[VFB] Quote

[Richard Zieger]

"As smallmouth swam against the flow, researchers measured its cardiac output(volume of blood moving through it>  They did so by looking at heart rate(number of beats in a given time), and stroke volume(amount of blood squeezed through the organ when it contracts). In some species, such as tuna, the heart rate does not increase when the animal is stressed.  but it does for smallmouth, just as it does for mammals, Schreer says. 'Sometimes after two or three minutes, the fish was so fatigued that it couldn't even swim.  It just turned over on his side', the biologist said. Perhaps the most surprising finding of the study was not that a smallmouth bass becomes so fatigued when it's on a treadmill- or fighting an angler- but that high water temperature is not necessarily more harmful than low. 'The standard is to believe that a higher temperature is worse,' Schreer said. Studies that reached such conclusions looked at mortality and the fact that fish can seem al right but suffer delayed mortality.  Schreer and his associates looked at sub lethal effects. 'We found smallmouth recover quicker at 16 degrees (Centigrade) than they do at 12 or 20. In Fahrenheit, that means smallies regained strength faster when temperatures were in the low 60's than they did when thy were in the mid 40's or upper 60's. 'That's just a tentative finding, but it may indicate that smallmouth bass have an optimal temperature, and they will have problems if the water is warmer or colder than that.' he says."   "North American Fisherman"  March 2003