Go to the seminars, read the magazine and Internet articles, query the pros and you'll hear one mantra repeated over and over again..."Catching fish is easy; finding them is the hard part."
Bull crap!
Now, I'm not going to say this is the case all the time, or even everywhere, but for bass fishing here in Indiana, which is what a lot of this blog is about, by and large, it just isn't true. In fact, it's actually the reverse, and you know I have some data to share with you to support this opinion.
First, a quick fishery terminology lesson. 'CPUE' or "catch per unit effort." It's a very common term that you'll find in most every lake survey dealing with fish populations. The 'catch' in this case will be bass, particularly numbers of bass 'caught' during a lake survey. The 'unit effort' in most instances is 1 hour, which comes from the total length of time spent electrofishing, and then adjusted using some simple math to get a catch rate per hour, or CPUE. For example, you shock up 300 bass in 2 hours of surveying, and your CPUE is 150. So lets look at the CPUE from the most recent data available for many of the popular Indiana bass waters.
The first thing you'll notice is that for the most part, every lake listed falls into just 1 or 2 basic categories. They are either in the higher range with CPUE's around 150, or they are in the lower range with CPUE's around 50. So what does this actually mean? It means when a team of biologists pulls along a bank on one of those listed lakes and does their survey, they are shocking up, on average, either 50 or 150 bass every hour. Now when you consider that a survey boat is moving along pretty slowly so that all the fish shocked can be netted and counted, you're really talking about hundreds, more likely hundreds and hundreds of bass down any given mile or two of shoreline. It means finding the fish is easy - they're concentrated pretty well on most every bank you might think of pulling up to to fish.
The fact that you're not whacking them doesn't mean they're not there. They don't bite for lots of reasons. Many are probably neutral or negative - only a few may be feeding at any given time. Perhaps you scared them with your sloppy approach or your poor casting. Maybe they're not impressed with your new $50 swim bait. Who knows exactly why. The point is, the fish are there, around you, under you...you've found them - it's the catching that is difficult!
Need some more data? IDNR biologists recently completed a lake survey and population estimate of the number of potentially catchable bass (those >8") in Lake Monroe. Do you really want to know what their models came up with?
22,797 bass! That's right. There are over 20,000 bass swimming in Lake Monroe at any given moment, and you can't even catch 5 of them to bring to the scales. Want more data from smaller lakes? Surveys and modeling combined to give an estimate of 16,754 bass swimming around in Hardy Lake down to the southeast. Over to the west, Sullivan Lake has an estimated 12,243 bass roaming its waters. Still not convinced? At Brookville Res., there are about 137 smallmouth bass per mile of shoreline, and another 307 largemouth in that same 1-mile stretch. That's over 400+ bass per shoreline mile at a lake fondly known as "the Dead Sea." Still having a hard time finding those bass?
So lets look at the catching side of the axiom. IDNR has researched catch rates for all the reservoirs that are part of the tournament permit system. Here are some of the results. The catch per unit effort (in this case number of legal bass caught per hour) was highest at Hardy Lake (0.42), followed by Lake Wawasee (0.21), and Brookville Reservoir (0.19). The lake with the lowest CPUE for legal bass was Salamonie Reservoir (0.04).
If you want to think of these numbers in a different context, the number of hours needed to catch a legal bass was lowest at Hardy Lake (2.4 h), followed by Lake Wawasee (4.8 h), and Brookville Reservoir (5.4h). The lake with the highest number of hours to catch a legal bass was Salamonie Reservoir (23.0 h).
When you look at not just tourneys, but instead creel survey data for all anglers fishing for bass at many of these lakes, you get very similar catch rates. For example, at Monroe, the most recent creel survey showed a catch rate for all bass anglers for all sizes of bass caught at 0.13 bass per hour. Even in some of the best waters such as the Bluegrass F&W area, overall bass catch rates only run in the 0.5-0.7 fish per hour rate.
The bottom line is, catching bass really is the hardest part of the equation. It's why we're so focused on purchasing new and better lures. The tackle manufacturers thrive on this same set of data. If catching was so easy, we wouldn't need to be buying the latest and greatest holographic, sexy, japanese-imported, Touring Pro touted 'whatchamacallits'. Would the brand of rod or the type of line truly matter? Isn't it why we attend seminars, go to bass university, subscribe to magazines and read everything we can on the Internet from all the newest and greatest sites?
The fish are right there in front of you, every time you pull up to the ramp, or set down on a bank. You found them when you arrived at the lake. Now you just need to figure out how to catch them!