Hal Schramm: Why Great Lakes Smallmouth Bass are Big→

Outdoor Life

“The Beaver archipelago is a group of islands in the middle of northern Lake Michigan. A comparison of fishery metrics taken from 1969 through 1984 and from 2005 through 2008 reveal drastic changes.

At Beaver Island 40 years ago, brown bullheads made up 60 percent and smallmouth and rock bass 14 percent of the total number of fish obtained in routine samples. A total of 14 other species made up the remaining 12 percent. From 2005 to 2008, smallmouth samplings grew to a whopping 93 percent of the total.

Despite their dramatic rise to dominance in the Beaver Island fish mix, neither the abundance nor the mortality of bronzebacks changed significantly from the historic periods. But smallmouth bass size structure indices (the proportions of fish greater than 12, 14, and 17 inches), growth rate, and body condition (plumpness) were significantly greater in the more recent period than they were 40 years ago.”

What of warmer water temperatures?

David Goldenberg: How Fishing Pros Finally Caught George Perry’s Miracle Bass→

FiveThirtyEight:

“In late 2009, two men walked into a room somewhere in Japan and found a fisherman hooked up to a polygraph. His name was Manabu Kurita, and he was there to answer some questions. The 32-year-old fishing guide had claimed to have caught a bass that weighed just under 22 pounds, 5 ounces — a weight that would make it co-world-record holder in the all-tackle weight category for largemouth bass, the most hallowed class in all of fishing. The other men in the room were representatives from the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) and, with the polygraph running, they asked Kurita about the precise position of his boat on Japan’s Lake Biwa and the tackle he used to haul in his catch. His answers from the hourlong session evidently passed muster; six months after he hauled the fish in, the catch was certified as the IGFA’s co-world-record holder.”

Interesting story on the history of big bass. To clarify, at the moment there are two recognized subspecies of the largemouth bass (Micropterus salmodies): the northern largemouth (Micropterus salmoides salmoides) and the Florida largemouth (Micropterus salmoides floridanus). 

Bass Fishing Cheaters→

David Hill, writing for Grantland:

JOHN TOMAC

“Here’s how most bass fishing tournaments work: Contestants (either as individuals or in teams of two) set out on a lake at the same time to fish wherever they want for a certain period of time. At the end of the time limit, everyone rides back in and weighs the fish they caught. There’s usually a limit on how many fish you can weigh in. If you catch your limit and then catch an even bigger fish, you can let one go and replace it with the bigger fish. Whoever checks in with the biggest weight of their total haul of fish wins the prize. Sometimes there’s an additional prize for the lunker, the biggest single fish caught that day...

How much money would need to be on the line for someone to cheat, I wonder. Cleary casts his line out, spins around in his tall chair at the front of the boat, and smiles like he has a whopper of a tale to tell.”

Beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression, power and attention; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight or a competition. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did all fishing contestants.