Your thoughts on this.

[Bird]

Ran into a guy at the ramp yesterday, super nice and avid bass fisherman.

He said he fishes mainly 1 bait, a 5" finesse worm, black/blue with a split shot 6" above worm.

 

I can relate to this but what I find bizarre is he had at least 100 of these worms, maybe more thrown all around his boat.

 

Asked him why his floor was blanketed with worms and he said he plans to recycle them.

Here's the strange part........

He said once he catches a fish the worm is useless and he grabs a new one.

Claims a bass releases a pheromone during the fight and his success rate plummets unless the worm is replaced. 

 

It's his money.......any thoughts on this ?

[MN Fisher]

4 minutes ago, Bird said:

Claims a bass releases a pheromone during the fight and his success rate plummets unless the worm is replaced. 

 

It's his money.......any thoughts on this ?

Another 'fish tale'.

 

My trip earlier in the week? 8 fish, 1 pike, 2 sunnies, 5 bass...all on the same Finesse TRD

I've also caught multiple fish (pike and bass) on chatterbait using the exact same Pit Boss trailer.

 

If he's happy doing that, let him...but the 'caught pheromone' is an old wives tale.

[dodgeguy]

lol

[Skunkmaster-k]

Bless his heart. 

[Jar11591]

My thoughts are that sometimes people who are successful (in their view or otherwise) at something feel the need to attribute their success to something in order to “prove” it’s not just luck. So they make up rituals or behaviors, or pick up on their own little quirks or habits, that sets them apart from others and then say “this is why I’m successful. I do X when nobody else does X, so obviously X is the reason behind my success”. It’s like Tom Brady saying he is so good at football because he doesn’t eat strawberries. 

[Logan S]

Confidence is a wacky thing in fishing...If that's what he thinks is happening he's got to do it or else it'll be in head all day.  

 

I don't agree with him, but I've done some weird things before too so I can't really fault him .  

[Bird]

5 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

Another 'fish tale'.

 

My trip earlier in the week? 8 fish, 1 pike, 2 sunnies, 5 bass...all on the same Finesse TRD

I've also caught multiple fish (pike and bass) on chatterbait using the exact same Pit Boss trailer.

 

If he's happy doing that, let him...but the 'caught pheromone' is an old wives tale.

Seems like fishing and Ole wives tales go hand and hand ?

[MN Fisher]

@Logan S and @Jar11591 hit it on the head - it's one of his beliefs as to his success, and messing with someone's belief will affect their confidence and thereby affect their success.

[ironbjorn]

The more chewed up my plastics are while still being useable, the better they perform.

[Pat Brown]

Jimmy Houston says the exact opposite.  He says there's no better attractant than bass scent on your bait because it seems to a bass like it must have just narrowly escaped being eaten.

 

I don't think it really matters at all.  I use plastics til they don't sit on the hook or jig head anymore and bite them down repeatedly and never have issues getting a bite.

 

I do save my old plastics for one day melting and repouring.....in a plastic container at home.

[padlin]

While I use a plastic till it won’t stay in place I have thought at times that when I put on a fresh one I get hits faster. Of course by that time the old bait is missing most of it’s appendages and is usually pretty limp.

[WIGuide]

Bait companies must love that guy! To each their own, but I've absolutely put a hurt on them using the same piece of plastic to the point it's so mangled it barely stays on the hook. 

[Bankc]

I think he's right about the pheromone.  Whether or not bass can detect it, I don't know.  But I don't think it's crazy to assume they could.  I mean, my nose is terrible, but I can often "feel the excitement in the air" in crowded places like sports complexes and concert venues.  

 

However, I don't necessarily agree that enough would get absorbed into the plastic and then re-released into the water to have an effect on the next bass.  It would seem more likely to have an effect on the bass closest and downstream to the bass you just caught than on the bass closest to the worm you reused.  And we've all experienced the phenomenon where you catch one bass in a school, and it riles up all of the others and leads to many more catches.  So even if it DID have an effect, I'd hesitate to call it a negative one.  

 

Plus, being the cheap guy that I am, I seem to do alright reusing soft plastics.  I'll frequently tear the top of worms so I can rehook then a little further down to get more life out of a single worm.  And in my experience, it has no noticeable impact on catch rates, either way.  Though I'm not a scientist, nor a tournament angler.  So all I have to offer is hearsay and conjecture.  

 

Also, if he's recycling the worms, it makes me wonder.  Would the heat from remelting the plastics be enough to destroy the pheromones?  And if not, they almost certainly wouldn't be the same density as the plastic, so they'd either float to the top or sink to the bottom, which could lead to some of your remelts being composed of extra-concentrated, anti-catch pheromones.  

[KP Duty]

Some people don't realize they can google these '¹old wives tales' and see if they are true or BS.  Usually the latter.

[Susky River Rat]

I knew a guy who musky fished and once he caught a musky  on a lure he would date it and hang it up. 
 

I never change out plastic unless it won’t stay rigged correctly or I want to change a profile.

[volzfan59]

Do what you do. If the guy thinks he's right and is confident in his technique, so be it. Even if he's wrong. Like other's have said, I've caught numerous bass on the same soft plastic. I use them until they can't be used anymore.

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, KP Duty said:

Some people don't realize they can google these '¹old wives tales' and see if thry are true or BS.  Usually the latter.

There’s more BS on google than in folklore by a landslide 

[KP Duty]

3 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

There’s more BS on google than in folklore by a landslide 

Agreed...you need to scrutinize your sources/info.

[gim]

3 hours ago, Bird said:

He said once he catches a fish the worm is useless and he grabs a new one.

 

Where's @Team9nine, our record holder?  Let's bring him into this conversation.

 

 

[Team9nine]

11 minutes ago, gimruis said:

 

Where's @Team9nine, our record holder?  Let's bring him into this conversation.

 

 

He said once he catches a fish the worm is useless and he grabs a new one.

If I followed that logic, I might as well just throw Senkos instead of Elaztech ?

 

…but we all have our idiosyncrasies, me included ?

[Darth-Baiter]

i cry BS, but i do admire his dedication to the lore.  and nice of him not to litter.  

 

i have lucky underwear, so i cant say jack-S. 

[BrianMDTX]

You should have tested his beliefs by hiding a banana in his boat! 

[Bird]

I left this part out.

He said on tournament weekends there's no place to step in his boat where you'd avoid stepping on a worm. ?

 

Nonetheless he was a super nice guy, we talked for close to an hour.

[GetFishorDieTryin]

I dont buy it for one second.  All of my best baits, soft plastic or hard, seem to work better when they are beat to hell, especially jigs.    

[TheSwearingAngler]

I think my record is 42 fish on a TRD TicklerZ before losing it… I mean it was hammered but I think it had another 8 in it to hit 50… btw this was the moment I became a ZMan diehard.