Can anyone offer any thoughts on artificial light and how it affects Bass behavior ?

I see the canal has spots were there is lot's of artificial light.

How bad is it to 4wd up to a rip, while others are fishing, with your lights shining across the rip and not turn them off ?

Does anyone see the fish spooking in this scenario ?

We obviously have some hard fisherman that bug our good spots every year and they (NJ) swear that light doesn't do squat. I beg to differ. Every turn your light on as you get ready to release a fish. A little bit of extra "get me the f*** out of here" life usually comes into the fish.

Come on

one of the piers i fish at night has a bunch of street lights on it. i definitly find that the fish hold in the shadows.

Fish adapt to their environment---if an artificial light is part of that, they adapt to that as well, and often use it to their advantage by lurking in the shadow lines it creates.

It's the sudden, unnatural burst of light---like headlights bouncing over a track or some yo-yo flashing a fish as you're getting ready to lip it----that scares the crap outta them.

what Mike said . its the sudden flash of light that spooks them .

Red light seems to be a whole different scenario though as long as it isnt too bright a light and allows you to see just well enough to rig line and or cut bait yet rarely spooks fish then TURN it back off. Its the same thing when you gather night crawlers for fresh water fishing which is seldom done these days anymore what with bait shops and all the new rubber worms.
when you shine a red light on WORMS they might move slow or not at all, but use a white light and they bolt in an instant. The same held true when i would feed bread to Red foxes out in the backyard. As for idiot non- fishermen or looky lou's who just want spot light everything with their headlights, they have no buisness screwing up the fishing for the people who have spent hours preparing and waiting on the conditions to be just right. :af:

When night fishing for snook in Florida we fished mostly around the docks that had lights on them. Shrimp seem to be drawn to the light and therefore the snook would feed under the light. Squid fishing is done with lights shining. Also up here the head boats when night fishing for blues shine the lights into the water.As for Stripers the only thing that I have seen at night are a few people using them little lights on there head.

And then again you always get the one or two boatist that love to shine the million candle power at ya:smash: :smash:

I've caught huge quanities of bass under lights.Right now is prime time to do so,squid are totally attracted to light and the squid in heavy right now.
In the surf,just the opposite.Headlites spook the sh*t out of bass.