Frogs, salamanders and other forage imitators to target bass when fishing

frogs, salamander and other forage for bass, when fishing for largemouth by matching bait to forage

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