What does it take for a lake to be a great bass fishing lake.

[chrisvmo]

Just would like to here everyones opinion on this. Should there be a few bass taken every year? I know my favorite lake is filled with pike and alot of people say its bad for the bass fishing but the lake is filled with big bass. Weeds? inlet rivers or streams? planting feeder fish etc?

[Durand Dan]

Great question!!
Is a great Bass Fishing Lake a Lake where you can hook a monster on every cast? Is it a lake where 5lb + are always available? Or is it a Lake where you have to use all the knowledge you have to land a 2lb fish?
Great question!!

[Flippin222]

I will go out on a limb and offer up the first smarty pants answer.....BASS.  That is all a lake needs to be a great bass fishing lake. Whether it be that monsters are readily available or that all it has is dinks or even if it takes all day to catch that first one.....all that it needs is bass.

It would be even better without the jet skis, but it still only needs bass.

[thedude]

lots and lots of food.

i had a pond in indiana i fished in high school.. older retired gentleman owned it and had landscaped all around it, aerated it and stocked and managed the  bass in it. You could fish this 1 acre pond and catch 30  bass in the 3+ range... in one day.
he would stock about 1 ton of baitfish a year into the pond if that tells you anything.

[Dan]

Well.... I have mentioned this a time or two or maybe it was twenty-two, but when I went down to Ray Scott's place last April I got to fish in his lake he built from the bottom up. In fact, one of his businesses is designing ponds. He has also designed a pump that maintains oxygen levels. He has ridges, rock piles, stumps, and about every kind of fish structure you can think of. It is a pretty big pond and the story of it being built was very interesting. I don't know how many acres, but I'd guess close to 50+. (The picture below shows about half the pond.) He also has some smaller ponds. He monitors them all the time. He works with a local university to make sure everything is tuned to where it is at its optimum for growing bass. We stayed in a guest house that had a dock with a feeder on the end of it. There were numerous feeders around the lake to feed the baitfish that were in the pond. The day I fished there we kept all the two pounders we caught to use to stock a new pond he was just starting. I know your thread wasn't specifically ponds, but the fishing in Ray's was obviously very good and a real treat. I caught two bass on one crankbait twice that day. Both times both fish were 3 lbs. or better. 
Designing fishing holes is very interesting work.
As far as what makes a good bass lake, I think it needs to have potential. Just catching bass is fine, but to know that there is a big one swimming makes the hunt more defined. Plus, if the lake is managed well the predator prey relationship should be such that there are big fish in the lake. Putting fish in a lake to increase the big fish is not a good idea though. The lake I'm on up north got largemouth bass virus and it killed all the big fish. I think the virus was brought in by guess who regularly brought bass back to the lake on private stocking missions. Now, the lake is stunted with little 8-10 inch bass. You can catch 40 of them, but I hardly fish it any more. Without the chance at a big fish it just isn't as interesting to me.

[rufus]

Obviously, you have to have the food. The shad filled reservoirs of the south seem to produce the biggest fish, but it seems the lakes that are the timeless lakes (the lakes or reservoirs that have produced fish for years) have the weeds as well. Lakes like Guntersville, Sam Rayburn, Santee Cooper. Guntersville and Santee Cooper bothe experienced downturns in their fishing over the years, but it was only when they were sprayed heavily for hydrilla control. As soon as the weeds were allowed to return the fishing got incredible again. Don't get me I know that the fish in these lakes get on the wood as well, but to consistently grow and maintain populations I truly believe you have to have the weeds. I believe the next generations of lunkers to come truly need them to survive in numbers. Lakes like Table Rock that are very void of weeds do have big fish and decent populations, but nowhere near the kind of population of a lake like Guntersville. Around my home in NE Indiana, hands down the best lake around is a little 800 acre lake called Hamilton. It is very similar to a Sam Rayburn. It has a huge population of shad and very large weed flats that are covered in coontail and Eurasian milfoil. This lake has both numbers and Monster fish. As far as the other lakes in the area we have many good ones and they all have weeds, but very few of them have shad. Every single lake in our area that does have shad though has a good population of big fish. The lakes without the shad, but with a lot of weeds all have good numbers of bass. The one thing I do notice is if a lake does not have shad and is mainly a bluegill/baitfish forage type of lake the fish tend to average on the small side, but if the lake has a large population of crayfish the average will shoot way up, but will still not match the shad lakes.

[Cheetam]

Cover, structure, bait, and good water (oxygen, nutrients for baitfish, etc).

[dashaver63]

Don't forget about good structure also. Bass need structure to relate to. Structure as in wood, weeds and rockpiles draw and hold the bait also and that means less energy wasted by the bass that feed there. Bass are opportunistic feeders by nature and outside of a couple times out of the year, won't travel very far to feed, so good structure is a must.

[Bender]

I look for this:
   

The great bass lakes I know about around here are places like Wixom Lake and Kent Lake. Both are river impoundments so maybe that has something to do with it. Kent seemed to have much better quality of fish in 07, but this year they sprayed it so hard for weeds and the weights were way down. I don't think I heard of a single bag of 20 pounds this year. It's funny how the "studies" show it does not affect fishing, haha.
It is really strange how lakes very near each other can be good bass lakes and the next one is not good.

From reading above it seems that forage is very important. What do you think allows some lakes to have good populations of shad?

Another question is do you think lakes go in cycles? Good for 1 year, 5, 10? Why? Climate, overfishing,

[Lightningboy]

I agree that almost everything you put in the water effects bass populations.  Chemicals may not effect bass directly, but any disturbance in the food chain will eventually impact bass.

Funny you should mention bags being down on Kent.  Same thing for Belleville this year.  Seems like all the big fish are gone.  I think combinations of factors add together to create "streaks" of good or bad fishing. 

If you only get optimum spring spawning conditions once every several years, the result is many adult bass of nearly the same size.  As this year class increases in size, it also gets harvested.  Numbers in that year class go down.  Get a stretch of 3-5 years without a strong year class combined with heavy harvest, and the bass fishing crashes. 

Now add in diseases like LBV, water fertility changes from fertilizer run off on all those pretty lakeside lawns, etc.  I guess bass populations are more fragile than we imagine.

Great bass fishing?  Low pressure + good cover + forage.  Northern MI inland lakes are a great example.  Look for 200+ acres, with 50% weed cover, and poor access.  The other extreme is the Great Lakes; tons of food, and tons of space for those bass to get lost in.  Heck, there's probably tons of big water 5+ smallies that die without ever seeing a lure.

[Waterfoul]

Great bass fishing lake?  Simply put it needs bass!!  But those bass need food, O2, cover/structure (gimme a second on that one!), and believe it or not, they need other natural predators in the same body of water.  A few pike can help keep the bass from being stunted.  There is a lake near my home that has a TON of bass... all in the 10-13" range.  BUT, it has almost NO predator fish.  In the 20 years I've been fishing this lake I have NEVER caught a pike.  I petition the DNR every season to lower the size limit on this lake to 12" just so some fisherman will KEEP a few of the smaller fish.  They always cite the same study done on the lake saying the fish average isn't small enough.  That data is from 1989 by the way.

I think Chrisvmo knows what one of my favorite lakes is too... several sunken islands, good dock cover, and nice drop offs with weed edges.  Couple that with light fishing pressure and a local "club" that stocks it with big head minnows every year and you have some BIG bass, and lots of them.  But this lake also has a very healthy pike population...

These fish are from a tourney we fished on that favorite lake. 



So is this pike:



As for structure and cover... I've always used a simple guideline:

Structure is something a bass can be ON or BEHIND to ambush prey.  Dock pilings, a single boulder or perhaps a couple big ones isolated on a flat or bank, and dead falls with little to no branches.

Cover is something the fish can be IN to ambush prey.  Weed beds, rip-rap (if the chunks are big enough), deadfalls with a lot of branches.

[cr]

Baaaaack to the subject , a good bass lake to me is a lake that has both large number's of fish plus the posibility of big fish.   Predators are necessary in my opinion, as much as I hate the slimy thing's . Throw in some docks and pontoons to skip and a few drop-offs, and I'm good to go. Structure , Cover whatever its called . How lucky for us we have Kevin , Al , AND Eric to keep us staight .

[Waterfoul]

Waterfoul,

Great points about predators and nice pics, too.

But if a bass can hide in, on, or behind something, it's cover. Bass habitat is often a combination of structure and cover, e.g. a ridge of boulders or a grassy flat. What term do you use to describe flats, ditches, points, humps, islands, coves, ledges, creeks, ridges, depressions, drop-offs, canals, contours, etc.? Kevin, Al, and I refer to those elements as structures. Bass relate to those as much as they do to various forms of cover.

I would call all those features structure.  Although if a ledge overhangs enough and a bass can hind in or behind it... it could be considered cover!  LOL!!! Guess I need to read KVD's book eh??

Around here there are a couple lakes I would consider very good (great is a BIG word that I don't throw around much... and I'm not telling you where those fish in the pics were caught!):  Reeds Lake and White Lake being on top of my list.

[chrisvmo]

I agree with waterfowl because his favorite lake is also my favorite lake. I think they planted a bunch of perch in there the last couple of years as well with the flat head minnows. never a bad day out there and that is usually over 15 pounds everytime. Didn't you have 21 lbs in a tourney out there waterfowl? He "thedude" where are you from?

[thedude]

i'm originally from Lowell, IN currently living just north of GR.

[chrisvmo]

what tournies do you fish in...I'm from Hudsonville. also what are your favorite lakes in the area?

[Waterfoul]

I agree with waterfowl because his favorite lake is also my favorite lake. I think they planted a bunch of perch in there the last couple of years as well with the flat head minnows. never a bad day out there and that is usually over 15 pounds everytime. Didn't you have 21 lbs in a tourney out there waterfowl? He "thedude" where are you from?

shhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

[thedude]

what tournies do you fish in...I'm from Hudsonville. also what are your favorite lakes in the area?

i run a small monday night tournament (see sig line) so i stick mostly to those now. Have done kellogsville, bbt, fom, and hawg hunters in the past also. favorite lakes around here... hardy, muskegon, white, tamarack, bass... thornapple river

[Waterfoul]

what tournies do you fish in...I'm from Hudsonville. also what are your favorite lakes in the area?

i run a small monday night tournament (see sig line) so i stick mostly to those now. Have done kellogsville, bbt, fom, and hawg hunters in the past also. favorite lakes around here... hardy, muskegon, white, tamarack, bass... thornapple river

What?  Not Wabasis??

Chris, you should join our Monday nighters.  Also, Gander Mountain runs one every Wed. night on Wabasis.  Did well there this year. 

[thedude]

wabasis is on the list.. its the very last lake on it. there are lakes i've never fished ahead of it.