Pondering bait balls

[Jpull]

Fished yesterday and today on Chick. Surface bait schools were everywhere Tuesday and nowhere today. Trying to fish under them yesterday was a slow day. Today all bait balls were about ten feet down and I caught 10 or so LMs (plus a bunch of white bass) beneath them. Best was fiveish. I wonder what makes the difference day to day? Also watched and Osprey dive on a school of surface bait three times. Caught three, dropped the first two and scored on the third.

Good learning days both catching and not catching.
Oh....and best luck was on a pearl colored deep diving crank.

 

[trbr81]

Bait follows bait - so whatever they were eating before probably moved
just a guess

 

[jaygivens70]

Thanks for posting....Something.
I wouldn't mind catching some white bass.
What I see on here are mainly tournament reports...and not many of Those.
What has happened to this site ?
It actually used to be a "FORUM" !!!
I posted last month re: Parksville on the "Discussion" side and got 141 views and ZERO replies
.p.s. AND BTW - there are other fish to catch BESIDES largemouth bass !

 

[31airborne]

Baitfish feed on phytoplankton (very small, suspending critters). Plankton is vulnerable to water flow, so any amount of current (TVA-caused or wind-powered) will cause plankton to move. Plankton is also affected by sunlight and air temps. I'm not smart enuff to offer any ideas on what the scientific relationships are but my experience is: 1) hot-n-sunny conditions will drive just about everything deeper; 2) wind and rain can help turn things on - the churn stirs up the plankton, which stirs up the bait fish, which stirs up the predator fish; 3) the dissolved oxygen (DO) content in any body of water is lowest in the dead of summer - this has a huge affect on fish behavior (low DO = tuff fishing).