Do Fish Learn?

[Scalem]

Just wondering what you think when you get out on the water and notice the distinct absence of schools showing on the sounder. Specifically, in the last 12 months there's nothing significant showing around Mud island where I fish with soft plastics. I still get a feed most times, but the size of the schools and the frequency of big schools seems to be declining.

Is it because they are being hammered by more an more fisho's, or are the snapper population learning not to go there for fear of being tempted by a franger burger, or is it purely seasonal?? I hope they come back, I will have to start looking around other places.. :'(

Anyone else notice this too, or is it my imagination? Oh well, nearly prawning season to distract my focus, so see what happens after April

Scalem

[finga64]

NO, they're dumb as. Just fished out # :'(

Maybe you just can't fish #;D
Just take Andrew. If there's fish he'll find them ;)

[Rainbowrunner]

I think alot of the "schools" might have been bait schools, which would be seasonal/wind/tide affected.

[Scalem]

Good on 'ya Finga!

Maybe I'm losing the knack buddy? Yes, Drew will have to come out with me again, I need a fish magnet of some description.. ;D

How did you do the last time you went Friday? You will have to give me the link to your post with all the nice pics, 'cause I'll be blown if I can find it??? ::)

Scalem

[Frank_Oostenbroek]

Hey Brian,

You have caught all the fish.

You will have to wait till the new fish arrive.

Frank OO

[Lucky_Phill]

Fish are stupid, stupid, stupid.................... :)

Theory has it that they have a memory retention of about 30 seconds, and it is only generational instinct that makes them return to spawning grounds etc.

Ask yourself this........would you eat a Plastic Hamburger ? #Wooden Fish or Metal Things ? #Or even a nice salad roll with 60 lb mono hanging out the side of it ?

Fish numbers are affected by many things, including seasons, rainfall, noise, moon, tide, natural eradiction and non-natural eradication ( us ), removal of habitat and pollution, but to name a few.

And the award for the most stupid fish goes to................

Freddy #Flathead ! # :) # #

Cheers # Phil

[agnes_jack]

Gotta say I give fish credit for a lot more brains than that!!!
For example, our resident groper where we fish the rocks. He knows where you will try to land your fish and sits right there until you bring your fish to him. He has developed a technique for when he gets hooked, and has learn't that by swimming out into the deeper water, he can bust your line off. He disapears during the winter months and returns with the same techniques every year. That to me means he has a long term memory, as well as instincts.
Another example is when I have had fish in tanks, if you feed them at one end of the tank regulary, they will always line up at the same spot each day to be fed. Gotta have some memory retention!!!

Regards, Tony ;)

[chanquetas]

Squid and octopus are also very intelligent. And their memory retention I reckon is far longer than...umm....mine...

[Freeeedom]

There's at least one dart that didn't learn much. On Saturday afternoon I was having my last session on the beach at the Noosa North Shore (see my report posted today) catching dart. On feeling a hit I struck only to feel the weight of the fish momentarily and then nothing. I though I had just missed the strike, but on winding in I found that my line had broken just below the swivel. I re-rigged with another hook immediately (I always carry a couple of spares inside my hatband so I don't have to go all the way back to the car just for a hook) and cast out again. In seconds I was into another fish. When I brought it to hand my trace from the previous cast was hanging out of its mouth and the hook was deep down in its gills. Despite this it had readily taken the next bait.
A similar thing happened to me several years ago while fishing the Fairy Pools on the Noosa headland. I was fishing for bream in the washes through the night and twice got cut off by tailor. Around dawn I started to bait spin pilchards for tailor and caught a nice one about 2 kilos. In its mouth were my two bream hooks that I has lost earlier. I was certain they were mine because the bait I was using (tailor flesh) was still attached to them.
Cheers Freeeedom

[cuzzamundi]

what about jacks? einsteins of the sea i reckon.

cuzza

[fish2eat]

There is a great show on SBS called Mythbusters.

On one episode they exploded the myth about fish having a memory of a few second.......they actually trained fish to foolow a path through a maze in the tank for food, making the maze more complex each few days.

I reckon the 3 second myth was created to make people feel better about having fish in small glass bowls

[Lucky_Phill]

Jeez Tony, not too many took the bait ! maybe fisherman are smarter than I give them credit for.

Yes, there are numerous locations around this great country of ours that have resident Gropers etc.

Fish CAN be trained, and do have the grey matter to make up their own minds.

But , in any case, I have not seen a completed IQ test from any species , so it is hard for me judge the actual Intelligence of said fishes. ::) ::)

AND, how do this fish get whol;e baiots from a good rig, without hooking up ?

How do fish know exactly when to ' kick ' and cut ya finger on their gill rakers ?

And, certainly, how do fish know a female fish from a male, and in thier own species ?

OH, the joys of things we do not understand and can only guess about ! :)

So I guesss we should re-visit the topic heading !

Do fish Learn ? answer.......................YES ! definately.

Cheers Phill

[Scalem]

Good comments guys,

I thought my topic for discussion led to a premature death, and had not checked responses for a few days, but obviously you guys have given this some thought.

I reckon there's some truth in the fact that fish learn from repeated visits to a GPS Mark, or many fisho's would be more generous in giving those marks away ;) Think about it, how big is a school of Snapper or pearlies? I reckon there's more fish in most schools than any number of amatuer fisho's can make a dent in their population by repeated visits, even if you publish the Mark on the front page of the courier mail. They will be there one trip, but not there the very next weekend. So how much do you attribute to this, tides? Moon? Current? Or did they notice one of their brothers being dragged up to the bright light screaming "No No, it's not my time to die!!"

Driven by a very strong instinct of survival, they may be smarter than we think. They might have such a strong survival instinct that they would force themselves to devour not one, but two baits, even if the last one had a bit of an after taste! "I managed a free feed last time and lived, what the heck, I'll try it again!!" ;D ::)

I think I am starting to think like a fish, that will hopefully get me the advantage and I can out smart them!! ;)

Scalem

[szopen]

Now,

STOP,

Think about large (I mean huge!!!) carp in Europe where they are mostly C&R species.


They do get smart, they do grow big, they are known by names...

They still get caught from time to time.

They get smarter every time.

Just not as smart as we do.

[side_show_cod]

too many cheesy puns to let fly with on this one ,,

fish are far from stupid ,, if you believe the internet ..

www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1043001.stm

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/03/nfish03.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/03/ixhome.html

[finga64]

Gidday Scalem,
Mate, knowing your luck you'll think like a sand whiting and go scittering around the place and the bream will be on or think like a muddy and end up in the mangroves. Also if you start thinking like a fish you'll start hearing lots of little voices saying "no, no, don't take me" ;)
I think your point about schools being big with larger sized fish is a little of the mark especially where tiny reefs are concerned. A lot of larger fish are territorial. If one goes and gets dragged to the top and put on the dinner table there is room for another biggun on that particular spot. If another fish is touring around on holidays and finds that spot with lots off feed around bingo he's there. Bit like a pensioner going on holidays and stopping at the Gold Coast in the Seventies.
School size is very dependent on fish size and very dependent on available food. The bigger the fish the smaller the school size and if there's no nibbles some fish just get the willies being hungry and move on and find a good spot that has the vacancy sign out front.

P.S. It's nearly time for you to teach me how to throw a cast net Brian. Please :-/

[Scalem]

Recently I had noticed suggestions that the introduction of new fishing techniques could be to our advantage where fish get used to seeing older methods - which could explain declining success with some types of soft plastics. Frankoo recently posted where using Vibes is quickly becoming an all time favorite way to fish.

It begs the same question I asked back in November 2006 when I started this thread, so rather than ask the same questions over again, maybe we can revisit the same question 2 years down the track. "do fish learn?"

Whoever was not convinced 2 years ago, are you still not convinced? Or is our fishery on the decline in and around Brisbane as DPI would suggest, purely and simply because we over fish them, as a major contributing reason?? ( Snapper is my main example)

Would be interesting to see additional comments 2 years on........

Scalem

[castlemaine]

Years ago ... years ago ... and years ago :-/ , I stayed at Tangalooma Resort. Like a silly idiot I sat on the jetty with a handline with prawn on a hook, for 4 days, with kingfish, bream, etc swimming around but to no avail. During a night walk, I saw one of the kitchen staff wheel and empty a garbage bin of scrap food over the side of the jetty (I'm sure they don't do it any more) and didn't the fish go wild. The splashing of feeding fish lasted well over an hour. Why eat a raw prawn when you can have a cooked 4 course meal later???;) I reckon the fish worked it out.
Cheers8-)

[straddie]

Heya Scalem

Imo the average fish is not that much more intelligent than the average house brick, but has the ability to learn very simple basic things. Experiences are remembered as good or bad in the same way as computers simply record things as a 1 or 0. They can also transfer that opinion to other nearby fish.

So can fish become used to fishing lines and avoid them? to a degree, depending on the fishes experience and the gear being used. No logic is used nor do they look at consequences it's just good or bad what they see, hear or feel. No considered thought just reaction.

RE snapper, my logs show a decline in the bay

[cuzzamundi]

Bugger - I just saw a post from Tony (Agnes Jack) and thought great, he's back!!! It's from a few years ago!

Bring back Agnes Jack!

Cuzza

[FNQCairns]

Think there was studies done off Townsville + other places a few years ago on some of the higher visited (locally hammered) reefs mainly on trout, from memory they would close a reef then reopen it after a period 6months or more to ascertain the impact fishing had (includes commercial trout fishing).

They found next to no impact from fishing, but fisherman did find once reopened that the fish where jumping onto lines but soon after the resident fish once again quickly learnt it's best to not take a line, which once again gave the impression of a fished out reef (as far as that's possible up here) to the uninitiated.

Some say this is also happening down south with localised schools of slimys and yackas.

MBs mud island would be a prime candidate IMO

One of the biggest reason for an area being fished out is the fish are too smart for the fisherman, change tactics, adapt, 99% the fish are still there over any week.

cheers fnq

[struktcha_man]

Fish will follow food
maybe thats what is missing.

Dan

[2manylures]

Good comments guys,

I reckon there's some truth in the fact that fish learn from repeated visits to a GPS Mark

Scalem

:o :o :o :o :o ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D I wasn't gonna say anything but I did get one with a Fin Held GPS last full moon.;D

[For Steve]

G'day Brian

You know my thoughts on this mate...but why do they still go for nuclear chicken?;)

Cheers
Brad

[Scalem]

Heya Scalem

Imo the average fish is not that much more intelligent than the average house brick, but has the ability to learn very simple basic things. Experiences are remembered as good or bad in the same way as computers simply record things as a 1 or 0. They can also transfer that opinion to other nearby fish.

So can fish become used to fishing lines and avoid them? to a degree, depending on the fishes experience and the gear being used. No logic is used nor do they look at consequences it's just good or bad what they see, hear or feel. No considered thought just reaction.

RE snapper, my logs show a decline in the bay

Sure, but I tend to think we underestimate the other life forms we share our planets with - The humble bee comes back to his hive, performs a few dance routines, and viola!!! The rest of the hive know exact coordinates of where he got his stash of pollen. So how big is a fishes brain by comparison??

See FNQCAirns reply also - your log book might not include our ability to adapt, where the fish are still there, but have become wiser to your methods of catching them!!


I wasn't gonna say anything but I did get one with a Fin Held GPS last full moon.

HA! Funny!


G'day Brian

You know my thoughts on this mate...but why do they still go for nuclear chicken?

Cheers
Brad


NAh! Really? Do they still go for the Nuke chook after all this time??? I thought it was the Atomic Prong!!! At least that's my mail:o::);D;D

If I really beleived fish didn't learn which colours to avoid, I'd do myself a favour and stick to 3 or 4 colours and patterns - but that's not the case buggar it! :'(

Scalem

[Dory4.1]

I recently got some aquarium fish, took them about 2 days to work out where the food is put into the tank, now eveytime you go past the tank, guess where they swim to! To me that at least proves they can remember where the food comes from.

rgs
Michael

[2manylures]

When the same fish can be caught twice in two casts then I think that says it all.

It's a no brainer all round.