Bass have particularly keen eyesight. The arangement of rods an cones in their eyes are such that scientists have determined that bass ‘see’ better (can collect and interpret more visible light)than humans by several orders of magnitude.
A lot has been published over the years about the Bass’ other ‘senses’, the lateral line, which allows them to feel and locate prey by the vibrations the prey makes in the water, their sense of smell, which is quite acute, and their ‘hearing’ which is at least five times ‘better’ than ours.
But, the fact remains that while these other senses help a bass to locate it’s food, the bass is a ‘sight feeder’. It doesn’t eat ANYTHING until it ‘sees’ it.
Bass have an area of ‘binocular vision’, where the vision cone from their high side mounted eyes ‘overlap’. This area extend outwards and slightly upwards from the fish’s nose. Before taking prey, the bass will always turn it’s body so that whatever it’s going to eat lies within this cone of vision.
The ‘location’ of the bass’ eyes on it’s body indicates that it’s ‘focus’ of awareness is ‘upwards’. This makes sense, as most of the bass’ natural enemies and a good porportion of it’s prey are first percieved from ‘above’ the bass.
Bass always strike ‘upwards’ in relation to the line of their body. If they are taking prey from the bottom of lake or stream, they will tip up their body so that the prey is ‘above’ their centerline before striking.
This explins a lot about why certain types of flies are more effective for bass, and gives some insight into presentation.
HOW does a LG MOUTH know when food is too big to handle??
In San Diego I saw a big bass with another Bass stuck in his mouth.
That was a misjudgement on the part of the big bass,
Doug
Doug, a bass will ‘geneticaly’ try to kill and eat prey that is up to 1/2 times it’s own length.
Soemtimes they mess up, and get something that’s too big for them.
I ‘netted’ a bass from the surface of a lake in San Diego that had a bluegill ‘stuck’ in it’s throat. The bass had tried to swallow the 'gill, realized it was too large, and tried to spit it out. The spines on the 'gills fins worked like barbs, and solidly wedged it in place.
We pulled out the 'gill, which was dead. It weighed over a pound and a half. The bass, which was still alive, we weighed and released. The bass weighed eight and one half pounds.
I’ve seen bass eat birds, snakes, frogs, mice, and even a small squirrel.
I fish fresh water bass quite-a-bit in this neck of the woods; large mouth, white bass and in some higher elevations and cooler water, small mouth.
One thing that L/M bass will do (and I’ve posted this here on FAOL before) … that I cannot recall any other kind of fish doing - I’ve had them break the surface of the water and snatch my casted popper right out of the air, maybe eight or ten inches above the water! Not that often, but every time it does it gets me by total surprise! I have to take a little break after and get over the shock of it!
I don’t quite remember all of the details surrounding this, but there are photos of a large mouth having suffocated by trying to eat another large mouth of equal size. If I remember correctly, the weight of each was around 4lbs. It is not uncommon for them to go after prey larger than half their own size.
For the record, good articles you have been posting.
Dale, I have had bass do the same thing. I was expecting a top water bite, just not a foot out of the water. It tends to really take you by surprise. :shock:
I have that happen also, expecially near lily pads where they hold under the cover close to the surface. My favorite small pond surface fly is a yellow foam popper,many times they will inhale the fly while it is still in the air.
When the bright damsel flies are arround the pads they will jump out of the water after them.
Early in the morning I occasionaly see a mouse skitter across the lily pads,wow what a comotion the bass will make going after these little furry guys.
As a kid, I was lucky enough to have access to fish a private pond owned by a man who raised fancy ducks. It seems that the bass were eating too many of his ducklings and he asked me to keep all the bass I caught. My top lure was a 8 inch long jointed pike lure. I caught a fair-sized bass for New England (16 inches) and when I got it in, I found that the bass had two baby ducklings in it’s stomach and one in it’s gullet that it didn’t have room for, yet he still took the largest lure I had in my tackle box. As an adult fly fisherman, I once was playing a bass that was around 14 inches long. The water was very stained and when I got the fish near the shore, he made a dive towards the bottom. When I tried to ease him up, he got rather heavy. I figured that he had buried himself in weeds, however, when I eased him to the surface, a very large 12-13 lb bass had over half of him in her mouth. She spit him out when she saw me and slowly swam away. Needless to say, I didn’t have any flies that could match what she was looking for. They are called large mouth bass for a reason.
Saw a bass come out of the water and try to take a crow off a branch by the foot…unsuccessfully. Wonder if he (the bass) thought he was after an ordinary blackbird?
James,
We have the “big fish after the hooked fish” thing happen quite a bit in the farm ponds we frequent. In about 35 such “event”, only once have we ever hooked the big fish. We have let them run off a full line into the backing even, for “swallow” time. Often we retrieve a completely scaled little fish. :roll:
…lee s.
