Bass------are they temperature sensitive?

[elleburra]

I've hooked up via email with an American guy, ex professional fisherman and charter captain and fishing guide and by the sounds of it he has been a pretty good bass tournament fisherman in his day.
What they call smallmouth bass sound identical with our native bass so possibly in the US their river and dam fishing conditions are very similar to ours.

He has obviously studied the habits and habitat of bass very extensively and one tip he has given to me is watch water temperature very closely. In his opinion far and away the best temperature to find bass feeding agressively is between 60 degrees and 70 degrees F, that's about 16 degrees C to 21 degrees C.

I've been carefully watching water temp in our river and his idea seems likely to apply to our local conditions. With the recent dry spell here (late December) and subsequent drop in the water flow river temperature even in the rapids was 27 degrees C. After recent good rains in January the temperature has dropped to a pretty steady 22 degrees C.
However our best bass fishing to date was around Sept last year with the water temperature between 16 and 18 degrees.

Anyone else had experience with watching water temperature?

[Awoonga]

Think this is posted in the wrong section.. Anyway have been fishing Cania here in C/Qld fished it in winter and summer To me the best time is now.. water temp up too 31c fish on the bite

[scroman]

Not sure where you are writing from but I've been doing at least a bass session every week for the past two years - wild bass, not impoundment kept - and my humble opinion for what it is worth is that they are very sensitive to temp fluctuations. We have caught them with a wide range of water temps 16-31 deg but have had to use various methods.
Hot temp - surface lures in the shade, colder temps - divers at structure.
At the moment surface walkers are being smashed between 4.30am and 7.30am.
Good luck
Troy

[roz]

Agree with you there Troy, I have found with wild Bass.....(they are the only Bass I've ever caught), are more active the warmer it gets. I rarely bothered fishing for them with lures in winter, fishing with bait just isn't the same IMHO.

cheers Roz

[elleburra]

we're on the mid north coast about 60 k inland, native bass only and C & R. Might be just my luck but the fishing was great from Easter right through to November then it just went flat.
The river now still has a fair bit of water going over the rapids but is the warmest I have ever known. Have used every lure in the tackle box, very few hits.
Will be interesting to watch the water temperature and see if things improve around Easter.

[McCod]

The best impoundment bass fishing i've had has been in late autumn and early winter when the water is cooling down. I think this has a lot to do with the breeding cycle as the Bass feed up big time to develop roe etc and get ready to try and hit the brackish water to breed . I have little experience with wild Bass. But a mate of mine and his son pull big numbers of wild bass during the winter months fishing the QLD NSW border area.

Cheers Les