Big Indiana Bass

Down the left side of the blog page you'll see a list of books I've posted. Many I've read, a few I haven't. I wanted to take a minute though and tell you about one of my favorites, marked in astericks. The book is entitled "Knowing Bass; The Scientific Approach to Catching More Fish". The book is written by Keith A. Jones., long time Director of Research at the Berkley Fish Research Center in Spirit Lake, Iowa.

At 298 pages, it is a pretty good sized volume of work. The book is broken down into 8 chapters as follows:

• Chapter 1 - Bass Basics
• Chapter 2 - Brain, Learning and Instincts
• Chapter 3 - Chemoreception
• Chapter 4 - Hearing and Vibration Detection
• Chapter 5 - Vision
• Chapter 6 - Senses of the Skin
• Chapter 7 - Pain and Stress
• Chapter 8 - Super Lures

The book strikes a pretty good balance on depth of content. Not so technical to turn you off or make reading difficult, yet certainly not your typical bass book (no "spinnerbaits on laydowns, big blades in murky water, what this pro does" kind of thing). It has enough color graphics to keep you interested and looking ahead, doesn't reveal any Berkley trade secrets but gives you enough information to apply and interpret to your own fishing style. For a sample of typical material I found this excerpt on the Net at Hatches Magazine.

Some of the cooler stuff more fishing related that is covered includes;

• Bass Memory for Lures
• Learning Curves of Popular Gamefish
• Bass Response to Common Flavors
• Light Absorption in Water
• Texture Effects on Bait Retention
• Strike Response to Shape
• and, Day versus Night Vision

There's lots more stuff I haven't begun to touch on. So, if you're in the mood for a good read about bass that gets much deeper than your typical magazine stand article, do yourself a favor and pick up this book. It just might change your bass fishing approach.

A couple years ago I attended the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Indianapolis. One of the many topic presenters was Dr. Gene Wilde from Texas Tech U. The topic was big bass, specifically Texas ShareLunker bass, and the relationship to historical weather patterns. What he and his colleagues discovered was a correlation between El Nino (ENSO) Events and higher than normal entries in the ShareLunker program. You can read a snippet about this work at the front of this Texas Tech article. A more detailed article entitled El Nino May Determine Record Fish by Craig Springer can be found at the link.

This is some interesting work, and it will be interesting to see if the theory pans out again. As it turns out, last year (2005-2006) was a banner year for entries (Outstanding Budweiser Sharelunker Season Closes) as you can read and while still early, so far through the end of January entries have matched last years high number.

How might this apply in our area little corner of the world, and is there other research supporting this? Well, there are some other studies with the same basic premise where weather events are correlated to overly successful spawns and recruitment. Here is an interesting study from our neighbors next door (IL) linking River Levels and Largemouth Bass Populations in the Illinois River.

So keep an eye on the weather and your fishing diaries in the future and you might find a link between the two, also.