Big fish choose feeding stations that give them the greatest amount of food while expending the least amount of energy.
One of the largest smallmouths I’ve ever caught came from a hip deep protected run about half the size of a badminton court on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. 13 months later a friend called me and said he caught an exceptionally large bass with my name on a numbered tag on it. Sure enough, when I checked my tag card numbers it was the same bass I had caught the spring before. He was even larger now, and my friend caught him within 20 feet of where I had caught him. The really surprising thing was that one of our all time high floods had occurred that spring. Obviously this bass knew his feeding stations and apparently liking it he did not want to leave it.
I had a very similar thing happen on the Madison River in Montana with an exceptionally large brown trout. He was not tagged, but a rough scar on his side led us to believe it was the same trout a year later. Actually this fellow fed in a pocket the size of a SUV where a small spring percolated from the bank into his feeding station.
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