Okee_Steve

There is nothing wrong with you. It may be the the lake you fished. It maybe the the color of or/and the way the Sinko was rigged or fished. What was the Ph, the water temp? Was there any vegetation at all? The big question is; was anyone around you catching fish? If so what were they using? There are just hundreds of reasons a person may not catch fish and without some basic information it's hard to help. Like you were told by Cephkiller you got some great advice and didn't use any of it. next time try some of the things you were told and I bet your catching will improve greatly. I would love to help but without some more info it would all be a guess, I should say an ill informed guess.

Followed by, "If these Bass had teeth, swimming in Florida would be life threatening!"

I agree, but I believe he is asking to try and figure out wether to fish crank that will run below the suspending fish or above them, to improve the odds of catching one or all of them. Especially for tourny situations where the less casts it takes to get one the more you can go after. If that's the case, I would say use a bait that will crank a little above the suspended fish.

Night fishing can be great fun, the fish have to strike more by sound in low light situations. I would suggest trying dark colored lures that make noise, poppers, jerk baits like the Gambler Flappin' Shade, Devils Horse or something along those lines. Good luck and let us know how you do.

Thanks to everyone and I sure hope I can contribute to this great forum. Thanks for having me.

Like most that have replied said you may be trying to hard. Just relax and enjoy yourself. After all Bass fishing is suppose to be fun. As you get more time on the water you'll see things that work well for others but not for you, but you'll just have to try them to find out for yourself. You'll try things that you think no one has ever tried before and it works great for you. Then you'll find out others have been doing those same things for years. Fishing is a sport with only a couple hard fast rules. ie. Fish are in the water, not in the trees behind you half way up the bank. Just about everything else is made up on the spot. Well maybe not made up on the spot but learned on the spot none the less. To give you an example, years ago I was hooking a straight worm, now called a "trick worm" just about a third of the way down the body and burying a finishing nail in the head of the worm. The bigger the nail the faster the sink rate. I fished this way for years, no one that I knew rigged their worms like this but me. Then at a BASS wight in Ricky Clunn said he caught all his fish "Wacky Worming" After the wight in I ask him what he meant by wacky worming and he showed me the same thing I had been doing for years. I just didn't know what it was call. He said he learned it from someone in Texas. Anyway just try different things and what works for you keep doing them and what doesn't, well you could tell your fishing partner!

Thank you. I look forward to contributing to an already great forum.

Semper Fi and thanks.

From what I've seen so far I have to agree with you. Super folks here.

Anything you throw into the water will make a splash. Now if you are casting with to high of an arch in your cast it will cause a bigger splash than if you have a lower arch. You maybe casting to hard on to flat of a trajectory, now that will make a big splash. Don't try and hit the space shuttle or win the long cast contest, just use short soft cast and you'll be surprised at how well your catching will improve.

I've found it to be about the same for fresh water, I've never tried a fly rod on feeding bass but flukes do work great in these situations. I always try and use a fluke as close to the color of the bait fish as possible. Pop it, make it jump out of the water and dart back and forth as quickly as you can. Sort of like a bait fish may act in the middle of a bass feeding frenzy. At lest it works for me.

I just stumbled across this site last night and replied to a couple of post and thought I should say "Hello" and tell you a little about myself. I'm from Okeechobee, Florida. I live in a small community on the north side of the lake. I've moved here just shortly after being discharged for the USMC in 1972 I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and have been fishing for Bass as long as I remember. My earliest memories of fishing was with my dad and granddad using a wooden row boat fishing for bream in Arkansas back in the '50's. In Ohio I mostly fished the Scioto River north of Gregg's Dam. I have fished the Hoover Reservoir, Alum Creek Reservoir and most of the lakes big and small from Lake Erie to Lake Logan. When I moved to Okeechobee in 1975, I worked as a fireman and fished every day off I had. After about 5 years I started guiding and for the next 27 years I have guided, fished tournaments, published a fishing magazine, "The Okeechobee Fisherman." and hosted a very popular South Florida radio talk show called, "Okeechobee Fishin'" I'm a single dad and have a 10 year old girl that lives with me, Billie Sue and she loves bass fishing as much as I do. I laid off guiding for the last 8 years and as soon as we get a little water in the lake I'll be getting back into it. If there is any questions you may have that I can answer I'll be more than happy to give you my opinion. Just remember they will be just the opinion of another fisherman, no more, no less. That pretty much sums up my life in 1500 characters or less. Not bad for a lifetime of stuff.

That sounds to me like a feeding frenzy. Most of the time, around here anyway, the feeding bass circle the school of pray fish. Kind of like the Indians did the wagon trains in the old western movies, the bass on the outside, the bait fish on the inside. When I find this happening I drop anchor and cast only when the fish get within casting distance. I'll usually get about two to three cast each time the bass swim past. This action sometimes last a long time and sometimes less than hour. It depends on the number of pray and the number of bass in the area. It seems to me that new bass must join the frenzy in order to last as long as they do at times. The bass just gorge themselves and fill up quickly. I normally cast to the inside of the circling bass to where the bait fish are and move the lure quickly back to the boat with short quick snaps of the rod tip, keeping the tip low to the water and making the lure splash as much water as possible. I know it sounds as though the position of the rod tip would not make much difference, but it really does. With the rod tip held high, with each snap of the rod tip the line will snap out of the water all the way back to the lure. I have found that this produces less bites. By holding the rod tip low the line does not snap out of the water and spook the fish. I am a very firm believer in trying to make what ever lure/bait you use look as natural as possible.

Sam gave you some great advice. What state is the "Great Bass Spot" in if you don't mind me asking? If it's in Florida the Ol' Bass Professor has some great "Snakes" that work real well on big bass around here.

I sure hope I'm not stepping in where I shouldn't, but here goes and we'll see where this lands. I'm not sure what you saw was "schooling Bass", or Bass at all for that matter. I would need more info to make that call. If what you saw was "schooling Bass" you just may have missed the trip of a life time. What most people mistake as "schooling fish" could be better described as a "feeding frenzy". And they will hit just about anything as long it resembles the pray they are feeding on. On my home lake, Lake Okeechobee that means 3 to 6 pound bass, hundreds of 3 to 6 pound Bass feeding on shad or minnows. It happens all the time, just not in the same place all of the time. I have been fortunate enough to experience Bass feeding frenzies only a few times in all the years I've been fishing here and around the country. If the Bass are hitting shad I will throw some type of top water stick bait like a Devil's Horse or any lip-less top water bait as long as it looks close in color to what the fish are feeding on. I jerk the bait across the surface of the water with the rod tip as fast as I can, moving the rod tip about 1 to 2 feet with each jerk and then reeling in the slack line and jerk the rod tip again, reel in the slack line. Kicking up as much water as possible and hang on! The fish will hit that bait as hard and fast as they can swim. Sometimes you will hang two 6 pounds Bass on the same bait, one on the front hooks and one on the back hooks. I know this is not what was posted already and a "feeding frenzy" may not be what you saw but from the info you gave this is what it sounds like to me.