I love dogs – especially dogs like the border collie.
Oftentimes, I'll be sitting at home where I catch myself watching one of those TV shows that features home videos of silly things that happen to folks at home. Sometimes, while I'm watching those home-video shows, I'll see a video of a border collie and all of the amazing things that a collie can do.
I'm always amazed at how the owner of a dog can place a dog biscuit on the very tip of a dog's nose, right next to his all-powerful jaws, and the dog will not eat the biscuit until the owner says that he can.
It's amazing.
Sometimes, the owner has the dog trained so well, that the dog has learned one, single command word that'll trigger it to eat the biscuit that rests on the dog's nose. The dog's owner will shout several words to the dog in an attempt to trick it into grabbing the biscuit on the wrong command. But the dog listens through all of the owner's words, then suddenly picks out the one word that allows it to seize the biscuit, and snaps up the treat to the delight of the owner.
Dogs are incredibly trainable.
If we know that dogs can be trained to feed in this way, the question becomes, can a bass be trained to feed in this way as well? Especially when a bass is likely to stay in the same place for several days on end, such as during the spawn? This raises the question that if a bass can be and is trained to feed, is it ethical to train multiple bass prior to a bass tournament?
I've recently become aware of a practice that has been developed by some tournament anglers that relies on training bass prior to a tournament. The way the training method works is fairly simple, and is only valid when a bass will be in the same location for an extended period of time (usually 2 or 3 days).
The method of bass training begins with finding fish that are "locked" onto the bed. This usually occurs 2 days before a bass tournament. During practice, an angler spends an entire day locating and GPS-marking bass beds. Once that's complete, the night before the last day of practice, the angler marks the eight largest bass. Next, the day before the tournament, the angler trains the bass that remain on the bed.
Bass that are on the bed are typically very finicky. Often, it may take several different baits and an extended period of time to catch a single large bass off of his or her bed. Therefore, training a bedding bass is a closely held secret.
Training begins by pulling up to one of the seven or eight singled-out bass to be trained. The angler selects one bait that will be used to entice all seven or eight target fish for that day. The bait could be a tube, or a jig, or a worm, or any number of other baits. The bait selection has little to do with the training of the fish, but must remain constant. The exact bait used to train a bass must be used the next day to catch the bass, or the training effort is futile.
Once the angler is properly located to pitch one particular lure to a bedding fish, he pitches the lure to that fish over and over and over again. An aggressive fish doesn't require this type of training, but a fish that's not aggressive, and often over 4 pounds, does require this type of training to be caught quickly the next day.
Over time, the fish will become aggravated at the persistent invasion of the bait into the bed and will strike the bait.
Once the fish strikes the bait, the training begins.
The angler allows the fish, with bait in mouth, to carry the bait out of the bed and release it. Once the fish returns to the bed, he pitches the same bait back to the fish to elicit another strike. The fish strikes the lure, removes it from the bed, and returns to the bed.
Once in the striking mode, the fish will normally strike several times over a period of 15 to 20 minutes. The fish is never hooked and the same bait is used over and over again. Over time, the fish becomes accustomed to striking the pitched lure and carrying it out of the bed with no consequences.
Once the angler is comfortable that the fish is trained to that lure, he'll move on to the next fish and train that one. Training one fish usually takes around 45 minutes.
So how does this help a tournament angler?
The answer is simple: Training bass speeds the catching of the biggest bass available. It's said that once the fish is trained, the five largest bass on tournament day can be caught in less than half the time it would normally take for a non-trained bass to be caught.
The advantage being that if an angler can catch the five biggest fish he saw in practice in less than 3 hours, he has 5 hours remaining to search for a really large fish to fill out his limit and potentially win the tournament.
Is training these fish fair? Is training these fish ethical? Are these fish really trained, or does the idea of training fish build confidence in the angler to catch them, which then results in catching the five fish quicker?
I don't know the answers to these questions, but once I became aware of the practice, I did find the practice to be interesting.
Who knew that a bass could be trained like a dog?
Is all of this fact or simply exaggerated dock talk to intimidate other anglers who fish tournaments during the spawn?
I don't know.
Perhaps training bass is fact, perhaps training bass is hype, but whatever the case, should I ever see a bass make an attempt to retrieve a duck during hunting season, I may have to rethink my practice methods when I prepare for a tournament during the spawn.
