Do fish become more wary during the year ?

I have just been reading an old thread ( one of Ron Clay's ) about carbelling and in amongst the usual stuff was an idea that you often see on forums but one I would question:

namely as the year progresses fish become more wary and therefore one should take measures to present the bait differently in order to cope with that - use critically balanced baits or longer hairs all to present the fish with something it hasn't seen before.

There are a few things about this

Do all the fish forget then over the winter ?


For a fish to be wary of bait does it have to have a near miss i.e. a hook pull ? ( surely there are so many fish in rivers that the majority don't suffer a near miss )

Are the fish reacting from experience or just reacting to a suspicious bait ?


I fish a carp water with about 200 fish in , over a season some of them must be getting caught many times they seem just as finicky at the start of the season as the end i.e. if you present your bait poorly you don't catch much if at all.


So , what do you think ( to quote Ron ) do fish become progressively more wary over a season and how do you cope ?

They seem to on floaters. I believe it is dependent on fishing pressure relative to venue size and stock density.

Or is it, as the water chills down they feed less (coldblooded that they are) and give the appearance of being wary? When in fact they are just not feeding. Energy out (movement) Energy in (food to compensate for energy lost through movement).

In winter,the water clears more,making fish wary of any disturbance,coupled with the fact that they probably wont move about to look for food,let alone feed much at all...Many places ,i fish require a bait to be put right in front of a fishes nose to provoke it to eat...they can be sat at any level in the water,which is the warmest part...i dont believe that they,ve become wary of being caught,just that they dont need/want to eat.....Gaz

I believe that repeated events can be converted to long-term memory even with fish supposing to have a short attention span or short-term memory.

Here are two instances of the same observations and illustrate the point I made above.
Way back when me and Adam were lads, early 1970s, I was a fanatical carp angler (but I grew out of it by 1980 J) and I fished a water on the Pennines fringe, Glossop to be precise. This water during the summer month was very productive carp wise. Come September it slowed to a stop, almost, by November it did stop. On one of my many winter blanking sessions, and from memory I think I had one run in the two winters I fished it, days only, to bloody cold for nights up there and the gear that was available at that time.
I went for mooch around the pool with the polarods on and under one of the many bushes on the pool in about 2 ½ ft of water were three carp just stationary only the gills moving. Back to my peg for some bait… Oh the exuberance of youth eh! The going bait was luncheon meat at the time, so I dropped very carefully about 5 cubes in and watched what would happen. Nothing! Not a fin twitch! Gave up watching after about an hour.
The following week when I returned I made a beeline for the bush to see whether the fish were still there. They were in the same position they were the week before and amazingly so were the 5 cubes of meat. In total those fish and the meat remained like that for 4 weeks that I knew of.

Scroll forward 30 odd years later and different water in Cheshire and I’m out bailiffing on a very frosty morning, not a sole on, so I have a good mooch round. This water is a very deep water, with an average depth of 20 ft, the deepest parts down to about 50 ft. I find a group of carp again under a bush, all 20s, best probably 30+ on the 3 ft margin shelf in water that looks like Jin. In the car was some bait, maggots, corn and mini boillies, so I grab a selection of them and carefully introduce them. The fish more just enough to let them settle on the bottom, showing no interest in them at all. Another hour passes and I give up watching and move on to another club water to check cards. Saw more fish that day than anglers out. The following week the bait and fish are still there! The week after that the fish are still there but the baits gone. Whether they or the ducks took it I don’t know, but I do know is they were there all winter up and until the water started to warm up in spring. I’d also wager, if I went tomorrow to check, the same fish would be in the same place as I found them on that very frosty morning. A clear case of Energy out, Energy in!

Do you think a regular but controlled pattern of prebaiting could lead to taking some of them? They must surely feed occasionally in all but the severest of temperatures.

rubio said:

Do you think a regular but controlled pattern of prebaiting could lead to taking some of them? They must surely feed occasionally in all but the severest of temperatures.

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Personally i think fishing with a single bait and no feed is the most successful winter tactic,on commies anyway...they seem to spook off of any loosefeed put over them....Dobbing bread on the pole,off bottom,to features,such as island vegetation,reed beds etc..or popped up bread discs or white or flouro boilies,or a grain of corn, on the lead for open water..Gazza

I have seen the exact same behaviour that TBO describes, Carp again very near to the bank beneath a tree branch, bait was trickled in to them same result as TBO nothing, they were still there a week later and may have been there longer I don't know as I didn't visit the water again that winter.

I believe they had gone into some sort of hibernation possibly caused by not feeding and the need to survive, even when bait hit them they gave no response.

It has been muted that fish that live in a water where bait is introduced on a regular basis up to and into winter will continue to feed and Carp catches in winter would seem to back that up, where bait is not going in and naturals are in short supply the hibernation might occour.

Yes they do get caught during the winter from the latter water, not many, but the conditions they come out in are mild weather and blowing a hooly. As for pre-baiting if it’s going to be done, as little as possible, probably 20-30 baits max a week. Personally I wouldn’t pre-bait and would rather fish where I know the fish are or will come to and only use small amounts with bags on the day I’m fishing. To much freebies and they'll get the energy they need to sustain them without you getting a bite.

Definitely a strong case here for semi hibernation causing enormously reduced food intake, but do you also think that as Jerry ( BarbleBoi ) says that fish have a long term memory ?

I wonder how many fish , barbel for instance on a pressirised day ticket water , have seen an anglers bait or have had one in their mouths ? If they haven't then they have no reason ( possibly ) to fear a hooked bait.

Some of the Korda videos show carp avoiding bait but these are fish on popular venues not river fish.

I don't think fish are very bright but I do believe they have a good memory, as with most wild creatures they need to remember where to get food where is safe from predators what represents danger to them or it might all just be instinct.

Whether this memory is good enough to differentiate between a bait attached to a hook/hair and one that isn't I don't know but if they can would we ever catch anything?

Benny the myth that fish have a very short memory has been disproved by scientific studies of late. So yes they have some memory retention, how much is open to debate.

A possible problem with the Korda videos is, we don’t know how long ago the fish in them were hooked or caught. They may well, fall under the some memory retention scenario.

As to river fish, it’s a far more hostile environment they live in and therefore they do use more energy than their counterparts in stillwater. Energy they have to replace far more frequently than their stillwater brethren. In short they have to get the intake when they can, not at their leisure so to speak.

I wonder why some carp do this semi hibernation thing and others dont.

I've had carp all through the winter in real cold spells. In fact I had one mid double and a 30 through from under the ice a few years ago. The lake had frozen overnight so I left the rods out anyway and one rod went and shortly after, off went the other.
This was the lake

I believe its because the lake in question has probably been fished fairly regularly up to and into winter with bait going into the lake, hibernation is natures way of some creatures surviving the winter when food is scarce, if bait is available there is no need for the hibernation.

I think

thecrow said:

I believe its because the lake in question has probably been fished fairly regularly up to and into winter with bait going into the lake, hibernation is natures way of some creatures surviving the winter when food is scarce, if bait is available there is no need for the hibernation.

I think

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My opinion is that the nature isn't an exact science and that the natural torpor of the carp may sometimes be overidden if a bait is dropped close enough to it , like a salmon taking a fly through instinct when they are in that part of their lifecycle when they don't really eat , I think

I often wonder what is going on under the surface near my bait either imagining there are a hoarde of fish surrounding it and a bite will come at any moment or there is nothing down there at all and I am wasting my time.

But I am yet to be convinced that fish , particularly river fish are half as clever as we think , rather I think they are mostly "hard wired" like ants.

On the heavily stocked carp pool whe I fish quite a bit in the summer , you have to fish a very light float on the pole , at the least resistance the carp will , very adeptly , blow the bait out but they are still sucking it in, they don't appear to be learning at all or , possibly , they are so hungry because of the stocking density.

If tnats the case , then in a river , which is at a natural stocking level , what do the fish do ? Inspect the bait looking for a hook ?