C&R makes it tougher to catch the next time?

[Bergen Angler]

I wonder whether catch & release makes it harder to catch the (same) bass using the same lure next time as they get conditioned?

[catfishonthelake]

I dunno, but I can tell you catch and kill makes it pretty impossible to catch the next time.

I've caught lots of fish with hook marks and hooks in their mouths, so to some degree I guess they never learn.

[FTD]

That's certainly a big question to ponder.

There's a small pond out in the pines I loved to fish, it was man made and had a large bass population. It took me and a buddy about a month of trial and error to figure out what would catch em, and after we figured it out it was a whole summer of bass fishing I'll never forget. When we came back next year it was not the same story. We could catch them, just not in the numbers we were used to.

They had no predators, and had a healthy food source. But, for some reason Texas rigged lizards didn't do the trick anymore.

[bigfishy]

Absolutely!!!! I have a few pet largemouth in some local spots that laugh at me when they see things that have fooled them one too many times....Thats why it can be very important to be a well rounded fisherman, especially at high pressure locations.....The same can be said for catch and release of trout.....I fish a few no kill rivers in P.A.- one of which has a pool that we refer to as the phd pool....The greater the challenge, the greater the reward

[fishfinder]

Have caught plenty of fish with scarred mouths but I do believe they get conditioned in time if you keep hitting them with the same tricks.

[Eskimo]

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This is a good question.
I've often wondered if bass can become educated (negatively conditioned) to avoid lures or if certain bass are inherently so skittish that they are frightened by negative cues given by the unnaturalness of a lure.

I have seen some big, old bass in some of the most heavily fished park ponds you can imagine. The question is, is it operant conditioning or some inherent wariness that causes them to reject the dozens of minnows-under-bobbers they see all week long?

In my uneducated opinion, it's a combination of both. There is a selection process occurring where the aggressive feeders are removed from the system and the reluctant feeders are retained. In addition, some of the released bass will be conditioned not to eat lures that give off negative cues like splashing down when it hits the water and giving off a lot of flash and shine.

[Matt A.]

When I was a kid I used to have a tank with largemouth bass, the ones I had quickly became conditioned to some lures.

[Bergen Angler]

Here's my experience.

If I don't set the hook hard enough and lose small mouth bass, I can usually cast the same lure and catch the same small mouth again. Once I catch & release the small mouth, he/she won't bite the same lure again.

If I lose a large mouth, he/she usually doesn't bite the same lure again.

Last year, when I had a 10+ day, I was using a lipless crank bait. A few other anglers saw it and they all start throwing the lipless crank bait. A few days later, they were not biting the lipless crankbait. However, they were going crazy with green pumpkin tube jig.

[Lard Almighty]

I've fished some small ponds with a certain lure and hammered the bass one year, only to come back the next year with the same lure and not do as well. On the other side of the coin, I've seen a couple of instances where a bass would break the line, and a short time later would get caught on the same lure with the broken off lure hanging out of its mouth.

I think bass are a lot like people: some of them just never learn.