Is it possible that those finned critters are smarter than you and I? It certainly seems that way sometimes, when we know we should be catching more than we are. You might spot tailing redfish and be unable to buy a bite, or maybe the meter shows a huge school below the boat and your lure goes untouched. Whatever. There isn’t an angler alive who hasn’t pulled his or her hair out trying to figure out why a fish won’t bite. And in some ways, it might actually be because the fish are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
This will sound a little zany, maybe even a little tinfoil-hat-ish, but hear me out: fish may be able to actually pass learned behavior down through the generations. Now, maybe they don’t learn a whole heck of a lot in the first place, but imagine the knowledge compounded by knowing everything your great-great-great-etcetera-grandfather knew.
The buzzword here is DNA methylation. Methylation “sits” on DNA and controls which genes are turned on and off, while helping to identify cellular identity and functions. In mammals, methylation starts fresh with each generation. But recent studies have shown that in fish, altered DNA methylation patterns are passed on from one generation to the next. Accordign to Dr. Tim Hore, one of the authors of a recent study published by the University of Otago, “We think intergenerational memory transfer through DNA methylation could be common in fish.”
A complimentary study published in the journal “Nature” from the Gavin Institute of Australia confirmed the findings. Now consider the fact that 50 years ago you could use rope-like mono and have no problem getting bites, but today for many fisheries you need to use thread-like fluorocarbon. Consider that we know the bass in some lakes get conditioned to certain lures and they become permanently ineffective. Consider that small (young) bluefish often know to bite off the head and tail of a baitfish, while leaving the chunk with a hook in it behind.
Yeah, it sounds completely crazy… but maybe those fish are fooling as into thinking they’re a lot dumber than they really are. Now, please pass me my tinfoil hat.