Science: It Sucks Being Shocked

If you’re a bluegill, that is. I love coming across little bitty  “one-liners” either in articles or research papers that either stand out as being profound, or explain via scientific documentation something generally perceived or accepted in the bass fishing world. Kind of like one of those “A-HA” moments. I don’t find many of them, but I’ve come across a pair of studies that each have the same finding and that qualify in my eyes for this distinction.

From the 1996 INHS report “Effect of Electrofishing on Sunfish”: “Small bluegill are more likely to be eaten by largemouth bass predators immediately after the shocking experience than unshocked bluegill. In our laboratory experiments, which were performed in an eight-foot diameter pool, the foraging largemouth bass would immediately eat any shocked bluegill that moved (either by gilling or twitching).”

And, from the follow up research nearly 10 years later (Effects of Electroshock on Bluegill Feeding and Susceptibility to Predation): “After release, largemouth bass began to follow and strike at swimming, unshocked bluegills with a success rate of 41%. The largemouth bass ignored the shocked bluegills that were present on the bottom of the pool. However, as the shocked bluegills recovered after about 30 s (evidenced by ventilating and attempts to swim), largemouth bass switched almost exclusively to feeding on them, and the predator capture rate increased to 88%.”

As relates to everyday fishing, of course, we’ve all heard about “bumping the stump”, deflection creating reaction strikes, or even light twitches of a sinking Senko or the death spiral of a falling tube or soft plastic jerkbait. Keep this “shocking” bit of information in mind the next time you’re out on the water working you’re baits in an attempt to catch bass.