Your worst fishing habit

[ScottW]

On 8/21/2022 at 10:11 AM, Koz said:

OK - I’m planning to change that up today if the rain holds off. I’ve never fished a drop shot before, but I bought the gear this week and I will give it a go today.

How did it go today with the drop shot? I’ve not tried it yet either but it’s on my To-Do List to try.

 

Guess my worst habit is sticking to the pond here at the house and not going to Inland or Henry Neely more. Water’s down at Inland since it’s a reservoir for BWW (B’ham Water Works) so bank fishing is easier there. Both are around a 30+ minute drive for me so my lazy self tends to head dow to the pond mostly.

[Koz]

14 hours ago, sdw215 said:

How did it go today with the drop shot? I’ve not tried it yet either but it’s on my To-Do List to try.

 

Guess my worst habit is sticking to the pond here at the house and not going to Inland or Henry Neely more. Water’s down at Inland since it’s a reservoir for BWW (B’ham Water Works) so bank fishing is easier there. Both are around a 30+ minute drive for me so my lazy self tends to head dow to the pond mostly.

I couldn’t locate the bass that day and ended up throwing a ned rig and catching crappie instead.

 

Me electronics showed some bigger fish in deeper (23 feet) water hugging the bottom, but that was in the middle of a main channel with lots of boat traffic. I don’t feel safe setting up there in my kayak.

[dickenscpa]

I have quite a few that drive me crazy yet won't do anything about it. I so love to bass fish and since I got heavy into tournaments about May 2020, I've had to come to grips with I'm really not that good compared to a lot of people around me.

 

1) I'm bad about not setting the hook hard enough in fear I'll jerk it out of their mouth. This results in getting fish all the way to the boat before they come off.

2) Won't give up on my confidence baits when I know they're not working and everyone around me is drop shotting and slaying them. I hate drop shotting.

3) Bad about not retying. 

4) When they're deep I keep beating the banks and shallow laydowns.

 

I have quite a few others that are mainly due to stubbornness.

[geo g]

I don’t experiment enough.  I stick with baits I have faith in, and fish areas that have held fish in the past.

[Swamp Girl]

I'm glad to read that there are others overwhelmed by the options. Roboworms? Chatterbaits? Flippin'?Huh, golly-gosh, and what? I understand about half of some posts, for they're so full of brand names and techniques that I don't know. I am a writer who has interviewed hundreds of high achievers and I always tell them at the start, "Talk to me like I'm a second grader."

[roadwarrior]

I buy a lot of stuff and never fish it. My best (worst) example is my Vision 110

collection. I fish about three different patterns out of at least 30.  I shouldn't 

admit to that, but I won't count those that are still in their original box. 

[Standard]

Bringing way too much tackle and then using the same 3-4 lures the entire day.  Always bringing an entire box of plastics even though I've barely been fishing them this year.  I've been paring down as the season progresses but still have work to do on that front.

 

Thinking about the next cast as soon as the current one hits the water.  I'm usually river fishing, so I'm scanning for the next spot even on a retrieve.  Lost more than a few fish because I was looking downstream for the next hole / rock / log.

[Bruce424]

if i catch a fish on a buzzbait.... that will be the rest if my day

[TriStateBassin106]

Not changing lures when I should, it's that gambler like mentality that the next cast will be the one I get a fish lol. 

[fin]

I don’t check my knot/line like I should.

 

I tie my knot and check to make sure it’s tight and firm, but I don’t really pull as hard as I should. Then I’ll have one easily break me off, and after that I’ll be checking everything much closer. For a while. Then I get out of the habit. Then another one breaks me off. (Repeat)

[CM-fisher]

I have two that I can think of right now...

 

Missing topwater strikes because I set the hook instinctively instead of feeling the fish first. I've probably missed 50% of topwater hits this year

 

And fishing too shallow in mid-summer. I've gotten better at this during this past summer, and I am doing much better this year because of it. Whenever I find myself fishing in 3 fow in between docks without any success for an hour I ask myself "why the heck am I doing this if it's not working?" and go find a deeper weed edge in 8-12". 

[galyonj]

- Wrong presentation for the cover/structure/etc.

- Stick with a presentation too long

- Bounce between presentations too quickly

- Wrong color at the right place

- Right color at the wrong place

- Moving too fast

- Moving too slowly

 

…sometimes, all at the same time.

[Triptych]

I tie on an Owner Flashy Swimmer keel weighted hook to my swim bait setup because I guess that's the juice.

 

My fishing experience goes as so...

 

-The blade catches all that hair algae and I have to spend 1 out of every 3 or 4 cast picking it out.

-The blade keeps wrapping around my fishing line, sometimes fraying it. I have to spend 1 out of every 10 casts fixing it or retying at times.

-I can't throw it and retrieve it out of weeds cause the blade will catch all that grass and I have to spend time picking out the weeds from the blades.

-The blade will sometimes get all wonky and misplaced such as between the belly of swimbait and hook and make my presentation spin.

 

Then I retie with a Gammy Keel weighted hook with no flash and don't have to pick weeds out of the blade, can throw into the thickest muck I want, don't have to be thinking my setup is spinning and whether I'm wasting time on that cast. Way more efficient and more time to cover water.

 

My thought is that if I'm going to use a flashy Swimmer keel weighted hook, it's going to be in open water. If I'm fishing in open water i'd rather use it on an open hook underspin.

 

The moral of the story is not the owner flashy Swimmer itself, but that sometimes I overthink it and pick a lure that's new and shiny, instead of one that's effiecent at covering the column of water and type of cover that I'm working that day.

 

 

 

[fin]

1 hour ago, Triptych said:

The moral of the story is not the owner flashy Swimmer itself, but that sometimes I overthink it and pick a lure that's new and shiny, instead of one that's effiecent at covering the column of water and type of cover that I'm working that day.

 

Yeah, I've caught lots of fish on flukes, but I can't seem to catch one with a little spinner blade like the flashy swimmer. I know lots of people have great success with that, so I've tried to make it work for me. I don't really understand why I keep trying. Flukes work great for me, flukes with spinners have never caught me a fish. Seems pretty simple.

[Motoboss]

My OCD….

I buy eightyteen exact baits in different colors because I caught a bass on one………a month ago.

 

 

 

Don’t even get me started on plastics ?

[TnRiver46]

Having to go to work……. Does that count? 

[DitchPanda]

My worst habit? Not catching bass. Been doing that alot lately.

[ThatZX14Fella]

I do almost exclusively finesse presentations. I have a lot of power fishing baits, but I rarely break them out. Most of the time, I have a Ned rig tied on, and I rarely stray away from that.

[AlabamaSpothunter]

On 8/29/2022 at 1:15 PM, ol'crickety said:

I'm glad to read that there are others overwhelmed by the options. Roboworms? Chatterbaits? Flippin'?Huh, golly-gosh, and what? I understand about half of some posts, for they're so full of brand names and techniques that I don't know. I am a writer who has interviewed hundreds of high achievers and I always tell them at the start, "Talk to me like I'm a second grader."

Absolutely......I was a diehard Basshead for the first 25 years of my life, but then life got in the way and I took a decade + off, I come back and I was absolutely STUNNED by how much Bass fishing has grown.  Tourneys, schools, incredible amounts of new tackle, everything has progressed at a lightyear pace. 

 

I didn't even know what JDM was until a few weeks ago.    Now I'm about to order a reel direct from Japan because of favorable exchange rates, and a Bass fishing forum educating me on the whole deal.  15 years ago it was pay the prices your local store had or pound sand.    I was ordering Roboworms out of a mail order catalog.    My how things and time fly.

[GTN-NY]

3 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

Absolutely......I was a diehard Basshead for the first 25 years of my life, but then life got in the way and I took a decade + off, I come back and I was absolutely STUNNED by how much Bass fishing has grown.  Tourneys, schools, incredible amounts of new tackle, everything has progressed at a lightyear pace. 

 

I didn't even know what JDM was until a few weeks ago.    Now I'm about to order a reel direct from Japan because of favorable exchange rates, and a Bass fishing forum educating me on the whole deal.  15 years ago it was pay the prices your local store had or pound sand.    I was ordering Roboworms out of a mail order catalog.    My how things and time fly.

I was in the same boat. Took 2000-2021 off. 
I had no idea what these guys here were talking about half the time.