The Science of ‘ABC’ Bass

Don’t you love acronyms?

‘ABC’ bass – some of the best pros in the world have targeted them, and won some pretty big bucks doing it. Chances are your local jackpot tourney has been won on them before. Better still, if you’re a tourney angler, you’ve contributed to their proliferation and probably didn’t even realize it.

What the heck is an ‘ABC’ bass? Keep reading…

OK, so ‘ABC’ is a cheesy acronym for ‘already been caught’, but it doesn’t change the fact that we tourney anglers have created what has sometimes been referred to as either a ‘put-and-take’ fishery, or the states best stocking program.

Every year across this country, hundreds if not thousands of bass tourneys take off from a local ramp, with their anglers returning 4-8 hours later to weigh-in and try and cash a check. After doing so, most of the bass are released back into the lake, often right at the docks of the very ramp you launched from, to swim off and be caught again. Here’s where the science comes in.

Lots of studies and tracking have been done to try and get a handle on exactly what happens to these bass after they are released, and the results are rather interesting. I gathered up a handful of these studies and reread through them, capturing some of the specifics to share with readers.

> In general, smallmouth and spotted bass tend to vacate a release area much quicker than largemouth do. They also tend to have a higher return percentage back to their general area of capture, though this still only occurs in about 1/3 of the fish. With largemouth, that return number tends to drop toward the 1 in 10 mark.

> Most sudies show that at least 50% or more of the largemouth released in the ramp area will stay within 1 mile of that ramp, often for several months.

> When they start moving out, over 80% of them will follow an adjacent continuous shoreline. That means in most cases, they can only move one of two ways (left or right), so pick a direction and drop the trolling motor.

> Since public ramp and marina areas are common public access fishing sites, many of the released bass get recaught within the immediate area. Studies showed that as many as 68% of those recaught bass that weren’t captured by another tourney angler ended up being harvested, in essence creating a put-and-take fishery.

It was interesting to read Rick Clunn’s thoughts on this situation in his Ohio River 2004 tournament summary. Skeet Reese and Rick finished 1st and 3rd respectively in that event, and both utilized release areas to some degree in their success. Rick believes “that the marina and ramp area that the tournament is using should be restricted. Anglers should only be allowed to fish water that is accessible by all other fisherpersons”, but he is “presently opposed to other restrictive actions”. In other words, all other ramp areas would be ‘fair game’, which is how I believe most bass tournies tend to operate these days. 

“I prefer at this point to consider this phenomenon as another of the many interesting variables in this sport that anglers must understand”, Rick concludes. That seems to be a pretty reasonable approach until further studies perhaps shed some light onto the overall population level effects, if any, that this type action creates.

Any thoughts or comments?