On a chilly, early morning on a calm lake, Matt Nelson slides his kayak out onto the water armed with a squirrel lure and in search of bass.
Nelson, a YouTube creator also known as NDYakAngler, is known for fishing the waters of North Dakota with unique lures. From rat lures to gnome lures, Nelson has often proven largemouth will bite even the most unconventional of real-world replicas.
Monster largemouth bass caught with squirrel lure
Here, Nelson is fishing a squirrel lure from Sensei swim baits, weighing four ounces.
“Time to see if the big bass on these lakes eat squirrels,” Nelson comments in the beginning of the video.
In the water, the squirrel lure slowly wobbles, emulating a small rodent swimming. It isn’t long before Nelson catches his first bite.
“Wow that’s a tank of a bass,” Nelson says after his first catch, pulling up a nearly 20-inch and close to five-pound largemouth bass.
Throughout the day the bites are few but the catches are big.
Nelson ends the day with a huge catch, a 21-inch five-pound bass he calls a “monster of a largemouth bass.”
Do bass eat squirrels?
Unusual lures like the squirrel lure beg the question— do large bass actually eat small mammals?
According to a 1995 study in the Journal of Freshwater Ecology by James R. Hodgson and Mickael J. Kinsella, yes, largemouth bass sometimes eat small mammals. Between 1980 and 1994, ecologists collected stomach contents from nearly 5,000 individual live bass and found that while small mammals were not common, they did occur 0.29% over the duration of the study.
It was later found in a 2005 study in the Journal of Freshwater Ecology by Hodgson and Elsa M. Hansen that terrestrial vertebrates (not necessarily small mammals) occurred in largemouth bass stomach contents at a frequency of occurrence of 2.1%. In terms of biomass in largemouth bass diet, however, terrestrial vertebrates made up 12.3% of the diet.
While small mammals are not a main staple of the largemouth bass diet, we can say with confidence it’s worth throwing a squirrel now and then for lunkers.
