A Bass is a Bass, But Not Always

(Editor’s Note: The writer's opinions and observations expressed here are his own, and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views, policies or positions of FLW.)

Amigos, as you may remember, we left the past blog with a big question mark on the well-known saying, “A bass is a bass, no matter what.” Well, it’s time to give you a different point of view. A lot of you, while reading these lines, might start questioning my ideas.

Let’s begin with a few points that most anglers agree on. For instance, when bass are ready to ambush their prey and eat until they get stuffed, they’re often found on points. This happens everywhere. Also, we agree that fish will spawn basically in a “flat” protected area, where you can find a “firm” bottom. And as we all know, the time it will take their eggs to hatch is just about the same everywhere. So up to this point we will say that a bass is a bass.

But whenever we start searching for new adventures in different lakes, reservoirs and latitudes, we will encounter things that don’t look the same as in our lakes.

Bass will adapt to the specific ecosystem where they are living, just as we Homo sapiens adjust our digestive and endocrine systems, as well as all other body organs and systems. Even our body clock will adjust depending on the time zone and month of the year. Whenever winter approaches, our bodies will burn fewer calories. We prepare ourselves for the hard, cold winter months by stacking up energy.

Bass will do the same thing. They stop using their energy to grow and use it to survive.

Farther south of the border, bass have adapted to their environment, and they will still eat different types of fish, insects, ducks, rodents, reptiles and almost lobster-sized crawdads called “acamayas” or “cauques,” which by the way are a delicacy … mmm mmm mmm!

In many of our lakes in Mexico, water temperatures oscillate around 65 to 78 degrees. Bass will eat the entire year – a little deeper or shallower at times, but they will eat vastly. Their metabolism is always running on high. They need and love to eat. This is one of the reasons bass grow so big and so fast over here. They don’t have to preserve energy for the freezing season. This energy will be used to grow and grow and grow.

As with many of you, my favorite fishing technique is topwater fishing. While filming an episode of Nuestra Pesca TV on Lake El Salto, I caught the biggest topwater fish of my life, an almost 11-pound hog that I caught with a walking bait. My second biggest bass, which weighed around 9 pounds, was caught in Lake Aguamilpa. It was a victim of a popper.

Well, in these two cases, the fish were caught in the last days of January and December, respectively. Topwater fishing in winter? Really? The answer is yes.

Another example of bass straying from the established “norm,” and which I can’t fully understand and should be a case for some serious studies, comes from a small lake about a two-hour drive from Mexico City.

Years ago, while trying to understand how bass behave and learn to pattern them, I noticed some odd things during a fishing weekend – something different from what I’ve read in the most important fishing magazines.

I saw a whitish circle underwater about 5 or 6 feet deep. I couldn’t believe it. It was a bass bed. The oddness to this case is that it happened in the month of October.

My head was spinning for several months. I thought the sun made me hallucinate. During those years the main bass fishing magazine was Bassmaster Magazine, and those prophetic articles could not be wrong. We were told in those articles that bass spawn during the spring months. But why did I find a bed in October?

So I made a very empiric study. Just as the spring (or “spawning time”) ended during one year, whenever I went fishing, if caught a big-belly bass in the 14-inch range, I kept it to see if it was full of eggs and then had it for dinner. (Yes, I know I should practice catch-and-release.)

To my surprise, I found some fish with eggs in the months of August through October.

The result of this rudimentary study is that I realized bass spawn basically twice in the year. Why? It’s still a mystery to me.

In my humble opinion (because I’m not a marine biologist), I think that due to the water temperature being 65 to 75 degrees year round in this particular lake, the temperature factor is not as big of an influence for fish to determine the perfect time to spawn. Maybe they are more aware of different factors that influence their ecosystem, such as the water level. During spring and through the hot months of the year (until June and July), a lot of water is pulled out of the lakes for irrigation and human consumption, sometimes leaving spawning areas high and dry. So maybe winter-spring and late summer-fall could be their prime times to spawn.

Just as I’m writing these lines, I’m in Lake Zimapan, a three-hour drive from home in Mexico City, waiting for some fellow fishermen.

I fished a tournament on this lake in January. There where some prespawn and spawning bass. I tried to catch one particular 6-pound bass on a bed without success. While searching and fishing the lake, I also noticed bass fry moving is small schools. Those small bass fry were 3 or 4 weeks old at the most.

Now it’s the middle of June, and I’m visiting some tournament fishermen and giving them support. The report from some is that they saw and caught big bass off the beds. So can you imagine more than six months for a spawning period?

In conclusion, I’ve seen a lot of lakes down here where bass have basically two spawning periods or even spawn the entire year. I can’t provide scientific studies to that, only my experiences and reports of what has happened before my eyes.

But what I can affirm is that these beautiful green fish have a different behavior than their counterparts in the U.S. Still, I love them in either case.

So is a bass a bass? Well, my friends, I don’t think so.

Muchas Gracias,

Jaime Luengo