November, 1954 
bass that are not caught have an oppor- 
tunity to become familiar with the more 
common methods used by fishermen in 
presenting artificial baits. Observations on 
the fishing techniques employed by the 
most successful bass fishermen suggest that 
these men vary their techniques much more 
than do those fishermen who are less suc- 
cessful. 
Cost of Fishing 
In 1949, a study was made of the 
amount of money spent for contingent 
travel, meals, equipment, and licenses by 
the fishermen who made reservations to 
fish at Ridge Lake (Bennett & Durham 
1951). It was calculated that the aver- 
age cost of a fishing trip was $1.22 per 
hour (Bennett & Durham 1951:13). 
When the average hourly cost was as- 
signed to the average catch in pounds of 
bass per hour, the amount of money spent 
to catch a pound of bass was calculated to 
be $8.66. The bass population of the lake 
was assumed to be 1,046 fish at the be- 
ginning of the 1949 fishing season, table 
15. Fishermen spent about 3,949 hours 
angling for these bass and caught 594, 
weighing 540.5 pounds (Bennett & Dur- 
ham 1951:9). The rate of catch was 0.14 
pound per hour or | pound per 7.1 hours. 
The average bass fisherman probably 
spends somewhat more than $8.66 per 
pound for the bass that he brings to creel, 
because usually he rents a boat (no boat 
rental charge was made at Ridge Lake) ; 
the population of bass at Ridge Lake was 
unusually high in the year the study was 
made; and this population, which had de- 
veloped in 18 acres of water, was con- 
centrated in 11 acres of water. 
Discussion 
Within the period of study covered by 
this publication, spring of 1941 through 
the bass spawning season of 1951, more 
than 11,000 largemouth bass were perma- 
nently removed from Ridge Lake, table 3. 
These fish were offspring of 435 bass 
introduced into the lake during the spring 
of 1941, table 2. Of these 435, only 100 
were sexually mature in 1941; the others 
were yearlings. There is evidence that 
most of the bass making up the criginal 
BENNETT: LARGEMOUTH Bass IN RinGe LAKE 
269 
stock died very soon after being intro- 
duced, table 19. Of the bass removed 
from Ridge Lake previous to the angling 
season of 1951, 3,743 were taken by 
anglers and the rest removed in draining 
censuses as excess small fish, table 3. 
Bluegills were placed in Ridge Lake in 
1944 (129 adult fish) and, from the sum- 
mer of 1945 through March, 1951, ap- 
proximately 155,000 of these fish were 
removed from the lake (9,073 by anglers), 
table 3, indicating that bluegills are more 
prolific than are bass. 
In the § years of the study period that 
the lake was open to the public for fish- 
ing, the annual bass yield varied between 
a low of 10.9 pounds per acre and a high 
of 30.0 pounds per acre, table 8. These 
figures are based on a lake area of 18 
acres. A still higher figure, +9.2 pounds 
per acre, is derived for 1949 when the re- 
duced lake area for that year, 11 acres, is 
used as a basis for calculation, table 18. 
In spite of the fact that Ridge Lake is 
located in soils of moderately low fertility 
and cannot be expected to compare in 
productivity with impoundments in better 
soils, the yields of bass were 2 to 10 times 
the yields of bass in unmanaged Illinois 
waters for which figures are available. A 
basic requirement for a high yield of bass 
is a high population of this species; how- 
ever, because of the behavior idiosyncrasies 
of the species, a high yield may not be a 
certainty even when a high population is 
present. 
The history of largemouth bass in 
new, unmanaged impoundments contain- 
ing more than one species of fish is one 
of a high population at first, which 
gradually becomes smaller, so that, within 
a span of years equal to that covered by 
this study, the population may drop to a 
very low level. At Ridge Lake the popu- 
lation level of bass appeared to increase 
somewhat, and the highest yields from 
angling were recorded in 1948 and 1949, 
near the end of the 10-year period re- 
ported here. 
When the lake contained only large- 
mouth bass (1941-1944), a satisfactory 
spawn was produced in each year except 
1944. After bluegills were introduced, 
the years of good bass spawn production 
were those in which the lake was drained 
and bluegills and other small fish were 
