate shot at landing a big one. This is in large part due to the reproductive biology of Largemouth Bass; they excavate nests in shallow water commonly visible from afar, display parental care (i.e. they protect the young in their nests), and will  attack predators (or lures) that enter their nests. The process of specifically fishing for bass as they defend their brood (eggs and young) is known as bed fishing, and a simple internet search will return hundreds of websites that detail specific baits, techniques, and strategies to target bedding bass (Figure 1). Indeed, bed fishing is a practiced by many and staunchly opposed by many others. At the center of the debate is whether the removal of guarding parents is bad for the overall bass population. Numerous studies have shown that bed fishing can cause individual nests to fail, but does this scale up to the entire population?

Figure 1. One of many websites that provide detailed information on how to catch bedding bass

A Conservation Conversation- Behind the scenes at B.A.S.S. tournaments

    As graduate students, we are afforded opportunities to work and collaborate with a range of people in fisheries and conservation sciences. In one of those instances, we had the pleasure of having dinner with Bass Anglers Sportsman Society’s (B.A.S.S.) own Noreen Clough (the recently retired B.A.S.S. conservation director and a former US Fish and Wildlife Service regional director). Over dinner we discussed the pros and cons of tournament fishing. Coming from B.A.S.S., Noreen told us why black bass conservation mattered so much to bass fishing organizations.

Figure 1 - Sportfishing for largemouth bass

    B.A.S.S. annually sponsors dozens of bass fishing tournaments nationwide. These include large opens like the 2013 Southern Open, a three-day event hosted at Lake Tohopekaliga, Florida. These Opens draw hundreds of amateur and professional anglers. For the first two days, each professional angler strives to catch their five-fish bag limit (the final day of fishing pits only the top-12 per class against each other). In the first two days of fishing up to 1,500 largemouth bass can be caught per day! To non-tournament anglers, these intensive collection events can be alarming. “Aren’t you killing or harming all those fish?” is a question that might be asked. To help answer this question and cast more scientific eyes towards these tournaments, Noreen invited us down to watch fish-handling practices at the 2013 Southern Open.

The hydrilla monster– a murky mystery

It came from beneath the deep

From a far off, foreign land comes a plant that dominates lake ecosystems, changes animal habitats, ensnares boat propellers, and corrupts anglers’ willpower…  Then again, maybe it’s not so bad.  The truth appears murky.

Prepare for the invasion!

Hydrilla Hydrilla verticillata invaded Florida from Sri Lanka and India in the 1950’s, most likely through the aquarium trade as it makes for a nice aquarium plant for fish.  It’s a submersed aquatic plant that forms a dense canopy near the surface, kind of like a mushroom or rainforest.