Soft bites

[David Dionne]

Yesterday I was 2.5 hrs into a stinker of a day, not one bite.  Out of frustration I yank my pole...and there was a fish.  I thought, wow, crazy.  He was tiny, but a catch.

 

Recast, about halfway through retrieve I decided to randomly “yank” again...and again, a friggin fish, a nice little 3 pounder.  I didn’t know what to think.

 

Recast...AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!

 

When I say there was no discernible bite, I mean absolutely nothing.  There was no wind and it pure glass.  I felt nothing and my line didn’t budge.

 

Was fishing a weightless, t-riged 5” yum dinger on a 4 EWG, with maxcuatro braid.

 

I can say this, the bite is, for me, at the very least, half of the fun!  But it makes me wonder how many “trickster” bites I’ve missed.
 

I can’t recall this happening when I’ve fished a weighted t-rig...

 

Any thoughts/advice?

[Bluebasser86]

Get on Youtube, search "Bigmouth Forever", watch it. The angler in the video has huge bass after huge bass inhale his bait and never felt a thing and it's on video, and those were moving baits like crankbaits and spinnerbaits. I imagine we have countless numbers of fish grab our baits that we never know about.

 

[Hammer 4]

While fishing creature/craw type baits on the bottom, sometimes, not always, a bass will inhale the bait, then just sit there on the bottom. I've had this happen more than once..Being a good line watcher, and keeping a finger on your line is a good idea, you can't always feel the bite, but if the line moves off just a wee bit, you can detect it.

[Catt]

The problem with "stick" type baits fished weightless & wacky rigs is you will not feel some bites resulting in gut hooked bass.

[jbrew73]

Slack line Braid is not a good conductor of transmitting what’s happening under water.   Give fluorocarbon a shot and it should help with bite detection. 

[Teal]

5 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Get on Youtube, search "Bigmouth Forever", watch it. The angler in the video has huge bass after huge bass inhale his bait and never felt a thing and it's on video, and those were moving baits like crankbaits and spinnerbaits. I imagine we have countless numbers of fish grab our baits that we never know about.

 

Dude, it made me sick, just watching that video.  I just want to cry now.

[Todd2]

5 hours ago, David Dionne said:

 

When I say there was no discernible bite, I mean absolutely nothing.  There was no wind and it pure glass.  

I think this happens way more than any of us want to admit. We miss a lot of bites. I know I've caught many Bass when something just didn't feel right and I swung. No bite, just a little more or little less tension on the line. Line watching can help in my opinion, I stick to Clear Blue or Clear line. Green blends in too much with the water here and I agree that braid is the not best for these semi slack weightless presentations.

[scaleface]

47 minutes ago, Todd2 said:

Green blends in too much with the water here

Green is invisible a lot of times . I dont like it for line watching baits . My worm rod is spooled with clear blue fluorescent trilene .

[David Dionne]

Wow, thank you for all the considerate guidance.

 

Im currently restricted to fishing a tiny stretch of bank...with tons of grass.  I started with floro but I just couldn’t drag the catches through.  And since every snapped line “feels” like the “catch of a lifetime“, I switched to braid.  Haven’t had a snap off since.

 

Thank you again...

[Scott F]

Years ago, a pro walleye fisherman named Mike McCLelland, put out a small book entitled “Crankbaits A Guide to Casting and Trolling Depths of 200 Popular Lures”. In it, he described how he tested the running depth of lures. These were the days before fluoro and braid, all he used was mono for testing in 8, 12, 14, and 17 pound tests. The lures were trolled 120 feet back and tracked via depth finder in a boat that was being towed, 120 feet behind. While doing the testing, they caught fish. All of them were caught on the 17lb test line. They could see on the graphs when fish hit. The person holding the rod never felt any hits while trolling the lighter 8-14 lb test, but felt all the hits on the 17 because of the greater amount of stretch of the lighter mono filament lines. 

[David Dionne]

Wow, that’s quite interesting Scott.  Thank you for sharing.

[Koz]

You may also want to look into getting another rod with greater sensitivity. I never gave that much thought before and had success fishing an Ugly Stick for years. But when I picked up a new Lew's rod I was amazed at how much more feedback I felt.

 

You don't need to spend $400 on a rod that transmits more sensitivity. Ask around the forum and I'm sure you'll get a ton of feedback in whatever your price range is.