I think one question to ask is "How many bass have to survive to consider the
spawn a successful one?"

Let's set up an imaginary bass lake that has the following characteristics:

(a) healthy bass population
(b) healthy forage base
(c) most fishermen practice catch and release

I'm no mathmetician, but it seems to me that if each and every adult bass is
able in its lifetime to produce only one single bass fingerling that grows to
maturity, then the bass population should remain more or less constant.

Fact is that every bass bed has jillions of eggs. We don't need -- in fact we
don't WANT -- all those fry to survive. It seems to me that if too many fry
survive to fingerlings, then on to adults, we'd have too much pressure on the
forage fish and we'd see the size of the average bass decrease.

Again -- I'm no scientist so take this with several grains of salt -- but I
can't see how bed fishing will hurt.

Family, Friends, Fishing,
Rob Storm
http://stormsrestaurants.com