what happened?

[cheezyridr]

today i went to a local place that's mostly fished out. i go there alot, and i rarely catch anything, because i only fish for bigs when i go there.  so today, i am throwing a  5"divine swim bait on a weighted hook. 4 times, i watched a HUGE bass strike at my lure, but i couldn't hook it.  i could see this fish clearly.  i changed lures several times, and couldn't get it to strike again. i went on down the bank and fished for a couple more hours. on the way back, i tied the swim bait back on but different color.  i hooked 3 nice bass, but not the giant i saw earlier, but in the same exact spot. the thing is, all 3 of those bass came off.  one of them i fought for a couple minutes, and he even pulled drag.  i just started fishing this lure this way, so can someone tell me what i did wrong?

 

edit:   i'm not sure why this got moved to "fishing reports".  i'm trying to figure out what i wasn't doing right in this situation,  the fishing talk was only for context.  eventually i'll figure it out and put posts in the right section. 

[Bluebasser86]

What size hook, rod, and line were you using? One of those items, or a combination of them, were likely a contributing factor to why you lost those fish. 

[cheezyridr]

15 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

What size hook, rod, and line were you using? One of those items, or a combination of them, were likely a contributing factor to why you lost those fish. 

 

#3 ewg for the hook, rod is a curado 7' 4" med/hvy moderate action   with 12lb flouro on a curado dc

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, cheezyridr said:

 

#3 ewg for the hook, rod is a curado 7' 4" med/hvy moderate action   with 12lb flouro on a curado dc

My guess is the plastic was getting gobbed up and the hook wasn’t penetrating the fish’s mouth well enough to land. If I’m using a 5” soft swimbait, I want the biggest hook I’ve got in it