 BASS
BEHAVIOR WITH DR. KEITH JONES
The Lure Test Continued
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Keith Jones, director of fish
research for the Pure Fishing Laboratory in Spirit Lake,
Iowa, has been studying bass for over 16 years. He’s
an expert in the field of bass behavior. Jones’
scientific research involves finding out what factors
will make bass attack lures and baits.
 “The
next part of the test was to learn if the bass could
discriminate between various types of artificial lures,”
Dr. Jones explains. “When we retested the bass
using soft-plastic baits, the strike ratio went up to
almost the same level it was the first time the bass
saw the crankbait. We learned that when we changed the
lure type, and the bass saw baits they’d never
seen before, they began to strike those new baits just
as aggressively as they had the crankbait.” Jones
and his team proved that bass could remember a lure
for at least three months, and they believed bass might
remember a lure for even a longer time. “We don’t
know for sure, but I won’t be surprised if a bass
can remember a particular lure for at least one fishing
season and maybe even longer,” Jones says. “Additional
research indicates that the longer a bass looks at a
lure before he strikes it, the longer he can remember
that lure and won’t strike it again. If a lure
goes past the  bass
at high speed, and the bass strikes it but doesn’t
get a good mental picture of the lure, the bass won’t
remember the lure. Therefore, that bass still will be
susceptible to striking the lure the next time the fish
sees it. We’ve learned that the better mental
image the bass gets of the lure the first time it spots
that lure, the less likely the bass will be to strike
that lure the next time.
“Rattling baits are abnormal. For instance, lipless
crankbaits that contain a rattle don’t resemble
anything in nature. So, these baits stand out like sore
thumbs. We’ve learned that naïve bass have
tendencies to be antagonistic, territorial and curious.
When a lure gets in their faces, prods their interest
and gets their attention, they’ll attack. The
first time the bass sees a rattling bait, that lure
often will trigger a strike. However, because lipless
rattling crankbaits stand out like sore thumbs, bass
have an opportunity to see those baits and form good
mental images of them, making the bass much-less inclined
to strike that  bait
the next time the fish sees that lure. If you use baits
that don’t stand out but instead blend into the
environment and are more akin to what the fish normally
feeds on, the bass has a difficult time separating that
bait and the memory of it from the food the fish feeds
on every day. I think this reason is why the bass continue
to bite soft-plastic lures, even after they’ve
had negative encounters with them. The soft-plastic
baits look, move and feel more natural to a bass when
compared to some of the other lures. Crankbaits, powerful
one-time lures that can cause bass to strike them the
first time they see them, over-stimulate bass. They’re
also easier for bass to remember and avoid the next
time.”
TOMORROW: WHY OLD BAITS CATCH
BASS TODAY
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