Originally Posted by
Pete Marino
My own personal opinion is that Bed fishing doesn't hurt the spawn in the least. For every guy bedfishing there is an unfathomable number of carp, bluegill other bass and other fish doing much more damage to the spawn then anglers can ever do REGARDLESS of if the male or female is there protecting the bed or not. And frankly the female doesn't stick around long enough to even be much of a "protector". She drops her eggs hangs for a day and is gone in most cases.
Reason would tell us that we (the anglers) could do damage for the simple fact that once we take a bass off the bed and take it to weighins that we could be hurting that bed...HOWEVER its also Naïve to think that we are doing as much damage as some of you think we're doing. The number of anglers taking fish off beds to weigh them in simply doesn't come anywhere close to the number of "predators" that do harm to the beds even if the male is there on alert. Simply put...we the Anglers do very little harm to the overall spawn. A largemouth bass alone does FAR more damage to its own reproduction before and after eggs are hatched then we can ever do or even possibly imagine....and that doesn't even account for the unfathomable damage stripers, bluegill, carp, trout, and crawdads do. Sorry guys, but people are being a bit overzealous if you think that we make a dent in the circle of life.. Just my opinion..