BFHP Bass Articles
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BFHP Bass Articles |
Reaction Strikes
by Ralph Manns 1//05/2011
The so-called reaction strike is just one of the many ways bass appear to humans to attack food items and lures. Basically, bass inspect and examine things that don't seem able to move away rapidly before committing to eating them. If prey can move out of range too fast for a successful attack, bass ignore them (and lures). Faster moving targets require instantaneous behavior, less the item quickly move out of range, but it is still a feeding response.
Everything a bass does, every behavior, other than sex, nest-building, and guarding eggs and fry is feeding related and motivated. Growing in response to ample food, and becoming sick are is biologic responses and not really " behaviors" unless we count moving to adjust body temperature and that is done to help sick bass recover and feed again or to better digest food and feed/grow again.
Much of the misunderstanding about bass feeding is found in the false belief that bass are somehow consummate predators, able to eat wherever and whenever they can. This is not the case. As I've repeatedly posted, bass and their prey are nicely balanced. Bass get enough to eat and grow and prey avoid being eaten enough to spawn and reproduce. Much of the time, bass are hungry and multiple studies have shown bass stomachs are empty much if not most of the time. A little food goes a long way to sustain a bass.
Until man created artificial reservoirs; water that supported large schools of shad, bass in natural North American waters almost never had an opportunity to over-eat or glut themselves. And even with overly abundant prey in some reservoirs, we still find many if not most bass with empty or partially full stomachs . The absence of an overeating probability in nature appears to even have left bass without a clear-cut “I'm full" signal" as they had little need for one as they evolved. Thus we get the rare but not uncommon reports of football-bass apparently feeding until shad fell out of their open mouths.
Why is this an important point? Because bass are almost always hungry. In most natural waters they can't really afford to by-pass eating. When they refuse our lures it is almost always because the lures are out of range or the bass have made wary due to a noisy approach or crude tackle rather than because they don't want to eat.
Yes, some bass are truly inactive. Once digestion is started, bass send most of their blood to their stomachs, routing only minimal amounts to their nervous system for defensive purposes. In this state they are, for all practical purposes, unable to feed. But, the sudden appearance of vulnerable and easily catchable prey or repeated casting of a lure over its nose may attract enough attention to arouse the fish and cause it to re-send blood to brain and muscles. Then, on the next pass of a prey or a lure, a bass may attack with ferocity (a so called "reaction strike").
When bass are actively feeding in schools, they all react competitively to any potential food, so we have many strikes that are called "reaction strikes" or “competition” strikes by the non-biologists and some bass pros, but they are simply routine feeding behavior.
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