OCdockskipper

Great question. For largemouth, I'm not sure but it is probably a lower number like 4 or 5 because I will often cast to the right or left of the main target after a few fish in a row. I like to know how big an area the school covers and see if there are any larger fish hanging on the perimeter. Often those casts come up empty and break the streak, but I was in the boat when my buddy caught an 8 lb largemouth doing just that. We were picking off some 12" - 14" fish in front of a dock on consecutive casts, when he suddenly shoots a cast 30 feet to the left towards a different dock and gets hit before the Roboworm touched bottom. I wonder if the big fish was looking at the school of smaller bass as a potential meal and couldn't help herself as the lure dropped in front of her. For smallmouth, it was probably near a dozen this past September on Lake Powell. Found a school off a point & was making long casts with a Redeye shad. Twice in that span I hooked fish who threw the lure while jumping only to have a second fish hook up as I then continued the retrieve.

"Hammered it" or "Hit it like a freight train" for moving baits or when a big channel catfish grabs your lure. A much more subtle "There he is" for bottom bouncing baits.

Had a unusual catch this past Saturday. I came upon a dock that was about 25 feet wide jutting out about 15 feet from the shore with a boat moored to the front. From the right side, I skipped a weightless wacky Senko a good 20 feet under the dock, so it was actually closer to the left side. After it settled down, I went to pop it up and found that it was hung up on something. There was no way I could access it from the right side of the dock, so I stuck the rod about 3 feet into the water (to clear the boats propeller) and moved my boat to the left side of the dock. The idea was to give the lure a tug from the opposite direction in hopes of making it come loose, but as I was working around the dock, I realized there was a weed bed along the front of the boat. So now my line is sawing through & collecting weeds as I move left. I can feel the lure is still snagged, but there is about 1500 lbs of weeds (or so it felt) hanging on the line. I give the line a guitar strum and feel the lure pop free, only to then the pop,pop,pop of a fish struggling on the line. I start reeling in a bass, who ends up with this mess of weeds around his head and when I landed him, I found he had been foul hooked on the bottom of the jaw. Apparently this poor guy was just minding his own business, watching this snagged senko on the bottom, when it suddenly came loose & hit him in the face. He then got dragged into a mess of weeds before being unhooked & released. He probably has an unusual story to tell his friends...

Like Bluebasser86, I rarely snag with the Zman heads & hooks. When fishing near weed beds, the lighter 1/15 oz won't penetrate far into the weeds & pops out with just a little resistance. If you are getting hung up, my guess would be you are using too heavy a head or too large a hook.

After a horrible season in the B.A.S.S. fantasy fishing competition, I finally have a tournament where I am doing well. I went to the leaderboard section to see how my scores for The Potomac are stacking up and what would need to happen the next 2 days in order for me to win the $3K Basspro gift card. As I was scrolling through the overall scores for the year looking for Potomac scores higher than mine, I noticed something strange. Currently places 312 thru 572 all have the same year total of 8536 points, and each of those 250 contestants have the exact same score for each and every tournament, including the Classic at the beginning of the year. My guess is that these were folks who signed up to play and never filled out a lineup, so their rosters were autofilled (a new "feature" this year). I think this makes the stats for the game kind of meaningless. With over 25,000 entrants, this means that a good portion of the players who are in the top 2% aren't even playing, their rosters are just being autofilled. I liked it better when you got a 0 if you didn't fill in a roster. I do realize it probably doesn't make a difference in the long run, being that there are just two winners per event and one overall winner. It would be fun to see B.A.S.S. try to explain what they were going to do if 250 entrants who hadn't set their rosters in months all tied for first in one event. $5 gift cards for each??

I fish because it gets monotonous to, uh, "hang out" with supermodels day after day, hour after hour. After all, I don't have an endless supply of duct tape & rope and the lake is on the way to the hardware store... I think of that a lot, how things would be if fish catching became a skill that ensured ones survival. I would have to raid a BPS as the riots began to make sure I had a lifetime supply of soft plastics.

Just shows he is washed up (said with tongue planted firmly in cheek)... It has been an odd season on the Elite series. 1st four winners had never won an Elite event, and the winners of the 1st two events will most likely not qualify for the Classic. KVD wins three of the next four events and follows it up with a crash & burn. Winner of the 6th event & leader of AOY gets a days catch DQ'd in the following event. Just odd... When Lake Conroe was announced for the 2017 Classic, I really hoped Rick Clunn's win would help propel him to qualifying for it (he guided at Conroe in his earlier days). Unfortunately, he is in the mid 50's in points for AOY and hasn't helped himself much the past few tourneys. Maybe he can pull one more rabbit out of the hat in La Crosse next month.

Well, on Bigfoot Resource.com, there is a 18 page thread about a 30 lb largemouth bass caught from a farm pond...

My friend has a koi pond and he has kept a bass in there for a few years. The bass is slightly smaller than the koi, but he/she bullies them, not the other way around. It may be because the koi are domesticated and the bass is wild, but they koi just are not territorial like other fish. Carp are the Great Danes of fish, they have no idea how big & strong they are and typically are very passive towards others.

When I read that paragraph, it made me smile. I have made that skip cast with that rig (albeit a Senko) under similar docks on my home lake thousands & thousands of times. Each time the line moves off or I set the hook, I wonder if it will be a lake record (I doubt a California state record lives in my lake, unless someone snuck in some Florida strain babies a decade or so ago).

That was what caught my eye. My screen saver on my desktop is me holding an 8 lb fish and they appear to be the same length, but his fish just has so much more bulk for the entire body. It has the head & length of an eight pounder and the girth of a fifteen pounder (would that be correct WRB?)

As an aside to this, I wonder if any move to change limit sizes on black bass will make a difference? I would suggest that the majority of black bass caught are done by folks who choose to practice catch & release, or who just occasionally keep a few fish. Those who are out to catch as many fish as they can to eat or fill their freezer tend not to catch that many bass in the first place. It seems in our current fishing culture, as one acquires the skills to become proficient at catching, a switch kicks in to not abuse that skill. The attempt to force people to keep what they catch is a different matter. It is more dangerous & sinister, but may not be constitutional. If something like that passes, I see most bass anglers becoming extremely clumsy when attempting to land a bass...

I am going to go a different direction than the rest of the posters & tell you that yes, you are indeed terrible at fishing. My professional recommendation is that you take two weeks off & then quit. Please send all your gear & tackle to me, I will make sure to educate them how to properly catch fish... Seriously, take a step back & don't be so serious. Keep learning from people on this forum, keep trying different techniques and areas and enjoy the process. One day you will look back and smile.

I had a small sparrow or swallow do that to me about a month ago, except the bait he was interested in was a ZMan TRD. Smaller baits attract smaller birds. By friends sister told me that when she was a teenager, she hit a swallow mid cast with a buzzbait. She wasn't aiming at it, she just cast it toward a bridge and the bird & buzzbait collided. She didn't know what had happened at first, all of a sudden her reel backlashed and these feathers started floating down a short distance from the boat.

I agree and believe that is the case due to the size of their mouths. They can inhale a bait (especially a smaller finesse bait) and have it inside their mouth without it ever touching any part of them. A big bass eating a Ned rig to is similar to a baleen whale sucking in plankton. Compare that to a catfish over 10 lbs, who has to crush what he catches - there is no subtlety to one of their bites.

If I had to catch fish to eat & survive or just wanted to show off my catching abilities to the others stranded with me, I would choose a Zman TRD 1/15oz Ned rig in California Craw. If I didn't have to catch fish and just wanted to have fun throwing & retrieving a lure, then a Zara Spook.

While I enjoy the process of fishing, from purchasing & setting up gear to launching for the day and trying to figure out where the fish are, I enjoy catching more than fishing. I target keeper sized fish and above, I don't consider a legal fish a dink. On any particular day, I'll adjust my methods to those that are producing bigger fish, but if the choice is between 50 legal fish or 1 eight pounder for 10 hours fishing, I'll take the former. The eight pounder gives a great memory, but if it is the only action for the day, there are 9 hours and 55 minutes of boredom built in. Real world is that on some lakes, this isn't that black and white choice. i caught two bass over 8 lbs last month (July) on my home lake, one on a TRD Ned rig the other on a 6" Zoom Dead ringer. Neither of those are baits used by those who target large fish only. On those two days where the big ones were caught, we ended up catching 60 fish and 38 fish respectively, so we had the best of both worlds.

Excellent, keep it up.

I too prefer barbed hooks, although I am well aware of the caution you need to take to avoid getting stuck past the barb with them. When a big fish is near the boat, everything & anything will happen and I want every advantage I can. I believe that in close range, a barbed hook gives you room for error.

You are correct, I still have 2 of them left over from decades ago. Note the attachment off the rear treble hook for a rubber skirt, which puts alot of motion into the bait.

That's what I thought, the setting and cast reminded me of E.T. or Poltergeist where the main focus of the story is on the kids and the "mysterious others" as opposed to the parents or other adults.

X3 on the sweep. Most of my wacky fishing is skipping them under docks, so the sweep also helps lead them out from under the dock.

There is a proliferation of information available now that wasn't available decades ago. However, like anything else, not all of the information may be valid for what you are trying to do. This site is a great example. Whenever someone asks how they can catch fish somewhere, you get answers from people all over the nation, fishing bodies of water that vary as much as the answers to the question do. I know most people have good hearts in wanting to help others, but I always hesitate before giving advice online. Do I really understand the situation and area that the OP is talking about and can I steer them in the right direction? For me, most of the time the answer is "I don't know", so I hold off giving potentially conflicting advice. If you spend some time on this site and get to know various members through their posts, you will find people who you can count on giving you the advice on particular subjects that are applicable to you. The best example I can give for myself was when I was learning about the Ned rig. The best and most consistent advice came from Team9Nine and Bluebasser, not because they considered themselves experts, but because they had taken the time themselves to learn from those who could be considered experts and were able to apply the techniques. Best of all, they were able to explain simply what they had learned, which allowed me to learn a technique that is now invaluable to my fishing arsenal.

When I was a kid, we had a Samoyed that used to do the same in a large clay pot. The problem is that everything & anything sticks to this breeds fur, so the dog would walk around looking like PigPen from Peanuts. My mom ended up giving this dog to a woman who moved up in a mountain cabin and wanted a watch dog/companion. The first night, the woman let the dog sleep in her bedroom. When she woke up, she reached over to put her dentures in, but they weren't there. She looked over & the dog had the false teeth in her mouth, smiling like Jimmy Carter. This dog was a little off...

Not the craziest, but a memorable one was last year with 2 lb bass that was apparently trying out for Cirque du Soleil. His initial jump was a good 2-plus feet out of the water where he did a complete 360 degree somersault. Then after regaining his composure, he charged toward the boat, jumped again and landed in the boat, smacking me in the shin. Thank heavens I caught him on a Ned Rig and not something with multiple trebles, otherwise I would have had to have him arrested for battery.