Understanding Bass Bites

Understanding Bass Bites involves understanding their motivations and their techniques of the bass bites. The process of a bass bite is covered under understanding how bass hunt. 

Why is Understanding Bass Bites Important?

It is important to understand bass bites to:

  • Make Best Presentation: Make effective adjustments to the retrieve speed and techniques. 
  • Help Identify Fish On:  To increase catch rates and make better hook sets by better understanding the bite. 
Understanding Bass Bites
  • Bass Motivations: Bass motivation to capture forage are:
    • Reaction Bite: Also called a reaction strike, is when the bass has very little time to identify the forage and out of instinct captures the forage. 
    • Hunger Bite(Actively Feeding). Also referred to as a hunger strike, is when the bass is actively feeding and once forage is identified will aggressively capture it.
    • Defensive Strike: Defensive strike typically refers to when a bass is on a spawning bed and is defending the eggs or fry. Largemouth bass don’t actively eat when spawning and smallmouth bass don’t actively hunt when spawning as their focus is on protecting the eggs or fry on the spawning bed. Largemouth will start with defensive swat at the forage, or capture it and moving it a short distance and spitting it out.  Some believe that continued irritation of the lure will result in a anger or irritation bite. 
      • Anger or Irritation Bite: Some believe a bass will get angry at a forage when the forage continuously returns to spawning bed or interferes with the bass while resting and strike it.
    • Ambush Bite. Bass often align with cover to position themselves to ambush forage when it comes into the strike zone.  
    • Opportunity Bite: If the bass is not actively feeding and a forage drifts by naturally the bass may capture it just because it is easy to do so.
    • Investigation Bite: Bass are curious predators and if an unknown potential forage to which they are not familiar they may capture it to determine if it is edible. If in doubt, they will spit it out. This can take place very quickly.
    • Competitive Bite: Sometimes when bass are in a group it is believed that the bass will compete with each other bass to attack an identified forage. 
    • Territorial Bite: Some large bass will command ideal ambush positions, for example near a crib corner, and some believe that large bass bite will attack to protect/maintain their ideal cover.
    • Stun, Wound then Kill Forage: Some suggest that bass will attack forage to wound or stun it prior to feeding on it. Some suggest that when a bass “misses” a lure they didn’t miss it, they were simply attacking it, for example on a top water bite. 
  • Capture Techniques: Bass capture potential forage by:
    • Hit it Hard: An aggressive bite where the bass captures the forage aggressively.
    • Vacuum: A bass swims up to a forage, may pause for a moment presumably to smell it,  open its mouth and uses vacuum to suck in the forage to capture it. This very subtle capture is typically used for stationary or slow moving forage (dead, hiding, or injured).
    • Nibble: A bass captures an appendage of the forage, not the whole animal, presumably to either taste/feel it or injure it.
    • Grab and Swim Off: A bass captures a forage presumably with the intention to consume or instigate it at a different location.
Additional Considerations
  • How Anglers Identify the Bite Motivation: Using sight fishing, anglers, forward facing sonar, adjusting fishing speed, identifying fish on, and other clues angler can make an informed guess as t
It's About the ALLURE™

Reaction Bites Lures

Actively Feeding Lures

Spawning Bass Lures

Fishing Slow Lures
Some bites require the bass to have time. 

Actively Feed Lures

Spawning Bass Lures

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