Largemouth in particular are very territorial, in my experience if I am
in an area where I am catching a lot of small fish, I am moving quickly.
I rarely get into an area where I am weeding through smaller fish to
get to larger fish, the only exception I have run into is in the fall
for small mouth. In three casts I can come up with a 13" , 17", and 19"
fish. Typically, and I have gathered this from reading a lot of
articles and books written by B.A.S.S or F.L.W pro's, they target areas
where their odds are higher of catching larger bass. I sat in a boat
when I was 14 in a pro-am tournament with Bob Dobratz (was on the
Wisconsin B.A.S.S team a while ago) who fished a specific stump for 20
minutes, and pulled a 3lb fish off of it. We came back to that same
stump a few hours later and another 10 or 20 minutes and he had another
3lb fish.

OH WAIT... the question was , Do little bass swim faster than big
bass???? What Rich Said :-)

Chris
Rodney Long wrote:
John B wrote:

Does this mean that smaller bass swim faster than larger bass? grin

Actually I'm serious...almost feel ike I'm learning the "game" all over
again !

John K

The answer to that is YES !

I have pulled a lot of bass from the same area, I always catch the
little ones first it seams, they get bigger as you pull them from a
group,, sure sometimes you get the lure closer to a bigger fish before a
smaller one can get to it.

Last summer I was walking along the bank of a very clear lake, I had
made a cast out to deeper water as I saw 4 LM cruising towards me, I
rapidly reeled to get my lure in front of the bass (actually in front of
me, they were still 30 to 40 feet away) I stopped the lure in about
three feet of water, and started wiggling it, it was indeed a race
between the 4 fish, and of course the little 4 lb'er hit it first, a
good 8 to 10 feet ahead of the largest that looked over 8 lbs. with the
two 5+ bass between them, the others tried to get the worm from the
first, then they must have seen me (I was moving a lot reeling in that 4
lb'er :-) and they bolted.

It's not just bass that the smaller ones move more quickly towards their
meal.

I don't know if they actually have more speed or it's just they are
willing to expend more energy to get a meal.

I have some underwater footage,, actually a lot of it, where huge bass
move so slowly to get to a lure, I really don't think LARGE bass chase
nothing far, but they are awesome quick at lunging a short distance to
feed, hitting very fast moving lures, if the lure comes close enough ( a
few body lengths or so from them ).

From what I've personally seen, most huge bass ambush their prey, or
they feed on any injured opportunity meal, by "slowly" swimming over to
it. (all those guys fishing the huge live shiners are fishing for those
opportunity feeding HUGE bass) All of the 8+ bass I have caught, I was
wiggling the lure in one spot for over 3 min. Of course I'm sure you
drag any lure at any speed "close enough" to a hungry BIG bass, they
will nail it, the trick is knowing the exact spot they are, so you
retrieve it close in front of them, or you just have to cover every spot
with many, many cast, to make sure. We call this machine gun fishing,,
I'm too old for that :-)