Do Stream Smallmouths Migrate?
Matt Litton snorkels New York’s Salmon River in July, an excellent stream for smallmouths.
Summer’s End
I fished the Delaware River East Branch for trout with one of my brothers last week, my Wooly Bugger getting hit at least once. It had rained the Wednesday night, and one guy said it had two inches. We fished near enough to Pepacton Reservoir that it didn’t flood the river. It’s a tailwater. But It was off just enough that I felt confident in the Bugger.
Yes, the following article was published in New Jersey Federated Sportsmen’s News.
Snorkeling is a Window on the Possibility of Migration
Snorkeling the North Branch Raritan River with my son involved observing smallmouth bass and making the inference that stream smallmouths might migrate. We did it on occasion for a number of summers, sighting them through our diving masks in Bedminster at the AT&T stretch along U.S. Highway 206, upstream and downstream of the company’s entry and exit bridges, and in general proximity to Burnt Mill’s Road near Bedminster’s border with Branchburg Township. Honestly, I would do it again and I hope to, even though I’m a senior citizen now without a partner in crime. But I do have a GoPro and can just imagine.
A few distinguishing characteristics of bass behavior interested Matt and me. For one example, we experienced their boldness. Anglers know smallmouths are aggressive, but when they faced us directly a couple of feet from our eyes, we understood it’s not only about attacking prey. This standoffishness is different from wary brown trout; that species whisked away instantly as we approached. We never had more than a split second to identify those fish.
Matt Litton with a nice Salmon River smallmouth from 2012.
We mostly snorkeled the North Branch before 2013 when brown trout still got stocked, and though not many remained in the stream during summer months, we did sight a few. I even sighted a rainbow trout in an oxygenating riffle that held in place just a couple feet from my mask. And we saw plenty of bass every time under water. Another behavior trait we noticed is quasi-curiosity. I’m unwilling to call it curiosity outright, because it’s difficult for me to think of animals other than mammals—possessing more developed brains—having it. But bass did offer signs of checking us out when we met them face to face. We noticed the eyes. They shifted, this way and that, as if focusing on patterns. The brains of these fish do judge the shape of lures we throw, so why not human faces as well? They were very direct about facing us down. Jealous of their own territory?
A small bass. Spots like this exist on a stream with fast water where bass might pass through swiftly.
To me, the most interesting aspect of their behavior involves this question. Apparently, they are less territorial than honey-hole well-wishers will want to believe. Spots exist on any of our rivers that form indelible memories for anglers who visit them time and again, and the natural inclination is to think a big bass lost, say during the previous year, awaits there—bigger yet—when the next year comes. Trying again might result in catching a bass as willing to hang out at a beautiful place as you are.
Maybe not.
The conviction my son and I have that stream bass do migrate from hole to hole, stretch to stretch, took root in 2006. After hiking and wading back upstream from far below Burnt Mills Road, Matt and I encountered a smallmouth of at least 20 inches. The fish would not hit the plastic worms we cast. Nor did it spook. It behaved like bass we would watch in front of a diving mask. It stayed in place, facing us down, watching our arms roll and our worms sail its way.
I don’t mean to suggest a fish’s brain makes conscious inferences. It doesn’t. But can a bass respond to out-sized humans standing in front of it with arms moving and objects (worms) splashing regularly in relation to these arm motions, by taking a later course of evasive action? Because our bodies and motions were at variance to what that bass perceived as normal and regular, maybe it had something to go on.
The next day we came back with a bucket of shiners, eagerly intent on feeding this fish. Instead, an older man at our spot told us that upstream, in the Lamington River, he had caught a 21-inch smallmouth an hour ago. We stood about 50 yards downstream of that river’s confluence with the North Branch. No sign of the bass we had seen yesterday presented itself in the clear water where it was yesterday, and I felt certain the bass this man caught was the same. I don’t know, but likelihood existed.
This made me think, not only that maybe bass move around a stream extensively, if especially under cover of darkness, but also that maybe they’re not normally prone to move, unless there’s an instigating factor. Maybe the perceptual irregularity of tall-standing humans with rolling arms and things coming at the fish--despite its bravery watching all this happen, maybe it prompted it to go elsewhere.
Fooled—by a bass. Who knows?
There are some spots on at least some rivers—accessible only by floating—that are so deep and so full of bass you can probably expect them to always hold at least one really nice smallmouth.
But in any event, one possible example of a bass on the move isn’t very firm evidence. Fortunately, a year later, I snorkeled a small hole downstream of the AT&T entry bridge in Bedminster, sighting half a dozen average-size stream smallmouths. They stayed there for the duration of my observing them. Matt and I came back the next day, I went back in that same hole and sighted none. A diving mask allows perfectly clear vision in clear river water. They had moved. And again, the situation begs the question about whether or not they had moved because of my presence.
On yet another occasion, we found more than a dozen bass, surprisingly some of them a foot long, along a shallow undercut further downstream of that entry bridge. This time, we weren’t snorkeling. We came to turn over rocks and otherwise involve ourselves with nature, and the water was much too shallow to snorkel anyhow. The number of bass amazed us. Matt frightened them all out from under bushes by forcing a long stick sideways, bass everywhere zooming downstream. Had I been fishing, I wouldn’t have bothered with the spot, it seemed so insignificant.
But what we witnessed really sealed the deal about this idea of migrations. I felt certain that when we would come back some other time, no way would a dozen or so bass, some of them almost a pound, go shooting away from where we would prod. We did return weeks later, nothing there. A year later, the same. And after that long a time, the likelihood of perceptual irregularity as the motive for bass abandoning a lair is less likely, considering that they seem to forget having got hooked, when released. Plenty of us have caught bass with hook scars.
Nothing is proven by the events of these excursions and our reflections on them, although bass certainly do flee a tight little spot when prodded by a stick. And bass inhabited a larger hole one day, not the next, although nothing is certain about their motive in leaving it. Even though it seems fairly likely my outsized presence in their rather small spot made them flee, they didn’t leave while I was in it.
Everyone understands intuitively—neither myself nor anyone else need tell—that a pool like that in the photograph holds fish. It’s completely natural to see. What isn’t clearly evident is that bass might move in and out of a spot like this during the summer.
How freely bass migrate a river during summer, I don’t know, but it was surprising to find that many, and that big, in the shallow undercut. High water probably means fish on the move, especially obvious when it comes to springtime trout, but the water wasn’t high that afternoon we found them under the bushes.
Who knows what shallows they might forge in the darkness of early morning during summer? And no doubt exists that wintertime means bass slip from shallows into the deepest holes. I still have my favorite spots, but I never know what might be there.