Missed Jig Bites

[Catt]

Night fishing from the bank is as easy & safe as from a boat.

The bite most anglers miss is the one where the bass inhales your jig & does not move. There is no thump, bump, tap, or line movement. The bass simply sits there with your jig in its mouth until you apply enough pressure thinking you hung & then it spits the jig.

[WRB]

Poisonous snakes hunt at night around the water edge, you can't see where you are walking, that can be dangerous, safer in a boat.

The bigger the bass the more difficult the strike can be to detect, big bass have big mouth with no reason to move like a smaller bass that runs off with your jig to get away from other bass.

Standing on shore is solid and not moving like a boat in waves, is a advantage to detecting strikes.

Night bass fishing is a good experience, everyone should do this.

Tom

[Fishingintheweeds]

I've missed jig bites that I KNEW I reacted slow on, because I wasn't paying close enough attention (and I've learned to pay better attention)...but is it REALLY possible that "we" are really missing that many?!

 

But now, I will say, since I've really been focusing on working just jigs, I HAVE felt a couple of different times, where something just felt different, and a little off, from anything else I was expecting. I wondered then if I had just missed a fish...but what to do next? 

 

Before you reel back in and throw something weightless or smaller...at that point when you realize you may have just missed a fish, or it had picked up the jig but spit it out...what do you do? Hop it and leave it? Just kill it there? What has experience shown to be the best? Or, do these fish just not come back at all?

[Todd2]

8 hours ago, Fishingintheweeds said:

at that point when you realize you may have just missed a fish, or it had picked up the jig but spit it out...what do you do? Hop it and leave it? Just kill it there? What has experience shown to be the best? Or, do these fish just not come back at all?

I just kill it and wait with intermittent shaking..works sometimes. If that doesn't work, I'll throw a worm at them. If that doesn't work, I move. 

[Catt]

8 hours ago, Fishingintheweeds said:

...at that point when you realize you may have just missed a fish, or it had picked up the jig but spit it out...what do you do? Hop it and leave it? Just kill it there? What has experience shown to be the best? Or, do these fish just not come back at all?

 

Each individual fish is different, some come back & hit it... some don't.

 

Just try whatever & see what happens!  ?

[OperationEagle]

Ok with bite detection being difficult at best...with some good discussion on how to be better at it, shouldn’t we then focus on how to get MORE BITES to take swings at the begin with?

 

Thoughts and suggestions?

[NHBull]

Again, this is one of those old threads I don’t mind revisiting.

This year, my primary bottom contact rods have been MBR style rods with a fast action and braid to FC.......and I swing at everything!  And put more in the boat than ever before.

while I may be in the minority with this non JWR rod, it works for me.....

[Fishingintheweeds]

1 hour ago, Catt said:

 

Each individual fish is different, some come back & hit it... some don't.

 

Just try whatever & see what happens!  ?

This is true. 

[Catt]

On 11/1/2014 at 9:07 AM, A-Jay said:

 

~ X2 ~ This is a Game Changer.

 

  Nocturnal Operations will also improve one's casting/ presentation accuracy quite a bit.

 

When you can place your bait in tight spots in very limited to no light conditions, day light angling gets much easier.

 

A-Jay

 

Darkness covers up an angler's presence & most of his mistakes!

 

Y'all really wanna get better turn the lights out!

[J Francho]

Come to the dark side!

 

This is an actual picture of Catt:

[mattkenzer]

Aahh ..... use a rod that lights up at night.

[Fishingintheweeds]

35 minutes ago, Catt said:

 

Darkness covers up an angler's presence & most of his mistakes!

 

Y'all really wanna get better turn the lights out!

I tell people the fish start biting good for me when the mosquitoes start. Not that the fish care if the mosquitoes are after me or not....

[Catt]

My day starts when the sun finds its home in the Western sky!

 

 

[islandbass]

He who knows not the power of the dark side knows nothing...

(Per James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader voice)

 

Night time fishing rocks! It is a lot of fun. Imagine...

It’s pitch black. New moon. A bull frog croaks from the shadows, unseen but heard. In my hands, I wield my weapon of choice, a bc rig. Left hand on the butt, right thumb on the spool, I proceed to make a cast and toss my spinnerbait into the darkness along an edge of lily pads. 

 

Auditory skills and experience take over as I focus on the sound of the whizzing spool. The waning spin of the spool is my signal to feather the spool to a stop.  

 

In the darkness, my lure splashes down and my thumb does not feel a single single loop of overrun. I begin my retrieve. I key in on the speed of my retrieve, picturing in my mind how the combination of willow and colorado blades are spinning. About halfway through the retrieve, I feel my lure get violently smashed and instinctively, I pull back to set the hook. 

 

The hook is driven in. The battle begins. The bass valiantly fights, but this time around, I score the winning point, in the dark to boot. 

 

And the prize is the larger bass in the image I hopefully posted successfully. 

 

The power of dark side fishing is not without its rewards or joy. So if you haven’t yet, “Do it!” (with senator palaptine’s voice, lol).

[Fishingintheweeds]

So, about the bites...plenty of times, you won't feel that tap-tap. But in the case that you do, it seems like it would be good to understand what the fish is found when you feel that tap-tap. 

 

If you do feel that, do you immediately set the hook when you feel the first one? Is that the fish picking up the jig? Is the second tap the fish crushing it? Or, is it the fish spitting it out? 

 

For me, I don't know if I could describe what I do or when but I don't think that  I'm not the best with a jig. But I was fishing in very windy conditions today, in deep water, on the end of king casts...feeling was really all I had to go on. But later, I started to think about anything that I felt or moments where something was a little different and what the fish was doing when I felt these things and if understanding that would help detect more bites. 

 

I'm sure the possibilities of things the fish could be doing are endless but is there anything along these lines that you've found useful to understand?