Set the hook.....Fast!

[WRB]

My 1st experience trying to hook a bass I could see was a bed bass when I was about 8 years old. The bass would nose down on my crappie jig flare it’s gills the jig would disappear and I would set the hook missing every time. I learned to set the hook when the gills flared, before seeing the jig disappear. Never felt the strike and I was watching the bass.

My eye to hand reflexes as a teen were extremely fast and help me as a gymnasts and drag racing, not much as a bass anglers because it takes time missing strikes before learning what a miss fells like. Strike detection is very important in bass fishing, can’t set the hook until you feel or see and process the strike.

Tom

[WRB]

Feeling missed strikes; working a bottom contact lure and feeling rocks where there are no rocks. Your partner is catching bass on the same lure you are using without success.

You haven’t caught s big jig bass where big bass are known to live.

Tom

[Turtle135]

I combat this problem by using lots of Megastrike! My jigs are so tasty the bass don't want to give them back. 

[Todd2]

So worst case, a Bass holds it .08 seconds..what's best case? Most of us never know because we're swinging, but I know some guys shake off a fish when pre fishing. For the sake of the discussion let's say best case is 20 secs? So somewhere between .8 and 20 secs that bass is letting go. In any portion of that range, it's in their mouth....so why not swing fast? 

 

Now..the ones we don't feel, not sure what you can do about that...but I've caught many fish on setting the hook when in doubt of whether it was a bite. I've whiffed a bunch too.

[scaleface]

Sometimes a bass will hold it for ten seconds sometimes for a tenth of a second . Either way I'm setting the hook as soon as I detect it .

[Team9nine]

It's not always as straightforward as 'set as soon as you can.' That works for some baits and some situations, but certainly not all. Likewise, the fact that bass can inhale and exhale something that fast doesn't mean they do (or will). I've had plenty of bass hold baits for upwards of 45 seconds or more before finally dropping the bait, and we've all had fish that swallowed a bait - those don't come back out. 

[WRB]

Big difference between a bass strike and that same bass deciding to eat what it struck. We all catch the bass that eats our lures.

Tom

[scaleface]

If one feels a hit , sets the hook and the bass has done spit it , waiting longer isnt going to help .

[Team9nine]

2 hours ago, WRB said:

Big difference between a bass strike and that same bass deciding to eat what it struck. We all catch the bass that eats our lures.

Tom

 

No difference to me because both actions are part of the exact same process on the basses part, one just occurs later, but they both begin with  the strike. They strike, they taste/feel, then they swallow or reject. We can't always control or predetermine what the outcome will be or how fast the process will occur, but my bigger point is that there are certainly some baits where immediately setting the hook on detection, whether by feel or by sight, is not the wisest thing to do, topwaters/frogs as just one example. With some other baits, the opposite is true. I guess that I don't consider "always set the hook ASAP" as a good all-around rule.

 

26 minutes ago, scaleface said:

If one feels a hit , sets the hook and the bass has done spit it , waiting longer isnt going to help .

 

Just an observation or...?

[scaleface]

 

4 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Just an observation or...?

I'm not following you .

 

 I dont think the OP was thinking about sight fishing or top water strikes , good point though , just how fast can a bass can reject a lure .

[WRB]

Since bass don't have hands or paws with claws they can only strike using their mouth.

Artifical lures may look like something they want to eat, depending how aggressive the bass is, they check it out by striking it, then decide if it's editable and continue killing and eating. Another strike response is a warning or simply to kill the lure when on beds, they don't eat it. If the bass is aggressive and fully committed to eat a prey the strike engulfs it, crunches it to kill and swallows it quickly, those bass we have a high probability of getting a hook set because the hook is deep into it's mouth.

Tell me why we wait or hesitate hook sets for a surface strike? I hear everyone saying the bass doesn't have the lure in it's mouth, where do they have it if not in it's mouth?

Surface lures we can see the strike, that is the only difference. Bass don't use different strike technique for different lures other then to check something or kill something.

Hook set timing depends on where the lure is inside the basses mouth and that depends on if the bass wants to eat it or not and how big the lure is so the bass can kill and swallow the prey.

When I first started using soft plastic worms the standard technique promoted by pro's was to let the bass move off with the worm by watching the line moving before hook setting. Today we don't wait knowing the bass may reject the lure quickly and set the hook the instant we detect it and make timing adjustments depending on success or failure.

I watch bass in crystal clear pit lakes and never witnessed a bass slap anything ever. What does slap mean? Hitting prey with their tail or body? Bass either strike prey with their mouth or mis judge and miss it. 

Tom

[georgeyew]

5 hours ago, scaleface said:

Sometimes a bass will hold it for ten seconds sometimes for a tenth of a second . Either way I'm setting the hook as soon as I detect it .

Some times the bass will hold on to a plastic lure long enough to swallow it....imagine that.

[N Florida Mike]

I fish with a floating line with my primary bait choice , which is usually some kind of soft plastic. I watch for the twitch as the bass takes the bait and usually try to set the hook in the opposite direction from the way the fish is moving. I guess you could say Im in the slower camp but have tried to speed up some so I dont gut hook the fish. I rarely use any attractant and I feel confident that I rarely miss a fish picking up a bait. One reason for this is seeing the twitch. Another is that I maintain some contact with the bait so I feel them pick it up. I dont know if its the plastics I use , but its uncommon for me to have a fish let go of a bait once he took it , An exception to this is a bedding fish moving the bait off the bed and quickly dropping it.

With worms , I usually hook the fish in the mouth near the edge. With flukes , I try to set the hook faster , because flukes gut hook fish more than any other bait I use.

My opinion is that I lose more fish with an immediate hookset than not. I often will set immediately if its a very weedy or structure filled area so the fish doesnt bury himself. Otherwise , I get myself set and see which direction the fish is heading and set the hook. 

I know thats not the popular opinion but to each his own. 

What Im saying is I know a bass can very quickly spit out a bait but it just doesnt happen to me that often.

 

[ptomacbass]

If you're using the right thing the right way, most bass aren't gonna be spitting it in 0.08 seconds. That is unless you're fishing for bedding bass.

[scaleface]

I feel and "hear"   a lot of hits where the bass  reject the bait before I can hook it . Sometimes when in a school I'll get a bunch hits on the same cast    . Theres noway of telling if the bass is going to spit it quickly or not . Only thing I can say is I have never hooked a bass  after  the lure gets  blown out  unless the fish  gets foul hooked .

 

 

[Catt]

Each bass is different

Each bite is different 

Each fight is different 

 

I don't care about the bass that can spit my lure in .08 seconds, gonna probably miss that fish anyway!

 

I don't care who you are everybody misses bites, it maybe because of the bass, it maybe operator error but it happens.

 

Those classic thumps, bumps, taps, & line movement are easy, but there will be times when you feel or see nothing.

 

Don't be surprised when a 2 lb bass inhales your 1 oz jig without any tell-tale line movement and proceeds to sit there until you apply too much pressure at which time they spit it!

 

[Troy85]

 I was fishing a Texas rigged worm.  I cast it out and let it sink(was in about 4ft of water) and I felt the slightest bump.  I remember thinking, is that a fish, or did my weight just land on a stump.  I decided to set the hook anyway, turned out to be my PB.  That could have easily been a missed strike, if I hadn't decided to set the hook on what I was pretty sure was just my weight landing on a stump.

[Montanaro]

I will follow greg hackneys advice....give them a second to really mouth it and then hook em.  Youll miss more fish and lose more fish swinging for fences at first thump.  They dont always inhale lure, sometimes only lip it. 

 

You will get spun out QUICK if you convince yourself that your bass are spitting your lures in .08.

[Mike L]

All good comments and advise

All I know is if I'm useing any type of bottom contact plastic and I feel or even think it was a hit, I'm swinging.

It takes less than .08 sec to reel down and swing. If I miss her, I miss her.

 

 

 

Mike

[DINK WHISPERER]

I think this is especially true right now here in FL during the spawn. It's been my experience that these bedding fish will half way grab the bait and spit it out of the bed so fast it's unreal. If you know what you're doing you will feel the strike but it's usually too late and you will get a tungsten weight flying at you at high speeds! You have to keep agitating them until they inhale it. 

[Deleted account]

1 hour ago, Mike L said:

It takes less than .08 sec to reel down and swing. If I miss her, I miss her.

 

Mike

If you're a mongoose, I just did the experiment, I get .20 to .60

[Mike L]

10 minutes ago, reason said:

If you're a mongoose, I just did the experiment, I get .20 to .60

Fair enough... And I'm sure you're faster than me. 

Dang decibels always confuse me. ?

 

 

 

 

 

Mike

[WRB]

Remember the dollar bill test? Have someone put a dollar bill 1/2 way down between your index finger and thumb. When the dollar bill drops if you can catch it without dropping your hand just using the 2 fingers, it's yours. Reflex time is about .5 seconds the bill drops about 4" in .25 seconds, easy way to win a dollar.

The point is your reflexes are faster when you are focused on what is going on around you, a lot slower when not being focused.

Increasing your catch ratio to strikes is only important if that matters. For me knowing the biggest bass in the lake often create the least amount of line movement when striking, so staying focused helps me.

Missed strikes also tells you the bass is interested but something isn't right, you need to make a change, color, size, cadence, something.

Tom

 

[MassYak85]

Most techniques I am either seeing or detecting a bite, and sweeping the rod immediately, or working something like a frog or jig where my rod is not necessarily pointed right at the fish, reeling down until it is, and the swinging. For no technique do I ever wait after feeling a fish, unless I know for some reason it spit it out already, or missed it completely (topwater). 

[Deleted account]

36 minutes ago, Mike L said:

Fair enough... And I'm sure you're faster than me. 

Dang decibels always confuse me. ?

 

Mike

I hate it when they scream the metric system...