Unequal Vulnerability Research Articles

Striking Behavior of the Largemouth Bass and Use of the Binomial Distribution for its Analysis

Abstract Three hundred tagged largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) 14 to 29.5 cm long were divided into experimental groups of 100 fish which were designated as control, bait fishing, and artificial lure fishing. Since individuals were “known” by tag numbers, it was possible to test the hypotheses of (1) unequal vulnerability to angling among individuals and (2) hook avoidance learning. Results revealed that some conditioning or learning occurred among naive bass exposed to live bait angling for the first time. In the case of artificial lures and/or bass which were no longer naive, individuals appeared to have equal probability of capture and seemingly struck at random.