Maybe just for giggles, some biologists years ago decided to see just how much largemouth bass are attracted to structure. They painted the inside of a big kiddie swimming pool white, added water and bass. The bass swam around aimlessly.
They then added a board over one side to create shade; later they substituted a pile of rocks in the bottom. The bass gathered in the shade and around the rocks respectively. After the “structure” was removed from the tank, they gathered around a black stripe painted on the inside wall of the tank. Go figure.
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All this might point out just why these crazy largemouth bass are at the top of the list in creeled tagged fish in “The Maryland $1,000,000 Challenge” tournament being run by the Department of Natural Resources. It can also give you a tip or three on catching a tagged fish to get in on a chance to win $1 million come September.
It seems, according to DNR spokesman Marty Gary, that far more coastal/tidal-water fish (stripers, croaker and white perch) are being tagged than freshwater fish (largemouth, smallmouth, walleye, crappie, catfish, sunfish, rainbow trout, brown trout) by a ratio of 2 to 1. Even so, largemouth more than any others are ending up in livewells and on stringers. Gary facetiously wonders if largemouth bass are suicidal.
According to our figures, of the fish caught by Week 5 of the tourney, 89 were freshwater catches, and only eight were tidal species. Of those 89, 50 were largemouth bass. Only five were stripers from the Chesapeake, where Diamond Jim ? worth $25,000 ? is swimming around right now. That?s some big odds for largemouth getting you into the $1-million fall fishing lottery.
This all leads us to the catches of two tagged largemouth, caught in Cunningham Falls Lake on July 6 by Mike and Tori Twigg of Smithsburg. The Twiggs both caught their tagged fish at the same time under the same limb of the same tree.. A Texas-rigged worm proved to be the undoing for both bass. Mike caught another tagged largemouth from the same lake the next day.
DNR biologists note that they tagged and released the bass in the center of the lake and nowhere near the shade tree in question. This proves that bass are gonna do what bass are gonna do, which means hang around structure.
So if you want a tagged fish, fish largemouth. And fish structure where they school up.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally-known sportsman and award-winning writer on hunting, fishing and the outdoors, and he has more than 20 books to his credit. He can be reached at [email protected].
