Would You Rather?

[grampa1114]

I think if people preferred B you would see a lot of light and ultra light combos on the water. 

About half of my rods are light or ultralight and my 7.2 PB was caught on one of them...My tournament days are over so I'm personally in it for the fight.

JMHO

Grampa

[bholtzinger14]

I fished when I was younger with ultralight and it was very fun. At this point I want to make sure I get the fish in the boat though. Lol

[Fishing Rhino]

About half of my rods are light or ultralight and my 7.2 PB was caught on one of them...My tournament days are over so I'm personally in it for the fight.

JMHO

Grampa

 

I've seen Grampa's arsenal.  They are not ultra light.  They are buggy whips.

[Bankbeater]

Big fish, less fight. The more they jump around the more they might get off.

[ward131]

A.  I prefer to catch bigger fish but when a smallmouth grabs the bait it is always a fun fight!

[Scott F]

I choose B. I can see why guys might choose a large fish because they are more rare, but I've caught large smallmouth out of cold water on the Great Lakes that had little fight in them. Much smaller smallies caught in rivers are a LOT more fun to catch. There is just no quit in them. You get a 14 inch smallmouth on and you'd swear it was at least 4 or 5 pounds and then you see it and are amazed. Big river smallies are even more fun. I don't fish tournaments so the size of the fish doesn't matter at all. It's all about the fight.

[Fishing Rhino]

If big is what you want, I've caught about twenty of these.  The second largest living fish, the basking shark.  An adult can be 26 feet in length.

 

But, I wish I had never caught one.  One night, hauling gear about fifty miles south of the harbor we had to deal with six of these things, two on one trawl. 

 

They swim with their mouths open feeding on plankton.  Occasionally, they will swim into the ground line.  When they do, they start rolling and thrashing, trying to get free.  The pot warp gets tangled up on their tails and fins.  They will get wrapped in so much line that there can be two, three, and even as many as four lobster traps pulled against their bodies.

 

The ones that I caught were dead when we hauled them in.  It could take over an hour to get them untangled and the line and gear freed from them.  A basking shark can weigh 8 to 9 tons.

 

[FloridaFishinFool]

This question gets down to the nitty gritty of why I fish in the first place. So if I am honest with myself and ask myself (without talking to myself) why do I fish in the first place it is to have fun. Fishing is a pleasure sport first and foremost. And I live in central Florida which is bass capitol and one of the best places in the country for fishing.

 

So to ask myself and be truthful, do I fish purely for the big one, or do I fish to have fun and just catch fish? My honest answer is to have fun with it. Catching big ones is nice, but it is not an obsession for me. If it were an obsession I think a lot of the fun would be lost to some degree as I would be passing up a lot of fish I could have caught in my hunt for that big one.

 

So over the years I have intentionally adjusted my fishing to catch more fish even if they are smaller fish, rather than just fish for the big ones and ignore the smaller fish.

 

I'd have to say one of the greatest thrills for me fishing is the initial hookup. I love it when the fish grabs the lure and hits hard with a solid hookup. I want as many of those as I can get.

 

I have caught some big bass that simply came to the surface rolled over and I dragged them in like a sled on top of the water. Not a whole lot of fun in that. But I have caught some 3 and 4 pound brawlers that just would not give up.

 

So for me, I actually adjust my fishing for quantity over quality. I would rather catch 30 smaller fish than 1 or 2 larger fish. I am there to catch fish, not focus on just a big one. If I did that I would probably have some disappointing days with zero bass to show for it.

 

Let me tell you a story about this summer... the summer of 2015 that directly relates to this thread question...

 

The bass I am holding in my avatar photo I caught while focusing on quantity over quality... My big bass of this summer.

 

I put my boat into the St. Johns river at a public boat ramp in mid June and headed north on the river in the main channel. I was passing up two smaller channels on my right that went around two small islands in the river. I looked up into the center channel and I saw bass jumping out of the water. I was like whoa! I immediately throttled down, circled back around, cut the motor off in the main channel, dropped the trolling motor into the water and I quietly slipped up into that center channel.

 

I paid attention to where most of the activity was and I anchored up along the western shoreline pushing up into shallow water anchoring up there with clean clear casting access left and right up and down the river in front of me. I was amazed to watch literally thousands of bass hitting on bait fish in a prolonged feeding frenzy for the next 4 hours. There would be single boils or several different boils going on at the same time. Sometimes they would be right next to the boat.

 

If I were just going for the big one, would I pass up a bass feeding frenzy like this just because 90% of the bass were between 1 to 3 pounds? Hell no! I am out here to have fun and catch as many as I can. And if I catch a big one, then hey great! But with a feeding frenzy like this I could not resist it.

 

So I prepared several rods with match the hatch type of lures. I had a 7' ML spinning rod with 10 pound braid on it that I put on Berkley 2" soft swim baits. I had a curado i on a 6'6" MH fast action rod with 15 pound braid and 3" Berkley or Calcutta soft swim baits. And I had a 5' ultra-light spinning rod with 8 pound braid I put on a rapala minnow lure. Another bait cast rod and reel with a rattle trap on it. And another with a spinner on it.

 

For about 4 hours anchored in one spot I was catching bass as fast as I could cast. If I had 6 arms and 6 rods and reels I would have done even better! But it was really cool to just sit in one spot and have the bass at my feet as I sat there on my casting seat on the front deck of the boat with finger on line ready to cast at any second waiting and watching for a bass boil up at my 9 o'clock position, or 12 o'clock right in front of me or off to my right or all of them at the same time and I did not know which boil to cast to! It was amazing! For the next 2 months- mid June through mid August it was awesome! There was a week at the peak where I lost count of the numbers of bass I was catching a day, with one 4 day spree topping out at over 150 bass caught, probably darn near just as many missed too!

 

But you know, to me this is what bass fishing is all about. It is not about that one big one. It is about the fun of catching them! I'd say most of the bass caught out there averaged 2 pounds. Probably 80 to 90% of them. 10% of the bass were upwards of 3 pounds plus average. I caught a few above 4 and 5 pounds, and then one day late in the summer I was using zoom 3.5" paddle tail swim baits rigged weedless with a stinger treble hook on it when the big one hit. And she did not put up much of a fight either. The smaller 3 pounders gave me more of a fight! And I had a lot more of those!

 

So I have to vote for smaller fish and more of them! Lots more of them!

[BigSkyBasser]

Depends heavily on the circumstance

 

When I'm tournament fishing I'll take big fish with a small fight all day long.

 

But when it's just for fun, we all know we love a good bend in the rod with the drag singing!