Do Fish Learn to Avoid You?
I
would like to answer this question in a round-about manner.
First, I would like to present you with a few situations that I
have been in where fishing results deteriorated quickly. Then, I
will draw a conclusion that satisfactorily answers the question:
"Do fish learn to avoid you?"
I have been in several situations like this:
- Milk Run Dries Up. My partner Eto
and I fished a 25 acre pond several days a week for several
years. This lake had some super rock, wood and tall reed islands
that held some super bass. The water was dark and thick with
suspended particles. The bass lived in home spots nestled under
overhanging, cavern-like trees, cuts and points in the grass
islands, in downed trees, etc. We had a milk run where we would
go from "house to house". We pitched and skipped
several different colors of spider grubs at them, and did good
for about a month, after which the fishing slowed down. Realizing
this, we switched to wireguard jigs and tube baits, and the
fishing was immediately good again, catching many of the same
fish in these home spots over again. Sometimes, new, usually
bigger fish would move in, sometimes we would catch a fish we
knew in a different part of the lake, but mostly the fish stayed
put. One fish, my pet, lived against a rock bluff, under an
overhanging bush for four years, after which we never saw her
again. This particular fish was an exception and did not learn,
hitting our lures with regularity. Getting back to the point
though, almost all the fish definitely learned to recognize and
not hit the spider grubs after a month, but they readily took the
tube jigs like hotcakes when we introduced them. After that
slowed, we switched to lightly weighted black/red twister tail
worms with renewed success. So, I believe these fish became
conditioned.
- Weekend vs. Weekday. Also with
Eto, we hit this one lake that only allowed boats on weekends
after Labor Day. In mid-September, the offshore weed mats would
die out and shrink back into thick clumps that attracted big bass
like magnets. We would go out on Saturdays and buzz or
spinnerbait up about 25 nice bass apiece, releasing all. Return
on Sunday and do poorly. Come back the next Saturday and pinbait
another 25 apiece, again doing poorly on Sunday. This became
predictable for the remaining weekends this action lasted until
the lake closed in mid-October. Somehow I can't shake a suspicion
that these fish cavorted freely Monday through Friday, got worked
over on Saturdays, and were sore-mouthed and in no mood to bite
on Sundays.
- Increasingly Cautious Individuals.
In yet another lake, we hacked trails to get back through 15-25
feet of phragmites to reach otherwise inaccessible pools and open
waterways up against the shady sides of several islands. Some
huge, solitary big bass staked out these areas. They'd eagerly
hit whatever you tossed in there at first. But the more you went
back there, the more cautious they became.
- First Cast or Nothing. Also,
every time you flip or pitch a dropbait into cover, your chance
of catching an ACTIVE fish is by far the highest on the first
cast. By the time you make the second cast, your chances of
catching that fish are pretty slim, and virtually zero by the
third cast. Note, this is only a general rule, and the exact
opposite applies to sightfishing for INACTIVE fish, where you
have to drop on their nose 4-5 times to rouse them out of a
stupor. Point is, the ACTIVE fish accepts or rejects what it sees
right away - a reflex or reaction bite. If you blow it, you can
come back later and try again, but you better make that first
cast count!
I guess I have rambled on a bit, but the morale of the story
is "Fish are dumb, they don't have thoughts, ideas or
notions, and they don’t learn like you and I do, but they do
have instincts." The prime directive is to survive despite
all adversity. So, when a fish is not hitting your bait on the
second cast, or after a month of seeing it time and again, it is
probably the primal survival reflex in play, rather than the fish
theorizing about how to outfox anglers. The survival of the
individual is temporarily overpowered during mating season by the
instinct to reproduce, thereby ensuring survival of the entire
species rather than a specific individual. Another primal
instinct, which can even disrupt the nesting instinct, is to
survive through adverse weather and other environmental
calamities, such as floods, droughts, and oxygen depletion.
Beyond these primal survival instincts, there is a strong
instinct in largemouths to control a territory, and many times
bass attack your lures due to this territorial instinct, rather
than hunger. This territorial instinct is always strong, but
particularly in pre-spawn, when bass will patrol and kill
anything intruding onto the nursery grounds. Beyond these, the
instinct to nourish itself and replenish it's energy comes into
play, particularly so in autumn when the speculation is that fish
build up fat reserves to help themselves make it through the
winter. So, yeah, fish are stone plumb dumb stupid, but they sure
do have impressive instincts, some of which work to thwart
anglers' desires to catch them! |
