Spring 2018
®
FK th O i N s, t R h O a A t W an G d E t Y he O ot U her R
by Mike Gorman
page 42
W
e have covered the basics of bass forage – shad,
wakasagi, sunfish, crayfish, etc. In this issue
were going to talk about a variety of “other” critters bass prey upon.
These are prey items that maybe seasonally available
or – simply opportunistic meals.
Bass are predators – they are not afraid to
miss an opportunity for a solid meal and regardless
of age, the largemouth bass is adept at exploiting
available food resources.
An examination of scholarly articles on bass diet
consistently shows that these “other” prey items often
comprise a proportionally small fraction of bass diet – if any.
In one study - the stomach contents from 3,873 bass
contained 80 terrestrial vertebrate prey items comprising 15
different species. Impressive right?
Well, numerically terrestrial vertebrates comprised
only 0.03% of the total prey items, and the frequency of
occurrence of terrestrial forms was 2.1%. However, in
terms of biomass, terrestrial vertebrates represented the
third largest prey category (12.3%)(i.e., not often terrestrial
vertebrates are consumed, however, they are a large food
item when they do). This goes back to what I wrote
about in my kokanee article – who is going to pass up
high caloric value for minimal caloric output?
and occur nearly everywhere and are generally abundant. Tadpoles are often abundant in littoral nursery areas for bass and serve as an excellent food source for growing bass. Curiously, there is consistently little to no evidence of amphibian predation in the stomach content analysis of bass diet; however, there is considerable research into the reduction in amphibian fauna following introduction of bass or other sunfish species.
Further – studies of amphibian behavior show changes
reductions in grown and
development of some frog
species on the presence of
FROGS AS BASS FOOD
Frogs and amphibians are the quintessential vertebrate bass forage – as they are primarily aquatic