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Food for Thought for September 1st

Jords

By Jords
in Freshwater

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Jords

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An interesting article I found about Bass fishing creeks, thought I would pass it on :)

Anyone keen to try it whilst the season is closed??


/>http://www.lovefishing.com.au/blog.php?user=LoveFishing&blogentry_id=299

There is so much more to be learned about our quarry by entering their domain

Successful anglers like to think that they have a good understanding of those fish that are their quarry and the environments in which they live. To a large extent this is true, keen fishos do have a pretty good grasp on the species they target and the aquatic environment BUT that is generally only from an above-water perspective. If we TRULY want to understand fish and how they interact and react in their various surrounds, we need to enter their watery domain. In other words, get wet. Don a mask and snorkel and spend time observing things from their perspective.

Ever since I was a young boy I have done this in a wide range of places and aquatic habitat types. I do attribute some of my fishing success to the knowledge that I have gained over 40 years of diving.

Last summer, my son Coen and I decided to snorkel about 2km up one of our favourite bass creeks near our home on the Mid North Coast of NSW. I took along a new underwater camera and took some interesting shots. We learned a great deal about the waterway in the few hours we spent floating down the upper freshwater reaches of this small coastal creek. Hopefully the accompanying photographs and following observations will help readers to better understand the Australian bass and its natural habitat.

Underwater observations of a bass creek

Heavy cover in full flow

Probably the most outstanding trend that we observed is that the majority of and biggest bass are not necessarily in the most expansive or deepest pools. As most bass anglers are already aware, structure that forms cover for the bass is the big drawcard.

We found one of the smaller pools in the system held the most number of bass. It was a deep little hole with a surface area not much larger than a single car garage, located right on a sharp bend and jammed with fallen timber. It held no less than eight adult bass to an impressive 50cm in length, a 20-30 fish school of big mullet, two eel-tailed catfish and large amounts of small native rainbow fish and gudgeons.

Within a few hundred metres were a couple of pools that were several times the size of this smaller hole, but despite having expansive areas of deep water, a few good snags and deep undercut banks, they only held one or two resident bass. The small log-jammed hole offered more substantial cover in full water flow, deep leaf litter and volumes more small fish life than its significantly more expansive counterparts.

This same scenario repeated itself throughout the two or more kilometre stretch of creek we covered – wherever thick entanglements of tree debris created heavy cover in full water flow positions, numbers of bass were holed-up. Admittedly this was during full-sun periods, and after sunset these same fish would almost certainly travel and forage in the shallower and more open waters up and downstream from their holding points. But we do a lot of our bass fishing in full sun, so it was most interesting to observe this.

The point to be made is that the more expansive, deeper pools that appeared to be preferred bass habitat from above-water, held significantly less and slighter fish than the smaller(and more difficult to fish) pools with heavy timber cover.

Undercut banks

Another interesting finding was that many sections of bank had more extensive undercut banks than what was apparent from above water. One would expect the heavily undercut banks to be those areas subject to the most direct and strongest water flow. However, it was often the opposite. Many of the deeper corner holes had extensive undercut banks on the up-current end of the hole. This appears to occur in holes where strong water flow hits the back end and creates a large eddy within the pool. The swirling action seems to gouge out under the bank of one side and the upper end of the pool.

Some of these undercut banks were like expansive caves that extended up to 3m under the apparent edge of the creek. These deep, dark dungeons almost always held one or a pair of quality bass – not to mention eels as thick as Mike Tyson’s arms!

Other favoured bass haunts

In one long expansive pool that had very little shade from tree cover, we struggled to find any bass. There was a section of the pool which had a hard rock bottom – unlike most of the creek bed that was either river stones or leaf debris. Within this area of hard rock bottom was a single deep pothole about as round as the roof of a family sedan. It was a bulbous sort of a hole that created shade on one side. I could not see into it without diving to the bottom and pulling myself in. Sure enough a trio of cracking bass shot out as I poked my head in, and all that was left in there was a dirty big eel eyeballing me!

Within the same pool was a backwater section with relatively still water and a large pocket of waterlilies. By sticking my head through the first few layers of waterlily stems I could see well back into the mess. Sure enough there were two large bass tucked in under the lilies and staring right at me.

The most prominent observation was that in daylight hours the bass showed a strong preference to hold up in shade, but not always in the shady areas that from above-water seemed prime locations. In this relatively small creek their preference was definitely for the large mid-stream snags where they would swim in and out of the pillars of sunlight streaking through.

It was most educational to observe bass in their natural surrounds. The other eye-opener was the proliferation of life that these creeks held from large intricately-marked tadpoles to turtles, water dragons, mullet, herring, catfish, eels, freshwater shrimp, colourful rainbowfish and gudgeons.

Just by donning a mask and snorkel and moving from above water to below we enter a vastly different world. I hope the images hereabouts capture some of that world.

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