Rants from the Hollow

Before they become truly amorous, fish need a certain amount of breathing room, so to speak, which varies by species. Common wisdom has it that Micropterus salmoides, otherwise known as the largemouth bass, needs more legroom than is offered by a 1/2 acre pond. I’d suspected that perhaps ours were becoming a bit less circumspect. For several years, I’d noticed some pretty small bass swimming around, which meant that the fingerlings we stocked were either not growing, or the bass were stocking themselves.

It was Elizabeth who figured it out. Before we’d even pitched our tent on the dam this summer, she’d identified a big fish and claimed first right of catch. It was the biggest largemouth I’ve ever seen in our pond, and I’ll bet it goes 2 pounds. Its got some meat on it, which is more than unusual for anything coming out of our little body of water.

Every time we saw old man bass, he seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of minnows. The funny thing was, he didn’t seem to be eating any of them. The first, and mistaken assumption, was that he was saving them for later. I dragged multiple lures right across his nose, but he evinced no interest in them at all.

He just cruised around in tight circles, always within a foot or two of the cloud of minnies. Most of them time, his territory was right around the large pipe that serves as the overflow, but sometimes he’d be 5 feet on one side, and maybe up to 15 feet on the other. His habits were predictable and he was easy to find.

It was Elizabeth who finally figured out that this was a parent, protecting its young. We did a little research and found out that the male is responsible for childcare.

Whenever the school of bass fry was disturbed, the fishlets would leap out of the water, making a series of popping sounds, like a handful of tiny pebbles landing in the water. Fun. We’d seen that effect for several years now, but never knew what kind of little minnow it was, and we thought maybe some new kind of aquatic critter had hitched a ride on a duck’s foot.

Certainly the pan fish have always bred in the pond. Within a few years of stocking it, there were fish nests all over the shallow parts. I don’t what the things are–blue gills and others. I think we had once stocked something called red eared sunfish, too, which Fenders now calls shellcracker. Maybe hybrid blue gills, too. All I know is that we’ve got more than enough of those. I don’t see any reason that our bass shouldn’t be well fed. The rule is, if you catch a pan fish, you do not throw it back.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Hollow Pleasures: weekending in the country. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.