Spawning Season
The spawning season of the black bass varies considerably, owing to its extensive range and consequent variation in the temperature of waters. In Florida and the extreme South it is as early as March or April, in the Middle West in May or June, and at the northern limit of its distribution as late as July. Owing to this variation, laws to protect the species during the breeding season must vary accordingly. As the brooding fish are easily taken from their nests with snare, jig or spear, the laws for their protection should be rigidly enforced, otherwise a pond or small lake might soon be depleted where the poacher is much in evidence.
Size and Weight
The large-mouth bass grows to a maximum weight of six to eight pounds in Northern waters, where it hibernates, but in Florida and the Gulf States, where it is active all the year, it grows much larger, in Florida to twenty pounds in rare cases. The small-mouth bass has a maximum weight of five or six pounds, though several have been recorded of fully ten pounds, from a lake near Glens Falls, N. Y. As usual with most other game fishes, the largest bass, as a rule, are taken with bait. For instance, the heaviest I ever took in Florida on the artificial fly weighed fourteen pounds, and with bait, twenty pounds. In Northern waters the heaviest catch with the fly, of small-mouth bass, seldom exceeds three pounds—usually from one to two pounds, and for large-mouth bass a pound or two more, while with bait larger fish of both species may be taken.
Season for Fishing
Owing to the variable conditions mentioned the season for black-bass fishing varies likewise in different sections of the country. Thus, both bait- and fly-fishing are practiced in Florida during winter. In the Middle West—Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, etc.—bait-fishing is available in the early spring, and fly-fishing as well as bait-fishing in mid-summer and fall. In the Northern States and Canada both bait- and fly-fishing are at their best during late summer and the fall months.
Distribution
The original habitats of the black bass, either of one or both species, were the hydrographic basins of the St. Lawrence, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Only the large-mouth existed in the seaboard streams of the South Atlantic and Gulf States. By transplantation the black bass is now a resident of every state in the Union. It will thrive in any water the temperature of which runs up to sixty-five degrees or more in summer. It is one of the best fishes to introduce to new waters where the proper conditions exist, but should never, for obvious reasons, be planted in the same waters with any species of trout.
Increase in New Waters