More Aquarium Watching to Learn
Dateline: 06/02/97
Last week I talked about watching fish in a small aquarium to learn their habits and actions. There is even a better place to watch fish to learn how to catch them. Companies like Bass Pro Shops and Mann's have their own aquariums with bass - often big bass - in them. Many cities also have freshwater aquariums where you can watch fish and see them in very natural environments.
On my first trip to Lake Eufaula in the mid-1970s, I visited Mann's Fish World. They have a huge aquarium with a viewing window higher than your head. The alligator gar weighing over 100 pounds was amazing, but what I spent hours watching were the bass. A school of a half-dozen bass over eight pounds each hovered near structure in the tank. They acted just like the bass in the nearby lake would act. I wish I could have stayed for days. Watching those bass showed me how they school up and group together. I could also watch them and learn how they used cover, hanging near a log or rock well off the bottom when not feeding, but moving to the cover and using it to ambush minnows swimming by when they got hungry. That helped me realize having my bait in contact with structure is important when bass fishing. Seldom did the bass feed when hovering away from cover and they would not chase food far from their ambush point.
It was also interesting how the bigger bass took the best spots and the smaller bass got what was left. The school of big bass ran off the smaller bass in the tank just by moving toward them. They got to feed first and chose where and when they wanted to eat.
Other fish in the tank had their own habits. Catfish usually stayed on the bottom. The bigger ones seemed to be loaners, but small cats schooled up in balls and traveled together. Crappie stayed over cover but seldom moved into it. They also stayed in schools, grouped by size. That went along with my experience of catching the same sized crappie together in the wild when I found some biting.
Bream in the tank were everywhere. Some seemed to like being by themselves while others stayed in groups. Most stayed in or very near cover. They did seem to loosely group by type, with the shellcracker staying away from the bluegill and the redbreast choosing different places than the other two.
The huge alligator gar looked like a log, seldom moving. The bass and bream ignored it, using it like cover. I never saw it eat although other fish were often so close to its mouth all it would have had to do was chomp down.
The feeding action of the bass was just like my Oscar I talked about last week. When a bass fed, it would ease up to a shiner minnow, shad or small bream and suddenly flare its gills and the smaller fish would disappear. Sometimes a bass would chase a bream, picking one out and chasing it while ignoring others they went by. The chase usually was not very long, and the bass almost always got what it was after.
Bream also sucked in food in one gulp, but their small mouths meant the bait sometimes didn't get in all at once. I could see how the hook might be left outside the mouth while a bream was feeding and you would need to wait until it got it inside before setting the hook. Catfish were the only fish that looked like they chewed their food but it was hard to tell since they got right over it on the bottom and the food they chose didn't try to run away. Visit an aquarium near you to learn the habits of the fish you plan on checking. Keep an aquarium at home. You can learn a lot by watching them.
For more information on aquaria you can visit and see freshwater fish:
Bass Pro Shop
Sportsman's Warehouse
Information about the 5500 gal. aquarium in their Atlanta store
Mann's Fish World
Several aquaria show the visitor many kinds of freshwater fish
but bass are the stars here.
Miramichi Salmon
Museum
Learn the lifecycle of the salmon and see them at different stages
of their life
Tennesse Aquarium
One of the biggest freshwater aquaria in the US. See all kinds
of southern US freshwater fish in their natural environments
South Carolina Aquarium
New aquarium with both fresh and saltwater fish. Observe them to
see how to catch them.
