What do gobies and crayfish have to do with smallmouth beds?
They are the nest's primary looters. Round gobies and crayfish are dedicated egg-and-fry predators that swarm a smallmouth bed within seconds of the guarding male being pulled away — in goby-invaded waters like the Great Lakes, studies have documented dozens of gobies raiding a nest within a minute of removing the male. That is the mechanistic reason bed-fishing is controversial for this species and why males guard so violently in the first place. It also explains a tactical detail: goby and craw imitations dragged near beds get annihilated, because the male reads them as the exact enemy he exists to repel.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Territory & aggression
Same topic, other species
- Is there a pecking order inside a crappie school? — Crappie
- If I catch one fish from a group, do the rest spook? — Largemouth Bass
- How many muskie does a lake actually hold? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Are the biggest jumbos loners? — Yellow Perch
- If I keep a big pike, does that "open up" the spot? — Northern Pike
- Do lake trout school like other fish? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- What makes a "community hole" keep producing year after year? — Walleye