I've been bass fishin for 40 years now and I've never seen this or heard of it before....This past weekend fishin the spawn on a 50 acre private lake near Kilgore, the wind quit blowin about 6pm, a truely beautiful evening . We noticed some "finning" on top of the water in about 20 ft of water out in the middle. We were curious and slowly moved in for a closer look. It was a 6-7 lb black bass (female?) with a small 1-2 lb black bass (male?) both as close to each other as possible and just slowly occupying each other. We watched for 5 or so min.  If they were dolphins, they would have been mating!!! Of course they weren't , but.....  I have never heard of such activity. I'm curious if anyone has any ideas.

David Burrow

Not seen this with large mouth, but a fairly common practice with other fish. the male is tryin to entice the female to release her eggs by nipping at her. I use to see this alot in my African Cichlid tank.

Like Steve said, sounds like spawning behavior.  Was there any timber in the middle of the lake?  Bass will sometimes spawn on the tops of stumps, or in the forks of submerged trees in deep water.

Russell, there were abundant stumps and I've heard of a Lake Fork technique of using suspending Rogues in submerged tree tops, but never thought seriously about it . Maybe now I will. DB