Bites Coming On The Initial Drop/splash?

[ClackerBuzz]

also your chances of getting a splash down bite go up exponentially if your casting within the drip line of a tree. 'stupid praying mantis bug thing just couldn't hold onto it's branch...gulp'

[primetime]

Anytime you are fishing an area with overhanging trees, I try to create a loud splash as they are conditoned to falling lizards, frogs, and other insects etc. from the above trees, I have witnessed many Bass inhaling Lizards and beetles that fall out of trees after a squirel shakes a branch....

 

If I am having a tough bite, I often try using a loud splash to get attention or stir up activity, sometimes it works, sometims it spooks em, but I have had days where a loud entry was the key to success....

[hatrix]

I have day where things got tuff and the only way you can catch them is on the initial fall. They will get in a mood where unless it drops right down on them you wont get bit and they are only feeding up. Usually it probably doesn't even matter what the bait is or so it seems. You catch 5 fish on a number of different baits and they only things you can pattern is the initial fall. There is times of the year where I can basically call it when beating a bank with something that floats and you know where fish are holding. It is not so much before you ever do any thing like a bait that sinks but as soon as you start to walk that spook or frog or crank that square bill they grab it.

 

As for the person talking about setting a hook free spool. I think about 2 years ago there was around a week straight on this lake where the spook bite was just insane. It was probably the best bite I have ever been on. Well I clipped the seat on a cast and it was a nasty one so I sat down on the deck and was about to start picking it out and my brother says something hit the spook and I was like ya whatever it doesn't even matter we catch so many. He just looked at me all funny so to be a ass I thumbed the spool and set the hook over my shoulder with the bait behind me and then my line pulls right to the knot and its pulling hard. The fish wen't almost 6# and was the biggest fish of that whole streak anyone caught. That was one of the fishing moment I will always remember. It was just such random crazy luck and out of the hundreds of fish the fish I didn't care about because we were killing it every day I was going to let go. 

[scbassin]

Some of the time they will see the shadow of your bait & they hit it as it hits the water.