Facebook Live 1 31 18 Bass Behavior Why They do What They do

greetings everybody Bob will us care the pond boss coming today from world headquarters upon Maas magazine nestled up here along the Red River north of Sherman Gainesville area north of Whitesboro Texas looking forward to having a little talk with you now tonight's topic we're going to talk about why bats do what they do best behavior that ought to be pretty fun so start kicking your questions at me in the meantime I've got a few topics we've had a couple of questions to come in over the week and we're gonna see if we can tackle that before we really get too far into it got to tell you about Paula's magazine if you're not a subscriber and you've got a pond or a lake you need to be a subscriber to pond boss it's good stuff I see Todd watts is on board hello Todd hope you're not freezing to death up there Herc in West Virginia and today's talk you know talking about largemouth bass gonna have a whole lot of fun because the thing about largemouth bass is in the ponds where they live they're typically the dominant predator you know and the thing about that is that you got to understand a little bit how they act what makes them do what they do so I'm gonna take a minute here and see if I can get this live feed up on my laptop so I can see your questions a little bit easier and then we'll get right into this topic so got my laptop in front of me and see if I can't get this video up rock and see it there we go there we go I got it now got it okay so let's start talking about largemouth bass I see Mike rivers is on board and the first thing I'd like for you guys do if you don't mind this right now if you don't mind share the video with your friends listen if you do that I would appreciate it you know last week we asked folks hey Scott Lindsey good evening tea buddy glad you're on board you know last week what we did was I asked you to do two or three things and several of you did and I think it's I think we're gonna do the same thing tonight I know Jake the West isn't yet but he's gonna be fun to find out that he won a hat and a month upon was mug so here's what you got to do to be in the drawing for that is to if you don't mind in the comment section put hashtag pon boss magazine click like on palm boss Facebook page and then share share the video and you can do that as soon as we see the hashtag palm boss magazine then Lian will pay attention to that she'll have a drawing but we'll get it done Jason next adds on board hey Jason glad to see you're on Kevin Briggs is with us today hello Kevin alright I'm gonna get into this and I'll keep drinking people as they come on but what I want to talk about is why bats do what they do you know the thing that we got to remember about pretty much any fish is that they that they that they act based on instinct and conditioning now where I'd like to start with that is bass for example instinctively know that they need to spawn so they can carry on the species they know that they're predator fish that's instinctive you know they have kind of a fight mentality that's instinctive so there's a number of things about bass in fish as a whole that are instinctive that's just that's just their instinct the rest of it is conditioning so they get conditioned to their environment when a bass grows up in a certain environment they get conditioned to that environment and I've had a number of people over the years say well hey I caught a bunch of fish out of this pond over here or caught in my Lake Fork and I brought them over here in this lake but I don't ever see them well that's because those fish get conditioned into that environment and if you switch environments and bring them into another one that doesn't mean they're gonna make this is that they're gonna make the switch let's see we got holy cow we got a lot of folks jumping in there's Anthony abates see Richard Clark gym liner alex shorts on board glad you got it yeah let's get this yeah let's get this shared please do okay so now when we start talking more about bass let's just start off as an egg when a when a female bass lays eggs and the what happens when they begin to breed what happens is the male builds a nest and typically it's a crater it could be in an old tree stump it might be in six feet of water and it might be in three feet of water but it's one nest with one male bass who's defending that nest then the female comes in and he may spawn with five or six females it depends on how many are right with eggs and ready to go so he may have a nest - Scott eggs from several females in there and then he'll guard those eggs while the female goes away and she might go spawn in another nest so that's part of nature's way of keeping the the species from interbreeding you know from to avoid that so that little egg hatches when the egg hatch let's just just for numbers sake let's say that that there's 50,000 eggs in one nest which is that's not uncommon that's not unusual for that many to be there well when those eggs begin to hatch they're little bitty fry that may be about twice as big as the head of a pin and as they hatch they're yellow and then they you can see two little bitty black dots under the eye and if you look real close you can see a short body and what is the yolk of the egg and over the next few days those babies absorbed the yolk of the egg that's their nutrition and then once that happens then they'll turn into what's called swim up fry and they'll swim up from the nest and that's when those five or six days in the spring maybe two or three times in the spring you'll see just little groups of bass maybe in a what this big they're maybe twenty-five to fifty thousand of them in one school and they'll migrate up to the shore what's happened is the male has pushed him off the nest their dads push two months in this that's fair game he may eat some of them because the whole world changes once they come off the nest so they head for shallow water and since they haven't eaten they don't have any body fat so their first thing they do instinctively is to start feeding on microscopic plants and animals primarily zooplankton if so plankton is available they'll feed on that and that's when those instinctive predatory things that they do that's when it really starts to kick in and they start to do it I see Mike rivers is on board Katie Ferguson from Alaska Wow hi Katie good to see you glad you're here so what we're talking about is now the swim-up frog come up in a pretty big school and then they start to move around they move around the pond they get up usually in shallow water and at that point all hell breaks loose and all their other predators are chasing those fish wanting to eat them so their survival rates are typically pretty low because in nature the parents mission is just to replace themselves you know so as those fish get a little bit bigger even though those little bitty fry are feeding mostly on zooplankton in bugs the bigger they get the bigger their mouth becomes the bigger their mouth is the bigger the meals and some of those little fish in that school are gonna grow it much much faster rates because they're more aggressive they figure out how to live in that situation if you're going to how to feed in that situation so when that begins to happen you start to see some fish in our and our business we call them jumpers because they jump up and get bigger it's not unusual after about 3 to 4 weeks to see some bats that long coming from a typical school or the rest of them are that long well that face is this big can turn around and eat all these brothers and sisters and cousins and they will so now that the little finger legs are starting to get to be 4 inches 5 inches long now they're probably eight weeks old 10 weeks old when they're 5 or 6 inches long there's all not nearly as many as there was Katie Ferguson says when you come back up to the Walker compound I don't know and I love that that was a lot of fun since you just invited me we'll put it on the calendar Alaska is a great great fun place to be so as these baths swim up and they start getting bigger their habits change their behavior changes when there's 6 inches long 7 inches long there just is instinctively concerned about Eitan as they are what they can eat so they're not only fighting to for food they're fighting to hide and keep from being eaten and over the next three or four weeks their numbers drop even more exponentially so out of that original school of 50,000 eggs and then 40,000 babies or whatever they are it gets drilled down from that one school to maybe a hundred young ones that are six or eight inches long and by the fall in a perfect world there'll be ten to twelve inches long and they might be 15 or 20 of those out of that school so their numbers drop well part of what I wanted to talk about is is is instinct compared to conditioning so you can imagine that these little fish when they come off the nest and they start to feed they become accustomed to whatever is available in that pond they get accustom and conditioned when I say conditioned it's the same thing as Pavlov's dogs know when you take your dog and you say sit give them a treat sit give them a treat these fish are the same way so they get in there and and they start getting conditioned to that environment that habitat and that's a situation that water chemistry and so the fish that are genetically predisposed and have the opportunity to thrive in that environment they will if they don't get eaten you know that's the catch 22 in a bass world now remember this I've mentioned this and other other broadcast this is something I always want to drive home it takes about ten pounds of bait fish for a largemouth bass just to gain one pound ten pounds of bait fish you know so they're constantly on the prowl to eat well as they do that they become more conditioned as they get bigger they don't get confident they get conditioned to where the bigger they get the less likely they are to be eaten so then they can start dominating certain habitats certain structure and cover and things like that so they'll you know when a fish gets bigger a bass gets bigger say a pound and a half or two pounds in their second year then they start to dominate some of the more preferred areas of habitat so they might be hanging out by that log unless there's a six pound bass over there that doesn't want them to you know or they'll get eaten so the conditioning is a big big deal and there's a number of things you know as anglers I said let me tell you this everybody watching me can out fish me I promise you you can you can win if you said hey let's go bass fishing I'm gonna be watching you because I'm gonna learn something from you but I don't know that there's very many of you watching this can they can beat me when it comes to raising those fish that you're trying to catch that's my that's my deal I love to do that it's really fun and part of the part of the things that have made it fun is that I've had a chance to get out there and study these fish through different eyes than an anchor I get to see them with their the electro fishing boat you know I get to see them when we when we build structure and run the electro fishing boat over that structure where's the fish or their good gosh here they all are you know and by building lakes and then coming in a few years and draining them you know just to see how it's worked I have a chance to do that this is my 39th year of doing this and it gets more and more more and more fun hey sorry about that my phone started ringing and I thought I had it on airplane mode anyway so as a student of this fish thing it's just fascinating the things I get to learn compared to what somebody in a boat above the water gets to learn so I want to share a little bit more about that I guess one of the where I want to go next is some of the physiological things about largemouth bass even though that's a big word they're instinctively conditioned to that environment by their sense of smell their vision their lateral line the lateral line that's a good place to start lateral lines what that does is that's that line that you see across the middle of a fish that starts behind it goes all the way to its tail and that lateral line is a hollow tube kind of like a vein and what it does it's got gas in it so when there's any movement in the water the lateral line senses that and then sends an impulse to the brain of the fish and the fish is then instinctively knows to either move to move away based on conditioning it knows it needs to react some way barometric pressure changed then when that happens they sense it through their lateral lines you know and so the lateral line is is one of the sensory mechanisms that a fish has and now largemouth bass keep in mind here's nothing something real important that I don't know that a lot of people think about but a largemouth bass doesn't have the ability to think it can't think it becomes conditioned it's got its it it's not like it can sit where it is and look around say well you know there's a bunch of bluegill up there and there's a bunch of shad over there it can't do that they fast can't reason and it just to me it's kind of fun when you start thinking about how much time we spend as anglers trying outsmart an animal that can't think you know so as we were doing as we're out there in the boat trying to figure out how to catch that beast we're trying to out thinking well I think sometimes we overthink it when we try to out thinking but I'm gonna give you some of those variables that influence bass behavior you know when they when you start thinking about their sight bass or sight feeders but some of the biggest bass I've ever electro fish came out of water you couldn't see six inches in you know so what that tells me is those fish in that muddy water have become conditioned to that water so they can't depend on their vision they have to depend more on their lateral lives so when they sits there another dadgum my granddaughter's trying to FaceTime me she has no idea and I didn't turn this thing on on airplane mode oops so anyway the UH when the bass when the when the bass sense movement and muddy water they're going to be more likely to come investigate that limit cuz how they're gonna get to eat so if you're fishing muddy water for example you need to use something makes a lot of noise you know it needs to you know rattletrap or something that's making a lot of noise would be the way to fish for bass in muddy water let's see craig McBride's on board hey Craig Robert gießen and Leanne's tuned in glad to see you guys looks like we've got about twenty six people on right now that's good 27 now good good so when you're thinking about bass thinkin rethink it cuz they can't do that what you got to figure out is what can I do to make those fish fight so there's here's some behaviors for you there's really only three reasons a largemouth bass will bite raise your hand if you know what they are oh yeah okay yep okay yep there we go all Aquatics hello there a bass largemouth bass bites for one or all three for three reasons number one is they're hungry and I want to talk about that here in a minute number two is they're reacting so there's movement they sense it they sense it with their lateral line if they don't see that bait or don't see that school of fish or whatever it is it causes them to to move make them move they sense movement so when they sense that movement they'll turn and then they'll go investigate they almost always investigating up especially in warmer water now in colder water or hot water that doesn't hold true but most of the time when they're actively feeding they investigate up to go eat the second reason that they'll strike is the reaction strike the reaction strike no feeding feeding reaction but they're reacting to movement almost every time and the third time the third reason know about your hook is to defend the nest or defend the territory if if there's a big bass land beside a log it doesn't want anybody come in that are messing with it no go run it off you know I've actually watched a bass a female bass that was spawning with a male bass on a bed just for fun I threw a worm out there I've done this several times and one of those fish will pick the worm up and just move it out of the nest they won't swallow it they put it in their mouth or you can where you can set the hook they'll just pick it up and they'll move it you know so the three things feeding strikes reaction strikes and defending a territory now that's testicle feeding fish behave feeding because they're hungry and that's instinctive and then they're conditioned to the food chain that's available at that moment in that area and during different seasons that food chain changes because fish spawn fish get eaten fish spawn again fish get eaten some fish grow come in there where they don't belong they get eaten so keep that in mind when you're thinking about feeding now here's the thing about feeding a largemouth bass let's say that let's say we have a three and a half pound bass that eats a ten inch bass that 10 inch bass is gonna in warmer water probably it's going to take that bigger fish two days to digest maybe even a little bit longer but that doesn't mean that that's big backs won't be hungry and hit another lure because it's it can you know so think about that now out of that feeding process when you start thinking about the feeding now my videos quit when you think about feeding they don't eat all day long they may come in and feed for 30 seconds you know they may leave the safety of that area where they are go feed they might are they gonna find their food they're going to inhale it quick and then they're gonna go back to where they were and that's where they're gonna hang out for the other 23 hours 59 minutes for the most part now the bigger the fish the more likely they're that they are to do that okay you know what we got a question looks like Jason nips Ted says when removing bachelor Blake's to keep the population in check we typically remove what we catch fishing are we removing the more aggressive fish and leaving the less aggressive would it be better to remove fish via electro fishing yes that's true aggressiveness is is genetic it's inherited there's been a number of studies around that proves that up so if if you're going to harvest fish exclusively by angling then my recommendation would be this pay attention to the links and ways the reason you want to harvest fish is because they're getting overcrowded when they get overcrowded you've got too many fighting for the same space and a limited food chain and in that case the most aggressive fish are going to be the ones that are growing the best that are getting bigger quicker so judge their body condition if you catch a fish that fought extra hard you pull it up and it's got a deep body thick shoulders in fat around the tail even though it may fit into your slop limit that you've decided that you're going to harvest go ahead and take leave throw those back those big fat chunky fish put those back in the lake but if you catch one that's uh 75 percent of what it should weigh 80 percent of what it should weight take it out but the answer your question is yes let's say you're Robert says ken Milam always told me anything under 15 inches and taken out that's a pretty good rule of thumb you know especially in lakes where the bass are really really crowded you know taking them out but at the same time what Kent and kid knows this as well Ken myelin by the way his radio show host the sunday sportsman and he's got a Saturday show on 1300 the zone out of Austin he has me on as a guest pretty often so on Saturdays and Sundays you tune in he's on Saturdays from five in the morning to eight and on Sundays six to eight he's got a good show if you want more details email me at info at pond most common and I'll tell you more about it but uh when you're going back to Jason's topic as you're harvesting those fish let's let's say your that your lake is overcrowded now and has been for a while start calling call call call and once you get to the point that you've reduced the numbers of bass enough that the remaining fish begin to grow then you can start judging which fish to harvest and which ones not to Nick Peterson hey Nick fisheries biologist he says hey Bob great to hear bass talk again brings me back to my largemouth bass studies with dr. Willis and at SDSU and dr. Neal at Mississippi State all set up and supported by the great folks at pond boss and the Jesse West research scholarship I'm enjoying these videos keep them coming Nick great to hear from you man wish I could spend some time with you you know dave willis was one of my very dear i call him my best friend ever and i still grieve over that i'm just a wish he was still around and dr. Neal man what a superstar that guy's fantastic so glad to hear that you're on Chris Dobbs glad you're on buddy we're talking about large mouth bass tonight so the question on the table is about culling some fish and taking out the most aggressive fish in my opinion electro fishing is random and it's better because then you can select for fish that you know that are underway and return fish that are overweight or about angling a bit the hook and that means they're pretty aggressive but as long as they're underweight you can do it by fishing to the downside the electrofishing is it cost money well you know so does a truck so does a side of the fishing rod so it kind of depends on your level of Management Dustin Powell he's at church tonight but he sent me this question earlier today he said on your topic of bass and what they do I'd like to hear how clear water affects their actions how can we use this info to become better fishermen not gonna be able to watch loud but I look forward to seeing afterwards well largemouth bass or site fees that's how they'd rather do it they would much much much rather see to eat you know like I've said earlier the lateral line detects movement so even if there's something going on let's say there's a school of threadfin shad that's 40 feet away and they're moving in unison all around through the water you guys that do this much you've seen threadfin shad flush you seen them running big schools well when they do that that bass that might be 40 feet away can sense the movement by the vibration coming through the water so what they'll do is they'll investigate so they'll move toward that movement anything as they get to it when they can see it that's when they instinctively decide to eat it or if they see that that big school of fish they thought we shad is actually a great big batch bigger than they are then they can flee from it but yes they in clear water it's they can see a lot better which means you have to have a little bit more stealth and you have to have a little bit more presentation tactics to catch the bigger fish especially Chris you betta when do you electro fish harvest see when you do electro fish harvest should you remove green sunfish as well any other species you know that's a good question um the way that I look at fisheries management is we sit down with each landowner and figure out the goals and then we figure out where they are we'd come up with a game plan and that wouldn't when I say you figure out where they are that may be an electric fishing and find out what fish they've got which ones they don't which ones they're missing which ones they need and then we make that choice so what may be great fish in one leg may not be such great fish in another so if it's a case to where we want to remove green sunfish sure do it when you're electro fishing that's a good time to do it oh you know we got a bunch of new folks coming on if you will if you will type in hashtag pond boss magazine click like on this video and share it your name goes into a hat for a hat and the video as a matter of fact and in any I made tossed in a copy of pom-poms bags the mere fact I will if you don't get it just you know when when lien does the drawing jacob west won at this last week so uh and also have your friends subscribe to the magazine because there's only you talk think this is fun there's a lot of stuff and every is amazing let's see here we got Kevin Briggs do bats in a pond get conditioned to stay in the middle of the pond to stay safe you know you know I don't think they get conditioned to stay in the middle of the pond to stay safe here's what bats do we we've got a study that's ongoing though we're learning a lot of stuff about speaking of South Dakota State they're the ones that we worked with to help start it and they pretty well taken it over there's a lake in East Texas where we have radio tagged about 40 bags and those radio tags last about 18 months and we we tagged these fish in stages you know start it off with like 18 or 20 and then add it more the thing that's really really interesting to me is how those fish behave especially in the summer and in the winter hey Bob we sure there's dawn winter out and Brandon is on Dusty Luton with the Whitesboro fishing club is on board so what happens with these bass that a radio tag is we're studying their movements and stuff it's pretty amazing cuz there's a couple of things that I mean is even as long as I've done this I had no idea that bass did this it actually floored me I would I think I said last week when I was telling a little bit about this story I would have bet a steak dinner against what I'm fixing to tell you but it's the truth these fish with the radio tags some of them are moving there's one bass in particular that weighs 7 pounds and 125 acre lake that moves 2 miles every day summer winter and it's not like it's running a trapline it's going from there to there to here to here and if there's just no method behind it at all and it may sit off of a point for four hours and then move 200 yards and sit there for an hour and then it may move again and again in conversing there's another bass and that length it's about 3 pounds that never leaves an area bigger than a football field you know so these different fish genetically and by their conditioning and particularly or your lake can be their movements gonna be different you know instinctively I think that bass want to stay close to cover habitat like a big bass it's its favorite place to be is in fairly shallow water off of a point with access to quick but deep water next is some kind of structure whether it's a drop-off or a log you know or a rock pile or whatever that's where the big fish really like to be that's what they choose now in this particular lake that we're studying the habitat was old so it was gone and we'd added some brush piles in there maybe 10 or 12 years ago and they deteriorated and they were gone within about six years so studying those bass we started adding some habitat to the lake and when we did some of the fish that moved quite a bit reconditioned coming to the habitat while there were others that even though the habitat was was increased a lot they didn't change their conditioning they kept moving I remember one story there was a guy Houston that bought some property and wanted to build a lake and part of his conditions is he wanted some big bats well we went got some big bass two great big ones I'd have a muddy lake when I was thirteen and a half pounds and as we moved those fish into his new lake the next two or three years they deteriorated there were conditioned to those muddy waters off that big ranch and when we put him in that clear water they didn't know they couldn't change they'd been there for a long long time hey I see it was Scott Lindsey Lance Barbour Blake Wilson Weisberg I can't see Blake Cary Cooper wood hey Kerry thanks for joining up with us the UH you know the next thing I'm gonna go is um how does temperature affect it you know some of those fish that we tagged one of the things that fascinating with it I would have bet against is in the summer time in this particular Lake and this is gonna hold true for your legs as well in the summertime water temperature gets really really hot bats don't like heat they don't like cold they don't like heat what they like is water temperatures somewhere between 55 and 85 degrees let me tell you a story this was back in nineteen 2004 I got called to come help develop a fishing program in upstate New York between Rochester and Syracuse for a man out of Syracuse New York well they had like five or six lakes there and my charge was to help people enjoy the fishery so when I was brought on board I thought I was gonna go there to help them grow more fish but it didn't take long to figure out that that wasn't the problem the problem was that people couldn't catch fish so we started working on some plans to to to hire some guides and bring in some good equipment you know so that people could actually go enjoy the fish but in the meantime the owner challenged me with this he said he said okay pond boss loves I want to raise some bass bigger than eight pounds well I kind of got the condition in my mind that their growing season was too short so I'm thinking okay how are we gonna take fish the biggest one I've seen and the any of these lakes around here was six and a half pounds so how are we gonna grow some eight pound bass so what I started doing was I started calling some biologists I called biologists I called fisheries professors up there and had caused some hatchery people in the private sector as well as the public sector and mnek when asked the question matter of fact I've brought a bunch of them together and had a meeting I said okay why can't we raise bass up to eight pounds or bigger in upstate New York well every one of them said because the growing season is too short the genetics won't work and it can't get the food chain so start thinking about that ok there's the box you know and we're all taught to think outside the box well in order to think outside the box you got to know what the box is well there was the box well was thinking about that um when I was coming home from the second or third time I'd been there I'd go spend a week or two weeks at a time sometimes a month at a time up there trying to help crack the nut and I remember was able to catch an early flight back up there one day so I flew into Rochester and I rented a car and I called ahead and let him know it was gonna be about four hours early I was supposed to be there 10:00 at night I was gonna be there around 6 o'clock so one of the guys that answer he says hey the chefs are gonna have a wine tasting tonight well huh I didn't drink one huh no anything about it I was kind of fascinated just to learn about it hey there's Josh flowers and Joshua woods glad to see you guys on board so I get there there's my bride debby Dobbs Debbie Dobbs loves I'm talking to him about the wine tasting at Savannah dude so uh I go in and they've got this guy that owns a vineyard and he's a he's also a sommelier and a winemaker so this guy's an expert and he's got six or seven wines that he's going to pair with different foods that the chefs have prepared there at Savannah dude well his mission was to try to sell them some wine because they wanted to serve New York wines and he had a winery there in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York which is beautiful country and so he starts going through his his spiel in the story he told that just as impaled in my brain even today he said you know when I bought this this vineyard on the shore that one of the Finger Lakes here he said the first year he said my grapes bloomed later than what I was used to they grew faster than what I was used to and they would churn faster than what I thought they should so I called my mentor in Napa and I told her what the Brix content was you know the sugar the color the acidity how juicy they were and she said pick your grapes he said well I don't quite file tell me what's going on she said well you know grapes need 125 days to grow a perfect weather and you have those days 125 of them in a row here in Napa we've got a hundred and twenty five days spread out over about two hundred and fifty days of our season so it takes longer so raise my hand I said hey what's the perfect great going day and he said well the perfect great growing day is when the when the temperatures are between 55 and about eighty-five I thought oh my gosh that's the perfect Baskar loading day too so went back into the National Weather Service records and started tracking all the data I could find for that part of the country and sure enough they've got about a hundred and twenty-five perfect bass growing days in upstate New York guess how many you've got guess how many we've got we have a hundred and twenty-five perfect bass growing days spread out over about three hundred days now what they don't have is they don't have bluegill growing days we've got bluegill growing days though our weather is perfect for bluegill production probably 350 days out of the year three hundred and thirty days out of the year so it was a growing season at all it was food chain so when we started focusing on the food chain there two things happen they had a bunch of small hatchery ponds on this five thousand acre preserve we started raising a bunch of bait fish and just transferring bait fish to feed the bass and then we've brought in some fish that had superior genetics and it wasn't long I think two years two and a half years we had some bass up over eight pounds and this it was had to do with giving them enough food and conditioning them with the way we fed them we didn't we would come in once a week or twice a week with with bait fish to feed them even working with mark Cornwell from a SUNY Cobleskill he was raised in tiger trout we got some of those tiger trout about that big to feed the biggest bass in these lakes and it worked great so looks like we got Jerry Ola and Jessica Frost hello there Jerry odors that was one of the very very best videographers I've ever met go to his Facebook page if you're interested in making a video because he is the very very best so let's see here Bob washer says what does it mean when they say your pond flipped which is what caused your fish to die well when a pond flips this part of where I was going to go long ago this is a good segue into that when the water flips the the nature of water the physics of water when water is 39 degrees it's the densest that it can be it's the heaviest so in the summer time coming up here in a few months as our water temperature starts to go up our days get longer so it's sunny longer we get more heat pushing into the water when the heat pushes into the water and the wedding and when didn't waves mix it then that he gets stuck in that part of the water because as the water warms up it expands gets lighter so that heat wants to rise in that case so what happens is the wind and the waves and the Sun can only push the heat down so far and you wind up with a layer cake effect you have a layer of water here sitting on top of a cooler layer of water here this is warm this is cool in the middle the transition is called the thermocline so what happens when your pond flips it's when those two layers of water equalize in the temperature and then they mix which is normal in the fall for most lakes now here's a significant thing about bass behavior on the topic is in the summer time what we found from these tagged two baths over here in East Texas at that 125 acre lake what we figured out was that those bass go down in the thermic line and they sit there now the water above the thermicon the thermic line is that layer where the water transitions from this warm temperature to these cold temperatures below the thermic line there is zero oxygen by the middle of summer so fish can't go down in that cooler water and survive they'll suffocate so what they do is they'll go and this is to answer the question about fish moving out into the middle of the pond to be safe they move out in the middle of the pond because they're looking for a better temperature and better temperature is that temperature between 55 and probably more like 55 and 82 or 83 once it gets warmer than that they're struggling that it's it's what they don't like water temperatures that are hot so what they'll do is they'll migrate down into that layer of water this between you know that thermicon that's where go now what's interesting about that is we've checked that thermic line when those bats are sitting in it and the oxygen goes from maybe five or six parts per million above the thermic line and that good 30 vibrant healthy water and it goes to zero below but in the thermic line it may be three parts per million oxygen but it might be five degrees cooler hey Jerry Kathy : Pierson Timothy Phillips glad you guys are on boards Timothy I see you've got a question will tackle that here in a minute that's kind of interesting question so what happens is those basket in that thermic line and they just sit there because they're trying they're seeking cooler temperatures then that hot layer on top of them in the summer so they would much much much rather have their ideal temperature than oxygen which I wouldn't bet that I would have lost that state dinner back if we'd have made that bet four or five years ago because I would bet you they would get down to the thermocline but not get in it but that's what they do now think about their behavior when they're in the thermocline they're trying to be cool so to speak not suffocate but they're also not active now the reason the fish will go out in the middle of the pond is because it doesn't have structure that he can orient to in the thermocline okay now that's a pretty important deal think about that a minute if you've got bass that are sitting in the thermocline and they're complacent they're not asleep they're just not not moving if you want to try to find them in that thermic line what better place to find them then around some kind of structure so if you've got structure or cover this like a rock pile or that's why bill dance tells me he likes to fish underwater hums he likes to go out and in the middle of a lake in the middle of the summer Kentucky Lake is the one he was telling me about when we talked about that and he goes out and he finds that underwater hump that's above the thermic line in deeper water and he'll start working that hump trying to find fish to entice them to get a reaction strike out out out of them or make them defend where they are so you know in in in the summertime if you're gonna try to catch a fish in the middle of the day you'd be looking toward the thermic line where there's structure and you've probably got a little bit better I've got to listen to Oh a famous angler Hank Parker talking the other day on a video I watched where he was talking about fishing in the winter time I'm like right now well he goes to the bottom and fish is really really slow you're gonna catch more quality fish than you are quantity fish so fishing it really really slow down close to the bottom because those fish are gonna be oriented toward the bottom this time of year but they're gonna be complacent you've got to give them a reason to bite okay so Timothy Phillips says see a deer fell through the ice near the aerator hole and it's floating dead and it's about a 1 acre pond 12 feet deep with no water running through it do I need to get the carcass out yes you do you need to get the carcass out because it decomposes now if you've got ice you understand safety so you know here's what I'm gonna tell people about that I'm gonna change the topic aerating upon this time of year you really need to have a specific purpose for that and what I tell people to do if you want to aerate your water this time of year move your diffuser up closer to the shore and now they're a aerated shallower water and keep a hole open by the shore rather than in the middle because if you can do that and that animal gets in or a person gets in they're going to be more likely to be able to get out now here's the reasons not to aerate in the wintertime they're the main reason did not aerate is because now your water temperature is going to be autonomous from the top to the bottom if you're not aerating in your you have ice-covered the water at the bottom is going to be about 40 degrees 39 degrees because that's the heaviest water and if your aerating your water could be 32 point one you know and it's not freezing because it's moving so now you've got that really cold water from top to bottom which is stressful for most pond fish even cooler water fish and even cold water fish like trout they don't really like it that cold so a reason to aerate under ice is because you've got a lot of aquatic plants going into the winter time or you got a heavy plankton bloom and you're worried about winter kill if you want to prevent winter kill then aerate so the next thing I would do the next time I would you know next winter I'd bring that diffuser in closer to the shore so you're not aerating in the middle you're aerating along the shore then you're still going to have that deeper warmer layer of water that you're not impacting with your aeration but you can also keep some air going into the water in the shallower areas and minimize the risk of a winter kill let's see here Colton Hinsley bob was your turn over is the mixing of levels of pond water caused by the changing of the temperatures at this of the surface water this occurs okay so the yes yes that's true now the thing is also about a turnover it can also be chemical they've seen chemical turnovers in other words when you've got a high production of fish going on say upon this being fed well there's a lot of fish waste being given off all that fish waste is heavier than water whether it's liquid waste coming out from a bladder or if it's solid waste or even if it's gas coming out of the gills you know once that saturates the water and sinks to the bottom that water density changes so I've actually seen that water migrate to the surface when it's got more fish waste or detritus or organic matter waste in it and when it gets to that point even in the wintertime there could be a turnover in the wintertime you know so yes Colton hazley you're correct there's a little more to it than that Colt LSC : Pierson says would you pull the aerator on the one intra pot in the winter well I don't know that I would pull it you know the explanation I just gave about that pretty well covers that I think my question I'm getting to read it a few minutes after you posted Billy Bert she's on board hey Billy ends everything of Southeast Texas man hope things are well so need some more questions you know a little bit more I wanted to talk about is how about barometric pressure changes are those so lunar tables I think the best explanation I've heard one that I buy into about the saloon or tables is that does it affect the way fish feed yes are there peaks of feeding yes now keep this in mind when a bass eats because it's hungry or because it senses something is changing you know like pre front before a front blows through the barometric pressure is dropping fish going a feeding frenzy because they can sense it with their lateral line which sends a message to their brain that instinctively tells them that they need to eat so at that point you'll see a lot more fish feeding more aggressively now the on the other hand there may be a school of fish sitting there and only one of those hundred that one will go eat now with fish behavior it's pretty interesting because the little bitty fish be differently than the medium-sized fish which feed differently than the bigger fish which be completely differently than the great big fish a great big bass a double-digit fish it feeds it's the king of the hill in the pond or lake that it lives in that twelve pound bass 13 pound bass can eat pretty much anything else that's in that pot so it doesn't have to work as hurt it's got abundant food whereas in that same pond all those 10 to 14 inch bass they're competing against each other they can't eat big food they have to eat little food so they're like gangman man they're on the prowl they're chasing everything down there getting where they can get and they're pillaging it you know where the bigger the fish gets the more selective that they are about what they eat hey Mark Sanders hello baby birches doing good bud that's cool so think about the size of the fish and you can begin to understand their behavior here's something here's a take-home point for you a seventeen and a half inch bass and your pond becomes the dominant predator because their mouth is about so big and a 10-inch bass can fit in its mouth that's when a bass starts becoming helpful to you to call your bass now keep in mind that that thirteen and a half inch bass I mean a seventeen and a half inch bass weighs about three three and a quarter pounds you know so that's about the magic number three and a quarter pounds is about the magic number if you can get your bass up to that size then you're gonna have a fish you can make a living in in that body of water let's see Victor Moberg is it too late to fertilize this winter Central Texas yes it is you don't need the fertilizers right now everything is dormant to kind of take that question as little deeper what fertilizer does is you mix it into the water column to promote the growth of microscopic plants and animals called plankton well plankton doesn't really start to grow into the water temperatures in the mid 50's to lower 60s so once your water temperature is is 55 and going up then think about fertilization now I'm not telling everybody I don't want anybody in Minnesota they run out of fertilize the pond before you do some homework you know because you've got this little thing called winter time where people south through the mason-dixon line and this little thing called summertime well summertime is better for fertile water than wintertime is better for fertile water so I'd be picky about it the just the direct answers don't fertilize in the winter wait until the water temperatures are rising and if the visibility is too great because what you want to do with fertility is you want to put fertilizer the water to promote the plankton which colors the water green well when you have green water what you're doing is you're creating the food chain from those newly hatched little fish remember those fish I was telling about earlier in the broadcast when they first come off the bed those little bitty fish when they absorb that yolk Saturday what used to be the egg yolk once they absorb that they have no body fat so they have to eat so they have a little bitty mouth so they can eat little bitty things and so if your waters gin-clear early in the spring when spawns start to kick in then your baby fish you're not gonna survive as well that's the time to have fertile water only in the south you don't want to have a real fertile pond when you get into the dog days of summer like July and August in the springtime and early summer is when you want fertility know the fertility does things more than just provide the food chain to help survival rates of your little bitty bait fish what it does is it keeps the sunlight from penetrating any deeper than that bloom can hold so if you've got visibility at 24 inches with a good fertile pond you're not going to get runaway aquatic plants that you have to deal with but if your pond six foot of visibility you're gonna have plants growing in six-foot depth so I'd be paying attention to that let's see here Dave Terry hey Dave glad to see it Brandon are there any negative effects of using pond eye well when you talk to the guys that manage golf courses they say no well that stops algae that prevents it that keeps plants from growing but if you have a fishing pond and you use pond eye what you've done is you've stopped the UV penetration from the Sun and keeping that from growing the plankton that your baby fish need so if you're if you want to grow fish don't use diet nothing if you if you if you really know what you're doing you can put some Diane this time of year just to prevent filamentous algae but it needs to be dissipated by the time that fish start to spawn so you have a plankton bloom kick in and start doing what it does to feed your baby fish so let's see here by the way for everybody that's joined in I see Rick Perkins is on board Mike rivers what kind of fertilizer works best I'll take about that here in a minute Effects of using file now we got that so want to remind everybody if you will put hashtag pon boss magazine click like on the video and share it that'll put you in a drawing for a pong balls hat and a final boss mug as a matter of fact I'll throw in a copy of pong boss as well if any of you that are watching if you haven't gotten pong boss send me an email at info at pond boss calm give me your mailing address and I'll have Liane send one to you our winner last week was Jacob West he got a pond boss hat and a mug so just that little commercial there and it's 35 bucks a year to subscribe to the magazine comes out six times you get nuggets out of every one of them I promise I know they got that writes it and puts it together so uh Rick Perkins good to see it Kevin Briggs did it hashtag pond boss magazine Adam what Kevin Briggs that boy there's Mike did it Brandon did it Tory Rhodes hello Tory january/february mag was excellent well thank you very much it's got some pretty good meat in and we'd like to share it with everybody so to go back let's see we had another question there I think what kind of fertilizer works best well let's see Mike if I remember right I think you're in Tennessee so over there you're probably going to use the fertilizer similar to what anybody in the South would be using so that would be a fairly high phosphorus fertilizer now if you live in Montana and you hear me say that that's almost like a hanging offense for cabin rustling in Texas but in Tennessee and in the South we're looking for we're looking to add phosphorus to the water because that's the limiting factor to grow plankton in our ponds and lakes around here Scott Lindsay you mentioned algae I seem to have a good bit in my shallow water now in South Carolina is this bad you know Scott I don't think it's bad because you're not fishing in it now if you're fishing in it and you're getting caught on it then it could be bad what I'm gonna tell you is it's normal it's normal to have algae especially in South Carolina now we don't have that here because our water temperatures in the low 40s you know I didn't take you today but last Thursday my water temperature was 44 degrees which is pretty darn close the fatal four threadfin shad for example so if the algae is bugging you it will Evan flow typically typically with filamentous algae as the water temperature goes up it dies back but if it overlaps when when you're wanting to fish you may want to do something about it now algae filamentous algae grows primarily off of nitrogen that's in the soils but it can also glean it from the water now our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen so nitrogen is continually absorbing into the water is saturated with as much as it can so that's kind of a catch-22 with filamentous algae is it gets plenty of nitrogen so there's a number of ways to treat it you know you can use an algae side but keep in mind listen here's the big deal about plants and filamentous algae is one of those plants you gotta have three things for them to grow you're gonna have food what you do in the bottom of the pond you gotta have the right temperature filamentous algae likes cool water more than hot water and you gotta have sunlight so you got sunlight temperature in food when those three things come together something's going to grow and right now in your part of the country in South Carolina that's algae so now if you were to go treat Theology keep in mind that you're that you're treating a symptom of a problem rather than the problem the problem is you got sunlight you got food and you got the right temperature with any one of those changes then the plants change as well so let's see here Victor Moberg says a friends to an Epicure pond has a bad duck weed for long periods of the year how can you control it well you know probably let's see I don't remember who you are Victor I'm gonna tell you this about duck weed duck weed reproduces exponentially duck weed is one of those plants that one in water meal and some others where it reproduces about every 24 to 36 hours so you remember the old story if somebody says somebody says do you want a painting doubled every day for 30 days or a million dollars take the penny well the duckweed is the penny so how do you control it well if you have much winter it's gonna freeze out but that doesn't mean it's all gonna freeze up so coming into the spring if it did freeze out they can take a swimming pool net or something and dip out the small amounts there before it starts to go again I think that's a smart way to do it now if it's thick oh you're in Austin area okay if you're in the Austin area you know what when they had I mean Austin had nine degrees last week I'd go back and look and if it froze out that's good if it didn't freeze out starting about the 1st of March there's a Thursday an enzyme based herbicide called flora Doan that will take it out but that's a catch-22 it can't be any water flowing out because that particular material has got to stay in contact with the plant the material the flora knows dissolved in the water the plant takes it up but it takes it about ninety days to die because it doesn't poison it it changes this metabolism where it can't photosynthesize so it starts to death so that's a good way to do it okay holy cow were knocking on the door of 7:30 let me see if there's anything else I wanted to cover about bass behavior let's see visibility matters we talked about that talked about the temperature impact radio tags we talked about that you know one thing I've noticed about bass behavior they move a lot more if they don't have the habitats that they can orient to so bass get conditioned to that environment and if they've got good habitat places where they can hide or they can reproduce where they can congregate then they're going to be less likely to move and that's gonna be the lakes and ponds where the fish get bigger but if they're if the lake or pond is void of habitat then they get conditioned to be able to move and that's what they have to do because they don't have anything to orient to if we like if you and I were dropped off in the Sahara Desert where are we going well we don't know but we're going because we're not sitting still but if there's an oasis that's where we're going and that's where we're going to hang out if there's water and food you know ambassador kind of the same way hey there's Roger garner my brother-in-law hey Roger let's see Todd watts is asking a question here Jeanne Gilliland hello Jean being SS conservation director glad you're here buddy let's see Todd watts Bob what about tilapia the control duckweed well um in theory that's a good idea but the problem is tilapia have to turn up and come feed like this because duckweed flows now they'll eat it but I don't think they'll control it I've had tilapia and posit have duckweed and the tilapia will control the algae but they won't control the duckweed simply because it out reproduces their ability to pull it off the surface and besides if a tilapia can graze without standing on its tail that's what it's going to do so in theory it's a good idea but in reality it doesn't Robert decent great show and info Thanks well hey you know it's about that time at 7:30 I want to remind everybody about pond boss magazine here's some resources for you if you go to pond boss calm we've got lots of videos there we've also got some articles that are free we've got to ask the boss discussion forum where you can go joint and ask questions and get some one-on-one help and we've got our Facebook page so uh please join up and come hang out with us we appreciate the shares because that helps build the audience and that's what we're after we won't appreciate it a whole lot if mike rivers thanks for the compliment everybody thanks for tuning in and oh hey guess what next next Wednesday I called my cocktail last week I got two emails somebody said hey can you get Mike on so next week we're understand we have a guest this will be my Cocteau one of the nation's best lake builders so uh thanks for checking in and we will see you guys next week 6:30 on Wednesday Central Time see you later

Channel: ThePondBoss

Views: 1,373

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Pond Boss, Bob Lusk, Bass Behavior, Fish Genetics, Spawning

Id: toWlvfg-6mQ

Length: 60min 45sec (3645 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018