2021 Bass Fishing Goals and Resolutions

[Junk Fisherman]

You know it's that time.  Here are my goals and resolutions.  

 

1.    Continue to investigate new areas where I fish using my electronics.  Too often I fall into the habit of fishing the same spots that have been productive over the years.  I need to keep learning and investigating.  

2.    Take more fishing trips.  I often cancel trips and fish locally if the weather report is not perfect.  YOLO

3.    Improve with jerkbaits, wobble head jigs, cracking tubes, and stupid tubes.  I do not have a lot of confidence in my ability to fish these baits and that needs to change.

4.   Make more changes throughout the day.  Color, size, style of retrieve- I am good about changing locations and trying different types of structures and cover to find a pattern but too often I stick with my traditional baits and colors rather than changing things up.  I have timed myself- it takes me less than 1 minute to tie on a new bait and less than that for plastics.  So I want to change baits more in order to see if small changes make big differences.   

5.   Flip my fishing day sometimes.  Rather than fishing daylight to 2-3 PM, get out in the afternoon and fish till dark.  

6.   Continue fishing out of my kayak.  I fished out of my kayak often when my boat trailer was down for repairs last year but the rest of the year I did not kayak fish much.  

7.  Get my kids out fishing more often.  Find easy places for them to fish.  They are 10 and 6.  Small bass and bluegill will entertain them and hopefully get them hooked.   

8.  Fish with my bass club more.  I only fished 1 event with my club last year due to Covid and other factors.  That needs to change. 

 

How say you?

[FryDog62]

I want to fish more outside of Minnesota.  Our season doesn’t even open until mid-May and I’ve enjoyed fishing the Dakotas, Ontario and Wisconsin but want to fish somewhere warmer Jan-April. Job and family health have been mitigating factors in recent years but I’m chomping to take a week and drive South... 

[TnRiver46]

10 minutes ago, FryDog62 said:

I want to fish more outside of Minnesota.  Our season doesn’t even open until mid-May and I’ve enjoyed fishing the Dakotas, Ontario and Wisconsin but want to fish somewhere warmer Jan-April. Job and family health have been mitigating factors in recent years but I’m chomping to take a week and drive South... 

“Come on down, the water’s fine” 

[FryDog62]

1 minute ago, TnRiver46 said:

“Come on down, the water’s fine” 

Funny, yesterday someone just sent me listing for a condo rental on Cherokee... that might be fun! 

[TnRiver46]

Just now, FryDog62 said:

Funny, yesterday someone just sent me listing for a condo rental on Cherokee... that might be fun! 

Cherokee is awesome when it’s cold outside. The big tourneys they had there this year were in the horrible fishing period of the “ fall transition.” When they have tourneys there in February, they catch the heck out of fish. Even the guys in the fall tourney said they could see hundreds of smallmouth on the livescope but couldn’t make them bite. Fish in East TN are already one step ahead of Garmin 

[lo n slo]

1. sink some brush

 

the end

[Catt]

#1: fish more often ?

[scaleface]

I got a lead on a deep brush pile on my favorite small lake . My goal is to find it .

[FryDog62]

17 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Cherokee is awesome when it’s cold outside. The big tourneys they had there this year were in the horrible fishing period of the “ fall transition.” When they have tourneys there in February, they catch the heck out of fish. Even the guys in the fall tourney said they could see hundreds of smallmouth on the livescope but couldn’t make them bite. Fish in East TN are already one step ahead of Garmin 

uh-oh I'm doomed then..!

[GTN-NY]

To stop feeding the bait monkey 

[Mobasser]

Fish more often, and continue learning about deep water structure fishing.

[FishinBuck07]

Get in better shape so that I can fish longer days!  (Already started this process)

Hoping to top my PB of almost 7# this season! (Planned trip to Chickamuaga this year, so could happen)

Get better with fishing from the boat and boat control.(only my third year with a boat)

Focus on my strengths and not get spun out so fast when something isn't working!

[MassYak85]

1. Fish deeper. I definitely made strides in this area this last year but for years I was a beat the bank guy, with 8-10ft weedlines being "deep" to me. My goal is to find some of those productive 20-40ft spots on some of my favorite lakes. 

 

2. Don't force a bite. The fall transition kicked I disagree this year cause I tried forcing that "fall feed" bite sooner than I should have. 

 

3. At least two 6 ponders. 

 

 

[Lead Head]

Mostly just get on the water more. Because of covid I had the opportunity to work pretty much as much OT as I wanted this year. All the extra hours caused me to not fish anywhere near as much as I usually do. My goal this year is to stop chasing the all mighty $ and get back to enjoying my life.

 

That is pretty much always the goal...

[12poundbass]

My goal is to crack the code of offshore structure fishing. 
 

To quit beating the fricking banks

 

5 lb smallmouth 

6 lb largemouth 

 

Get better with my electronics 

[Koz]

My goal is to catch bigger bass this year. I caught a ton of 5 and 6 pound bass when I managed to find time to fish. While that's both exciting and great, I think that it led to complacency and "bad habits".

 

What I mean by that is that I need to think and fish differently if I want to catch bigger bass and not assume that there's a 10 pound bass hanging out with the six pounders or that they will bite the same baits and presentations.

 

The obvious first step would be to fish at night, but I bank fish in gator territory and I'm not comfortable (OK, I'm somewhat terrified) fishing at night when I've already had enough issues with alligators during the day.

 

I also need to fish some new lagoons and not fall back on my favorites. I'll probably have to jig and worm fish more. It will be interesting to see if I can break my complacency and really do what it takes to land a giant.

[throttleplate]

my goal is to buy a 1 piece 7.2 foot graphite rod and figure out how to fit it into my 2004 honda 2 door civic withut putting the back seats down.

The back seat is allready packed and i dont want the road noise getting worse from the trunk and the wife likes the air conditioning in the summer and exposed trunk will kill the air.

 

I am currently using ugly sticks new carbon 2 piece spinning rods which to me are fantastic but dont come in a medium heavy.

[TcRoc]

38 minutes ago, GTN said:

To stop feeding the bait monkey 

May as well forget that one ?

[gim]

31 minutes ago, MassYak85 said:

Fish deeper. I definitely made strides in this area this last year but for years I was a beat the bank guy, with 8-10ft weedlines being "deep" to me. My goal is to find some of those productive 20-40ft spots on some of my favorite lakes. 

I’ve never been very good at this either. 15 feet is deep water bass fishing in my book.

[TcRoc]

Fish more Cranks/jerkbaits, throw more jigs, hopeful upgrade my kayak, get out on my favorite lake more often. 

[MN Fisher]

2 minutes ago, gimruis said:

I’ve never been very good at this either. 15 feet is deep water bass fishing in my book.

I think my cut-off point so far has been 10'-12'. Now that I got some deeper-diving lures, I'm gonna have to change that.

 

Also - deeper jigging, more work with T-Rigs, and deeper drop-shotting.

 

Having a better graph is going to help me locate 'more productive' areas too (old: Hook 2-4, new: Striker 7cv)

[TnRiver46]

48 minutes ago, FryDog62 said:

uh-oh I'm doomed then..!

Nah you’ll be fine, they are just hard to catch in oct/nov. they eat like sharks when it’s snowing 

[Bankbeater]

#1 is to finish replacing some of my older rods and reels.

#2 is to fish more with jerkbaits.

 

 

[gim]

7 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

I think my cut-off point so far has been 10'-12'. Now that I got some deeper-diving lures, I'm gonna have to change that.

 

Also - deeper jigging, more work with T-Rigs, and deeper drop-shotting.

 

Having a better graph is going to help me locate 'more productive' areas too (old: Hook 2-4, new: Striker 7cv)

Electronics certainly help, as does more patience. It takes longer for a lure to get down deeper thus requiring more time to be effective.

[TnRiver46]

18 minutes ago, Koz said:

My goal is to catch bigger bass this year. I caught a ton of 5 and 6 pound bass when I managed to find time to fish. While that's both exciting and great, I think that it led to complacency and "bad habits".

 

What I mean by that is that I need to think and fish differently if I want to catch bigger bass and not assume that there's a 10 pound bass hanging out with the six pounders or that they will bite the same baits and presentations.

 

The obvious first step would be to fish at night, but I bank fish in gator territory and I'm not comfortable (OK, I'm somewhat terrified) fishing at night when I've already had enough issues with alligators during the day.

 

I also need to fish some new lagoons and not fall back on my favorites. I'll probably have to jig and worm fish more. It will be interesting to see if I can break my complacency and really do what it takes to land a giant.

The night time mosquitos in the SC low country have teeth . I’m still scratching from when I camped at edisto in June