How often do you guys get skunked?

[Bluebasser86]

On actual multiple our fishing trips, maybe once a year. If you count my little 15-30 minute after work stops, couple times a month.

[NittyGrittyBoy]

Choice of location has a huge impact. The Lake I went to see's contsant heavy pressure and weather both days was the worst.

 

Big fish there but extremely hard to catch. Like glaucous said I could a went to different lake or pond and probably caught more fish. Sometimes I like trying to catch big fish in hard to catch places. 

 

To me that's what makes you a better fisherman, when you can't get a bite. It makes you have to work harder and try to figure the fish out. My 0.02 cents worth

[Troy85]

Its rare that its a true skunk, usually a tough day is catching a few dinks.  It did happen 2 weeks ago though, I was out for about 7 hours and I had to show for it was 1 bite, and fish didn't even get hooked up, just swiped at it.

[NYWayfarer]

Rarely.

 

I follow a personal rule of take what the water gives you. Meaning, I might have gone fishing for Bass but if they are not biting I will go after whatever will (Pickerel, Catfish or Sunfish)

 

Rarely getting skunked takes some work. Get to know the bodies of water you fish. Water temps, time of day that are productive, what fish are present. Don't be stubborn with your baits. Change them if nothing is biting them. Get a few confidence baits under your belt. Mine is a freefalling wacky rigged Yum Dinger (smaller the better) I can usually get a bite on that.

 

When all else fails, dig up a worm and use a piece of it on a small hook. Bluegills love that. It can turn a skunk into a very productive fishing session.

[Angry John]

1 hour ago, clh121787 said:

More than i care to admit.a few years ago I went over 100 hours of getting skunked Swimbait fishing. Probably 15 or 20 consecutive outings. 

I'm also in the big bait game and I have to let go sometimes and just fish to catch.  The strength mentally to sb only escapes me.

[Koz]

It happens enough to get me peeved but not enough to get me to stop fishing.

 

If I do get skunked then it's most assuredly my fault:

 

• I don't fish for dinks. I'm lucky enough to live in an area where there are plenty of 2-4 pounders as well as a good population of 7+ pound bass. Knowing that, I don't downsize my gear to go for quantity.
• I power fish. Rarely do I have the patience to slow it way down. But I think that's also because I bank fish in areas with hundreds of lagoons. So if the bite isn't there I move onto the next one. Some day I'll need to bring a chair with me, sit down, and slow fish. But on my feet I gotta move move move!
• Almost all of our lagoons are featureless, residential, man made lagoons with no structure and very little vegetation. I probably need to take the time to use my iBobber and map out the bottom of some of these lagoons to look for dropoffs and unseen vegetation or structure.
• Another factor is that these lagoons are interconnected stormwater lagoons and the fish do move through the pipes from lagoon to lagoon (verified by tagged fish). So that feeds into my impatience that if they aren't biting to move on to the next lagoon.

My guess is that if I slowed it down and didn't hop from lagoon to lagoon on those slow days I'd get skunked less.

 

I'm planning on fishing this evening and as of this moment I plan to pick one lagoon, bring a chair, and slow it down if needed. We'll see how that goes.

[LionHeart]

I'd say 1 out of every 5 trips I get skunked (depending on conditions and time I have to fish).  Oddly enough, it only discourages me for the drive home.  After being back for and hour or so, I Can't wait to get out and try it again.

 

I have had days that I've fished for 5-6 hours and caught nothing.  That does sting a little.

[burrows]

All the time bass fishing can be a tuff gig.

[scaleface]

Now are we talking zilch ? Not even a 10 incher ? If were talking 15 inch keepers it happens  . If were talking any  bass , give me eight hours on the lakes I frequent and 99 per cent of the time i'll catch at least one  . 

[OCdockskipper]

Let me preface my answer by saying that 98% of my fishing is done on my home lake, that most of my trips are over 4 hours and that I began bass fishing in 1977.

 

The last skunk I had was in March of 2017 while fishing a small pond in Georgia.  It is one of 3 lakes on my sisters property, the other 2 produced lots of fish.  This one I fished for about 2 hours without a sniff.  Later in the year, she needed to let this pond nearly dry up and when she did, she found out there were no fish in it, just turtles & snakes.  Turns out it was originally used as a watering hole for cattle & wasn't a true pond like her other two lakes.

 

Other than that, my last skunk (no keepers) was in January of 2012.  I know my home lake too well, it is designed so that there are never extreme adverse conditions (flooding, mud, etc) and it is in Southern California, so there are never extreme weather issues.  If I traveled around to different lakes all the time or threw nothing but giant swimbaits, the answer would be different.

 

Age & experience (time on the water) are a huge factor in my opinion.  While older tournament fishermen don't experience the same level of success as the 30 & 40 year olds, I seem to notice older fishermen who fish for fun have a high level of consistent success.  I'm not sure if it is all of the experience causing certain good decisions or if age is helpful in slowing one down & making them more focused.  I know my years of fishing and success on my home waters have given me the confidence & ability to always catch bass on new waters the few times I do venture out of state.  However, it wasn't that way the first decade or so that I fished for bass specifically, I often had trips that resulted in nothing but dragging water.

[JustJames]

Skunked? More than I would like to share but I forget all about that the next time I catch fish.

[Falkus]

Spend three hours at the local lake. Was about to call it until I decided to go spend another 20 mins there. Next thing I knew is that I caught four dinks. so it's all about timing. 

[Wurming67]

It happens, here in South  Florida during the spring the fishing is insane the numbers and size,than comes summer alot of rain (high water) and hot temperatures than you really gotta work for them.

[Eric J]

I get skunked... but I am usually out for big bass and I avg 2 pounders with so.e 4 and 5 hawgs in there.

 

The tough days are when I start jumping from one lure to the next or stubbornly stick to the same area. As primarily a bank angler it can. Be tough.

 

Recently I landed a PB simply by moving to a back pond  near the end of my day. 

[Graham]

It’s for sure something that happens to most people time to time. For me, a total skunking has happened with less frequency the more serious I’ve gotten about fishing. The important thing is to try and learn from your experiences and let them motivate you. The people that get skunked and immediately assume “there’s no fish in this water” aren’t gonna have the same success as the ones who are eager to figure out why the fish weren’t cooperating.

[Further North]

On 5/31/2018 at 8:24 PM, StrikePrince said:

I think I'm mostly looking for some reassurance that it's all gonna be OK.

 

The short answer to how often do I get skunked, without reading all the other responses, is: Enough to be reminded it's called "fishing", not "catching".

[Further North]

Stuff I do to change the odds:

1. Change tactics.  Shallow to deep.  Aggressive to finesse...
2. Change where on the lake I'm fishing.  Weed beds to rock piles to docks...
3. Change baits.  Senkos to spinners to crank baits...
4. Completely change how you fish.  I learned to fly fish so I'd have an arrow in my quiver that was completely unlike everything else I was doing.  I couple weeks back it paid off really well.  Couldn't get a bite on any kind of gear.  Other fisherman I talked to were in the same boat (pun intended)...so I started chucking flies.  Surface, mid depth...some bites, but not much...bright green and black with steel eyes on a depth-bomb of a sinking head line (8 IPS for you fly guys)...BINGO!  Over 20 fish in the boat in the two and a half hours I had left....to the point where other fishermen...who still weren't catching...started asking, "What are you using?"  I sorta felt bad when I showed them...I've seen this happen a couple times, and sometimes it's the other way around, gear works and flies suck.
5. Change bodies of water. Where I am, I've got lots of choices.  If lakes are DOA, really not producing, I can switch to rivers...if the rivers are off...I can switch to streams...which brings me to my next choice:
6. Switch species.  This time of year here is a perfect example: Pike are well past spawn and ready to eat, musky are getting there, bass are coming off the beds here, so they'll be blah for a while, but they are just getting on them an hour north, and they are well post spawn an hour south...which brings me to my next choice:
7. Drive somewhere else.  Completely change conditions.  Get out of a weather system.  Not always an option, not always practical...

[Airman4754]

I fish about 250 days a year between ponds and the rivers and it happens maybe 7 times a year. It's pretty hard to go fishless with the amount of finesse gear out there. 

[gim]

Completely skunked?  Very rarely.  An outing without a bass?  On rare occasion.  An outing without a pike?  Almost never.  There are some days I literally can't keep the pike from biting so aggressively to give a bass the opportunity to bite.

 

Muskie fishing?  Skunks are a common occurrence.  Zero fish is the norm.  A good day is when you get a follow or two and once or twice a season you will land one.

[Catt]

Stuff I do to change the odds:

 

Fish whenever I can

Fish wherever I can

 

This year I've was given the opportunity to fish some private big bass marshes & private big bass lakes.

 

One of those lakes is stocked with Tiger, Gorilla, F1 or whatever adjectives ya wanna use.

 

Two separate trips, 8 hrs total, for 0 bass!

 

My grandson son loves it!

 

 

[BrackishBassin]

I used to worry about getting skunked until I started watching MLF all of the time. Once you’ve seen a few pros go all day without a bite, it makes me two or three hour fish-free sessions seem like nothing. 

[new2BC4bass]

Getting skunked in my area is a very common occurrence.  Catching a fish locally is always noteworthy.

[ww2farmer]

Even on a lake I have fished almost daily for 30 years it happens a couple times a year.

 

Usually during bizzaro transition periods. In a barren lake that depends on grass growth, and shallow water boat docks for cover, when these fish get out and roam or suspend in the deep basin of the lake, there's not much I, or anyone I know can do to catch them. 

 

I did have a nice almost decade long streak of not being skunked EVER going, but that went out the window last year. So far this year, there's been A LOT of tuff days, but I have always managed to put a few in the boat.

[Raul]

On 6/1/2018 at 10:07 AM, OCdockskipper said:

Let me preface my answer by saying that 98% of my fishing is done on my home lake, that most of my trips are over 4 hours and that I began bass fishing in 1977.

 

The last skunk I had was in March of 2017 while fishing a small pond in Georgia.  It is one of 3 lakes on my sisters property, the other 2 produced lots of fish.  This one I fished for about 2 hours without a sniff.  Later in the year, she needed to let this pond nearly dry up and when she did, she found out there were no fish in it, just turtles & snakes.  Turns out it was originally used as a watering hole for cattle & wasn't a true pond like her other two lakes.

 

Other than that, my last skunk (no keepers) was in January of 2012.  I know my home lake too well, it is designed so that there are never extreme adverse conditions (flooding, mud, etc) and it is in Southern California, so there are never extreme weather issues.  If I traveled around to different lakes all the time or threw nothing but giant swimbaits, the answer would be different.

 

Age & experience (time on the water) are a huge factor in my opinion.  While older tournament fishermen don't experience the same level of success as the 30 & 40 year olds, I seem to notice older fishermen who fish for fun have a high level of consistent success.  I'm not sure if it is all of the experience causing certain good decisions or if age is helpful in slowing one down & making them more focused.  I know my years of fishing and success on my home waters have given me the confidence & ability to always catch bass on new waters the few times I do venture out of state.  However, it wasn't that way the first decade or so that I fished for bass specifically, I often had trips that resulted in nothing but dragging water.

Fishing a fishless pond doesn’t count as being skunked.

[Bankbeater]

Hardly ever this time of year.  From the start of November until say the end of February almost every time.  It all balances out in the end.