Bass movements ? Not the bowel kind!

[mattybculp]

So I've been doing some thinking lately, which can be scary. I am very familiar with seasonal bass patterns from spring to fall. So I fish the tri lakes a fair bit and have fished a few local tournaments and have done well. But I will pose the question and ask your feedback on your thoughts. So I filled the live well with five decent largies, I go to th weigh in and some tourneys will have a boat that releases the fish in certain areas whether it's the chemong causeway or Gannon's narrows bridge area. So my question is do or will bass return to the area they are caught ? Or just find closer ideal structure to where they are released? Now my milk run spots do replenish with fish whether there the same fish or not is uncertain. But since it can be quite a distance say Gannon's narrows to north pigeon I feel as though I may be giving them a little to much credit on how "smart" ( which I know is the wrong word) they are. My instincts tell me they just find ideal structure close to where they are released, but I am truly curious. I looked around for info on the intranet but it was just giving seasonal migration patterns which Is not what I'm looking for. So what do you think? I'm hoping this isn't a dumb question but I was curious. But I know I've gotten a few PBs thrown it in the live well travelled back to the house on upper buckhorn Got a quick shot then released it at the dock. Would they be enept to kinda hanging around or are they outta dodge, trying to head back home. Thanks guys.

[OhioFisherman]

I think being caught and held in a live well stresses them, I don't believe their first thought on being released is to head for home turf, that probably takes some time. I am guessing that a lot make it back to an area they were comfortable and familiar with.

[singingdog]

Here's an interesting quote from a study done in New Hampshire:

 

Relocating large numbers of bass to Ames Farm Inn release site may negatively impact bass

because many displaced bass remain in the general vicinity of weigh­in sites for days, weeks or

even months after release (Stang et al. 1996, Gililand 1999, Ridgway 2002). Wilde (2003)

reviewed 12 scientific studies that examined dispersal of tournament caught black bass and

reported that at the end of studies, 51% of largemouth bass and 26% of smalmouth bass had

dispersed less than 1.6 km from the release site and 41% of largemouth bass had dispersed less

than 0.8 km

[OhioFisherman]

http://www.getalimitoutdoors.com/2012-08-09-21-37-51/todd-driscoll/41-movement-of-largemouth-bass-following-tournament-release

 

 

http://www.biol.ttu.edu/faculty/gwilde/Shared%20Documents/Reprints/Wildebassdispersal.pdf

 

 

http://tnfish.org/NorrisReservoir_TWRA/files/BassTournamentMortalityLakeMartinThesisBenjaminRicks_TWRA.pdf

 

http://www.fecpl.ca/wp-content/uploads/2002/05/SMB-Displacement-MS.pdf

 

Some info to sift thru.

[AKRISONER]

so what this is saying is after a tournament, fish where the release area was lol.

[mattybculp]

That's Funny I read that article late last night singing dog. It was pretty much what I was looking for ! Thanks ohio fisherman, when I get a minute i'm going to look at those articles. Akrisoner, for that study, pretty much. But I do know some tournaments, will have multiple stops to release fish so they're dispersed more evenly, more so on larger bodies of water.

[OhioFisherman]

so what this is saying is after a tournament, fish where the release area was lol.

 

LOL it's not a bad place to start? A few days after a tournament once the fish have calmed down? I doubt that smallies will hold in a shallow weedy area that is a release area for anywhere near as long as a largemouth would?

 

I won a tournament on a lake in New York fishing for two days never more than a couple of thousand feet from the only resort-campground on the lake. They had 4-5 different bass clubs that would stay there and have tournaments over the season. Weigh in by their launching ramp and the best habitat for largemouth in that area, smallies almost always came from areas farther away with deeper water and rocky areas in them. A small lake though only 300 acres or so, doesn't take much time for a fish to find their comfort zone?