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Fish Intelligents?
Eddie21X 
 		    09/13/2004 23:44
Alewives
Posts: 2
 

Are game fish as smart as we think they are? Do they know if your lure is "the right color"? Do you think they inspect it before deciding to eat it? My belief is they eat when they're hungry and they don't when they aren't.
Eddie21X Team Triton TR-21Xpdc/Merc 250XS Optimax
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Re:Fish Intelligents?
t3pt6k 
 		  Port: Grand Haven, MI   09/14/2004 00:32
Admin
Posts: 2447
 

Well Eddie I agree mainly with what you';re saying - however my own experiences contradict that - I know for Salmon fishing that on certain days only certain colors and actions will work. Once you pattern them - mainly with color - and you switch up to match you increase your bite. I'm not sure why this is true and may be a reflection of catching fish that have plenty of forage and are looking for a special treat I don't know.

But I'm sure you have experiencesd the same thing with bass - somedays you can catch them on everything you throw and some days they will only eat a certain pattern or technique. A lot of bass guys a Bassmaster Universoty were claiming Bass as a predator of opportunity but Ken Cook thinks there are some scientific drivers that make Bass very-selective predators. You can Bass to protect there nests etc... but the majority of time you need to be presenting the right pattern - the other scholl is the "match the hatch" philospohy - but this almost never holds true for Salmon fishing - it does work well for river fishing and flyh fishing so it is hard to object to.
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Re:Fish Intelligents?
JAL 
 		    11/21/2004 14:06
Steelhead
Posts: 106
 

May I add something here? As far as fish being intelligent I think we may give them more credit that we should. Yes, they can learn to avoid something that is threatening, or they may learn to recognize a 'good situation'. Such as gold fish learn to recognize the hand that feeds them.
We deal with steelhead continually during the fall and winter...You have biters and non biters on a daily basis. The biters are easily triggered with a lure or bait, but these fish would bite most anything that is in their area. Then you can have selective biters..these fish may respond to a lure if everything is just right.
I firmly believe a strike is dependent on how the fish sees the lure and it's general action.(fast, erratic or slow and throbbing). Visual is dependent on light, water clarity, type of paint and the contrast between paint colors. This is where your patterning comes into play...finding the color, tone and action that 'triggers' the fish.
We all have also seen fish ignore one plug to strike another identical looking one...we do not see a difference but the fish does recognize something different..this holds true for salmon as well as steelhead.
A point of interest here is when fishing for steelhead and you are looking for a big buck troll or back troll plugs.....They are more likely to strike a plug that is in their area. Big bucks are generally very territorial.
We also find that fishing bait will hands down trigger more bites with steelhead.
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Re:Fish Intelligents?
JAL 
 		    11/21/2004 14:18
Steelhead
Posts: 106
 

I thought I'd Kick this one out on bass.....Eddie do you ever use tube baits for bass....specifically in a river situation?
Under this situation we have had bass just move into a position and look over a tube, then just ignore it and in some cases even turn away. If you give that tube a gentle lift and make it move, you can trigger a swift strike. That fish did not seem to want to eat the bait but it was triggered to strike when it moved. We have seen this happen numerous times. I do believe that color and tone does make a difference in the fish and his reaction.....
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