The Right Stuff

[RipzLipz]

1 hour ago, FishTank said:

Bass fishing can be a humbling sport.

For some, and many have been there at least once in one way or another, the humbling can begin at the boat ramp before the bass fishing has even started. 🤣🤣🤣
 

…and to add to the rest of the angling wisdom that’s being touched upon, much of this thread goes back to fishing your strengths & KISS.😉

[king fisher]

When I was a kid, I tried fishing a T rigged plastic worm with zero success.  I new that plastic worms were the number one bass lure, and assumed the reason I wasn't catching bass with them was the lack of angling skill.  After all every article I read about worm fishing stressed the difficulty in detecting strikes.  All the articles stated over and over, that until you developed your feel to a ninja level you would get bit and not know it.  I finally gave up on the worms thinking I just could not develop the necessary skill.

       As my experience as an anger grew over time, I fished many different species and techniques that require the ability to detect bites, and determine bottom or current changes from actual bites.  Drift fishing from shore for salmon and steelhead is one technique that requires skill in detecting bites because of strong current and a weight bouncing along a rocky bottom, making it easy to mistake a rock for a salmon.  I had zero difficulty from day one determining the bite of a salmon from the feel of a sinker bouncing off of rocks.  The reason is because I hadn't read hundreds of articles telling me how difficult it would be to detect bites.  There were many other examples over my lifetime of fishing that I should have made me realize I had the skill, but didn't know it.  Fishing jigs for walleye, no problem, subtle bites on live bait in saltwater, no problem, even nymph fishing for trout, without a strike indicator, difficult but still no problem.

       Thirty some years went by, I was fortunate enough to get back in to bass fishing.  I still thought I lacked the skill to fish soft plastics on the bottom, so I continued to fish spinnerbaits, crankbaits, and other moving baits.  Even though some of my lightest bites bass fishing have been while slow rolling spinnerbaits, I was completely convinced the T rig would never be for me.

      Then one day I went with a guide and he showed me how to punch mats.  I had no difficulty with strike detection, but was sure it was because I was fishing heavy weights on a short braided line.  After all detecting bites using lighter weights, on a longer normal cast with a soft plastic was only something very skilled bass anglers could do.

      One day I watched a video Glen made about learning to detect strikes.  He suggested going to very shallow water and catching some baby bass to learn what the bite feels like.  The reasoning being the baby bass were aggressive, and a person was sure to get many bites, therefore lots of practice.  I new a place where I was sure I could get bit by small bass every cast, so when the off shore crankbait bite slowed down I decided to give it a try.  After about a half hour of catching baby bass on a T rigged Senko I realized feeling the bite of a small bass was easier than detecting bites of other species and techniques I had experienced in the past.

     I started fishing soft plastics more and more, and found that large bass usually felt different than small bass.  Instead of a tap tap, the large bass many times would have a feel difficult to describe, a simple change in weight, a mushy feeling, but I instinctively new it was a bite, not bottom.  The first few times I got bit by bass larger than 5 pounds on a T rig, I would slowly reel down to make sure it was really a bite, but after landing a few large bass, my angling instincts kicked in, and now I only feel a second time for the bite if a little voice in my head tells me the bass has let go or is trying to reposition the bait.

      After a season of success with T Rigs, I expanded to Carolina rigs, and weightless soft plastics.   Learning with each new technique, that yes they do work as well as people say they do, and I already had the skill set for detecting bites long before I gave the techniques a fair try.

      Now I catch about 1/4 of my bass on soft plastics.  I even landed my biggest bass of the year for 2023 on a T Rigged worm, dragged through some standing timber on a long cast.  

      A friend once told me I had so much nervosa energy running through me, that he doubted anything could possibly breath on my line without me feeling it.  I always thought that to be true, for other types of fishing but could not get the bad experience of my youth fishing plastic worms for bass out of my head.  Now I am positive the reason I didn't catch bass on plastic worms in my favorite fishing hole when I was a kid was because the bass didn't want the worm.  It wasn't because of my equipment, ( which was sketch to say the least) or my skill level.  The bass simply weren't biting worms the days I was trying to fish them, which so happened to be the days I wasn't catching them on anything else.  Now I only try new techniques when the bite is on, and use my old faithful lures when it slows.  If any young angler ever asked me if detecting bites of any kind is difficult I am going to tell them only if you make it difficult.

        Not to say I don't set the hook into objects other than the mouth of a bass.  Abandoned gill nets are the worst.  When I drag my worm over a net it feels exactly like the bite of a large bass, and when I set the hook, the net gives enough to feel like I am hooked in to my PB.  after a second I realize what has happened and am glad no one is there to see the look on my face and witness the unhinged language that instantly comes out of my mouth.

       I don't know if I have the right stuff, but I do know I have the ability to adapt to new and changing conditions, with a variety of fish and locations. Besides I would rather be lucky than good any day. 

[Swamp Girl]

27 minutes ago, RipzLipz said:

…and to add to the rest of the angling wisdom that’s being touched upon, much of this thread goes back to fishing your strengths & KISS.😉

 

You misspelled KISS. It's spelled CISS, abbreviating Canoe Independently Slinging Surface (Lures).

[Jar11591]

5 hours ago, gimruis said:

No, because when it gets to this point, I am already either long gone or not even out that that day.  lol

Same. When I fish lakes like that it’s usually from 4am and I’m off the water by 9-10. Even then if it’s a weekend, it can already be a zoo. 

[RipzLipz]

@king fisher I personally love that mushy/my lure just got slightly heavier feeling & my experiences have been like yours in that more often than not, that’s a quality fish on there. Once in a blue moon I will have that tap tap pecking bite like a small fish or, where I’m located & fish the most, might often be bluegill/panfish trying to attack tails or appendages of the plastics but it ends up being a larger fish.

From my years of dragging T-rigged nightcrawlers across offshore rocky reefs in Canadian Shield lakes for smallmouth using 4lb test & UL spinning rods/reels, I feel/theorize that mushy sensation may be a LM in the process of eating the prey & it just has yet to swim off with it. Maybe due to lack of response from our lure, whereas those smallmouth would rarely register a strike but they were almost immediately swimming off with the nightcrawlers. We would even let them go with the worm until they’d eventually just drop it. Most instances the smallmouth were bedding & we’d drag the crawler across the bed. Probably saw the crawler as a nest invader & were carrying it away versus eating it.

[crypt]

I practice hook setting all the time.....I think I'm getting better though......

[RipzLipz]

@crypt if your PB listed is any indication, I’d say your hookset is probably not lacking. 🤣

[jbmaine]

Me and the Mrs. have had days were we could do no wrong, and days we could do no right. But whatever kind of day we've had, at the end of it, we were both smiling and saying to each other " what a nice day to be on the water".

 Fishing is a passion of ours but we never let it erase the pure joy and amazement of just "being out with nature" we've been lucky enough to see eagles, loons, muskrat, otter, beaver, deer, bear, moose, a pair of sea run brown trout doing their mating dance in the upper reaches of a brook named after my family, many more things we'll never forget, long after we forget how many fish we caught. This, for us, is our " right stuff".

[AlabamaSpothunter]

When it comes to big fish especially, I couldn't agree more with what @PhishLI said.    

 

Certain anglers catch significantly larger fish on average than the majority of other anglers all things held equal.    Seen it my whole Bass fishing life, at all ages.   I just call it Big Fish Magic because the "it" factor can't be nailed down to a single thing, it's incredibly nuanced.   

 

A fantastic example of this is @Pat Brown, he consistently shows his ability to catch the 1% of Bass in his bodies of water.        

 

With a tweak in your mindset from last year to this year, you've got that Big Fish Magic as well Katie.   

 

eta:  If KingFisher doesn't have it, there's no hope for any of us 😂

[Swamp Girl]

Thanks, Alex. I'm out of responses.

 

I like what @jbmaine wrote. There is a world famous fisher who lives five miles down the road. I'm not going to name him, but he's fished from the Arctic to Argentina to New Zealand to Newfoundland, again and again and again. And his favorite place to fish is a little stream that I drive over a few times each week. It's not loaded with five-pound brookies, 30-pound pike, or Arctic char that'll make your reel scream, but it's got that understated excellence that anglers like you and him can see.

[txchaser]

2 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

There is a world famous fisher who lives five miles down the road.

Take him fishing in your trophy bog!

[Swamp Girl]

8 hours ago, txchaser said:

Take him fishing in your trophy bog!

 

I tried. I failed. 

 

 

 

[Bankc]

18 hours ago, A-Jay said:

This seems less like targeting specific fish and more like playing the Powerball to me. 

Either way, someone always wills . . . .eventually.

A-Jay

You're probably right.  But sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!

 

17 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

 

^This^ reminds me again of @Team9nine's quote. Einstein said something similar, about how he always had his best ideas when he was reaching for an apple. I have a friend who's an MD + a PhD and he too believes in the potency of the unconscious. So did Rollo May in his book, "The Courage to Create."

 

I know that there are way more memories in my mind that I can recall. Every so often, something bubbles up, something as obscure as a dream I had 20 years ago. I think, and some others agree, that the unconscious has easier access to those memories that we can't retrieve and perhaps that's intuition. 

Oh yeah.  Running, doing remedial tasks, anything that can hypnotize the mind into a lull usually works well for coming up with new ideas.  Get the brain going, but kind of spread out your thoughts instead of focusing them.  

I used to be a musician (I guess I still am, but I used to play out in bands) and one of the things that always fascinated me was "being in the zone".  It's this weird juxtaposition where your brain is both highly active, yet consciously inactive.  Like you're balanced between thinking of everything at once, yet focused on nothing at all.  It's hard to explain because it's hard to observe.  If you notice it happening, it stops happening.  Kind of like sleeping.  You can't be aware of the moment you fall asleep, because if you are, you don't fall asleep.  So you never really know what it's like to fall asleep or even be asleep.  We only really know we fell asleep because we woke up.  

 

And I think intuition is a bit like that.  It's the culmination of the subconscious cues that we're not really aware of.  We're processing too much information at once to focus on all of it.  That "feeling" we get doesn't come from one, two, or three sources of information, but from hundreds or thousands of sources, all at once.  And if you give it focus, and actually think about it, you tip the scales of the balance of those bits of information in your mind to get a false reading.  It's too complex to focus on, so to think about it, we must simplify it into something that it's not.  Which defeats the purpose of thinking about it.  Hence why intuition is more of a gut feeling than a thought.  I mean, it's still a thought.  But just not one that we can really be conscious of.  

[Susky River Rat]

40 minutes ago, Bankc said:

being in the zone".  It's this weird juxtaposition where your brain is both highly active, yet consciously inactive.  Like you're balanced between thinking of everything at once, yet focused on nothing at all.

I used to get this way when I race motocross. Didn’t even feel like I was human or on earth. Time was at a stand still everything just happened. I didn’t feel a single bump, didn’t make a single mistake. I didn’t even feel like I ever touched the ground. Like you it’s extremely hard to explain. It wasn’t all the time either. 
 

I do at times get this way fishing. I couldn’t tell you what I’m doing but, I’m doing it and it’s working. 
 

I think you have to fish what you’re given and fish often. I think what at least for me is don’t make a job out of it. I know to some of you it make sound crazy but, I need to back off fishing at times. It becomes a job, a routine. I do it because well “that’s what I do” I do not fish every day. I don’t have kids my wife works every other weekend so I tend to get plenty of time out. Sometimes I need to take a break to get that itch back. Then it becomes fun and magical. 

[Swamp Girl]

55 minutes ago, Bankc said:

And I think intuition is a bit like that.  It's the culmination of the subconscious cues that we're not really aware of.  We're processing too much information at once to focus on all of it.  That "feeling" we get doesn't come from one, two, or three sources of information, but from hundreds or thousands of sources, all at once.  And if you give it focus, and actually think about it, you tip the scales of the balance of those bits of information in your mind to get a false reading.  It's too complex to focus on, so to think about it, we must simplify it into something that it's not.  Which defeats the purpose of thinking about it.  Hence why intuition is more of a gut feeling than a thought.  I mean, it's still a thought.  But just not one that we can really be conscious of.  

 

There are many times when I cast to a spot for the first time in my life and I automatically go to DEFCON 1 because there's something about that spot and that moment that subconsciously reminds me of other spots and moments when I caught bass. I'm not always right, but I am at least half the time and it's great to be at maximum readiness.

 

One time last summer I had a kid in the canoe and my Spidey Sense/intuition/subconscious started tingling. 

 

So, I said to the kid: "Watch this. The bass will hit at 3, 2, 1." and the bass did. 

 

It was my Babe Ruth pointing to center field mini-moment. 

 

You did a good job explaining intuition, Bankc.

 

11 minutes ago, Susky River Rat said:

I couldn’t tell you what I’m doing but, I’m doing it and it’s working. 

 

This utterly agrees with what @Team9nine posted at the start of the thread. 

[Susky River Rat]

@ol'crickety I think the people that get in that “zone” more than they aren’t. They are your better anglers. I think that goes with pretty much every hobby or skill. Sadly I am not there more than I am there. I’m actually surprised people don’t think my boat is on fire because I am thinking that hard smoking is rolling out my ears.

[Swamp Girl]

15 minutes ago, Susky River Rat said:

I think that goes with pretty much every hobby or skill.

 

Like motocross and music!

[RipzLipz]

@Susky River Rat Try doing your thinking & plan of attack & backup plan before you’re even at the water. There are going to be times when a whole family of skunks take up residence in our boats & we could throw the entire tackle box in the water - they’re just not going to bite. I find if I can accept that possibility beforehand, my mind is clearer when I need it to be.

[Swamp Girl]

Good idea, @RipzLipz.

[RipzLipz]

@ol'crickety Thank you. I’m full of ideas. Whether or not they’re good or bad remains TBD.

[Reel]

On 12/7/2023 at 1:28 PM, WRB said:

 I talk a lot about strike detection and intuitive hook setting. 

Unless the bass hooks itself, and they do more often then we admit, strike detection is critical and separates the average angler from the those who catch bass consistently.

I am a line feeler for decades and that helps me to detect strikes day or night it’s the same feeling. The level that some us have and others don’t is the feeling called intuition when something tells you set the hook, you just know.

It’s hard to stay focused with distractions on or off the water, your mind drifts away from the moment of the strike and you often miss that fish. 

Intuition is something you are borne with.

Tom

I'll give an example that is not about bass fishing but just fishing.  Where I live, we shad fish.  Everybody lines up almost shoulder to shoulder and uses the same tackle ( spinning rods and shad darts) and fishes the same way that is drifting the lure in the river current.  This eliminates a lot of variable.  Most of the time you can have a hundred fishermen two feet apart using the same color lure in the same way fishing the same water.  Day in day out, 10% of these fishermen will catch double or even triple the fish the others catch.

[WRB]

The old saying practice makes perfect is somewhat true if you have the natural ability to develop perfection, not everyone gets a trophy.

When I was a gymnasts practicing routines until they became automatic was essential because the stress very intense as the judges are watching every movement for flaws and the audience, your teammates and competition are focused on you. A good routine happens when you are out of body watching yourself glide through the routine. 

When racing we called this out of body experience the red haze but in racing that can be fatal. Same feeling with different results.

Staying focused isn’t essential when fishing because fish have a way of hooking themselves, especially with moving lures or live bait. But....staying focused is very helpful when using bottom contact bass lures like jigs and worm imo.

Tom

[RipzLipz]

@WRB One thing I found most interesting in my years of fishing was back when I was a teen, my dad had borrowed some snorkeling gear from a buddy of his. We went to the strip pits for a weekend & once we were out in the boat, he told me to throw on the mask & jump in. We were bluegill fishing with live bait & slip bobbers on a saddle where redear were bedding around 8-12’ deep.

 

Once I got in, I grabbed onto a rope tied to the boat & he took me around the lake on a short tour, seeing all kinds of different stuff. The thing that stuck out to me most was when we returned to the saddle with the redear on it. I was floating on the surface & could see them on their beds, their little red gill flaps looked like fluorescent orange jig heads. Dad dropped his slip bobber rig down & I guided his line until the cricket was right in a fish’s face. The fish just sat there for a moment but I eventually saw it flare its gills & the cricket was sucked right in. What I found odd was my dad didn’t set the hook. I kept watching & saw the fish spit out the empty hook. I lifted my head out of the water & asked dad if his bobber had moved & he said no. Told him to re-bait & lower it again only this time to watch my hand & to start reeling when I signaled. I once again moved the cricket in front of the fish & watched it inhale the cricket. This time I still had the line in my hand so I yanked it up. I quickly raised my other hand & dad started reeling.

 

They were sucking that bait in & not moving off. The bite was completely undetectable with a bobber. It wouldn’t even bounce. The bobbers came off & we tight lined the rest of the day, coming home with a nice mess of fish. Lesson learned.

[WRB]

Watch Big Mouth Forever video By Glen Lau engulfing treble hook crank baits without detection....amazing!

Tom

[Susky River Rat]

@RipzLipz that sounds to much like musky fishing. I’d say about 80% of the time I don’t know where I am going to fish till I get on the highway and choose.