How do you differ and why?

[papajoe222]

1 minute ago, ol'crickety said:

 

PapaJoe, when do you set the hook? Do you reel down and set or wait as we did 50 years ago?

I wait until I either see the line moving off or the rod start to load up.  My son-in-law can't believe how long I wait to set the hook using hollow body frogs.

[RRocket]

6 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

@RRocket: Here's a 43" pike on 6-lb. test. I'd usually catch one or two this size each week in northwest Ontario, but because I was fishing from a canoe with a small net, I left them in the water. For this fish, I borrowed an abandoned, leaky boat and had a musky net to land it.:

 

 

 

Great fish!! 

 

Pike are loads of fun on light tackle!  I feel fortunate to be able to fish for them locally.

 

I also caught a couple Long Nose Gar this year.

 

[gim]

5 hours ago, RRocket said:

I feel fortunate to be able to fish for them locally.

 

I don't.  Annoying tackle-wrecking snot rockets is what they are here. 🖕

 

 

[flyfisher]

I do pretty much everything different than most since I am mostly slinging my fly rod   

[Swamp Girl]

10 hours ago, papajoe222 said:

My son-in-law can't believe how long I wait to set the hook using hollow body frogs.

 

Man, I admire your discipline. When a bass hits one of my poppers, I'm Ms. Cool, waiting until I feel their weight. But when a bass hits my frog, I nearly scream and throw my rod into the air. 

 

23 minutes ago, flyfisher said:

I do pretty much everything different than most since I am mostly slinging my fly rod   

 

Heck, yeah. 

[Mike L]

Well mine is easy compared to the vast majority of posters on here…

 

As I’ve said before…

Standing at the bow of a boat looking down at a screen all day holding a 6ft lightweight spinning rod with 6# line, waiting for a 2# fish to swim by so I can jiggle a 3” worm in her face is not me. 

I don’t Ned, Drop, Shake or Wack

 

I envy those who are successful at it as they apparently are effective presentations.
Just not for me. 

 

I’d much rather flip, pitch and punch with the big stick. 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike

 

 

[Team9nine]

Hmmm, if they've already been mentioned, am I really different than anyone else? 😆

 

As @Pat Brown mentioned, I’m a huge proponent of depth and speed control irrespective of bait. You’d be surprised what you can do with a bait (versatility) once you fully grasp the concept. It’s why another of my ‘different’ traits would be, I don’t buy new stuff to try (almost never). I have my proven ‘standards’ and don’t get wrapped up in the marketing and allure of shiny and new. That goes for line, lures, rods, reels, etc.

 

One that might be truly different than most is that I’m predominantly functioning as a backtroller, operating out of the back of an aluminum V-bottom boat with everything I need right there - tiller engine, troll motor, graphs, anchor, etc., and fish sitting down over half the time. 
 

The last, in regard to time of day, is I no longer ever get started before lunch these days. I spent years and years fishing tourneys, up at the crack of dawn and on the water. No longer - lol. Science says bass move just as much in the last hours of the day as they do in the first few. Plus, nearly every big bass chaser worth his salt will tell you the middle of the day is one of the absolute best times to catch a lunker. I’ll take a good night’s rest, grab a good lunch, then hit the lake in the middle of the day with the sun overhead, launching about the time most guys are thinking of heading home, then stay until dark, long after most early rising anglers have left.

 

 

[RRocket]

4 hours ago, gimruis said:

 

I don't.  Annoying tackle-wrecking snot rockets is what they are here. 🖕

 

 

 

Yes, they are problematic when you aren't fishing for them. They love Chatterbaits! 

 

Bowfin can be problematic for me here, too.

[Jmurphy87]

I like to go with there’s no real set in stone rules to bass fishing, gotta do your own thing through experience and guesswork lol. I have caught a 4-5 lb bass 20 feet or less away from people in a swimming area before. Some people will say that noise scares bass but does it ? I think that it’s all situational in reality. Gotta do the oddball thing sometimes to find the magic. I march to the beat of my own drum and it works and that’s why I love fishing the thrill of the next great accomplishment based off your own theories, make your own history don’t follow the trodden path.

[Jmurphy87]

2 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Hmmm, if they've already been mentioned, am I really different than anyone else? 😆

 

As @Pat Brown mentioned, I’m a huge proponent of depth and speed control irrespective of bait. You’d be surprised what you can do with a bait (versatility) once you fully grasp the concept. It’s why another of my ‘different’ traits would be, I don’t buy new stuff to try (almost never). I have my proven ‘standards’ and don’t get wrapped up in the marketing and allure of shiny and new. That goes for line, lures, rods, reels, etc.

 

One that might be truly different than most is that I’m predominantly functioning as a backtroller, operating out of the back of an aluminum V-bottom boat with everything I need right there - tiller engine, troll motor, graphs, anchor, etc., and fish sitting down over half the time. 
 

The last, in regard to time of day, is I no longer ever get started before lunch these days. I spent years and years fishing tourneys, up at the crack of dawn and on the water. No longer - lol. Science says bass move just as much in the last hours of the day as they do in the first few. Plus, nearly every big bass chaser worth his salt will tell you the middle of the day is one of the absolute best times to catch a lunker. I’ll take a good night’s rest, grab a good lunch, then hit the lake in the middle of the day with the sun overhead, launching about the time most guys are thinking of heading home, then stay until dark, long after most anglers have left.

 

 

That time of day part is spot on, all of my biggest bass that I have ever had been after 12pm. I also like fishing from 5-10pm if where I am fishing allows it.

[Swamp Girl]

@Team9nine and @Jmurphy87:

 

[Jmurphy87]

21 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

@Team9nine and @Jmurphy87:

 

I do go night fishing from 10pm-3am during the summer though. So that makes me first on the water besides the ducks, geese, swans right ?

[Swamp Girl]

7 minutes ago, Jmurphy87 said:

I do go night fishing from 10pm-3am during the summer though. So that makes me first on the water besides the ducks, geese, swans right ?

 

Hey, you've got the shift right before mine! I'm guessing we've passed each other at the time clock a few times, but both of us were too blurry-visioned to notice.

[Jmurphy87]

1 minute ago, ol'crickety said:

 

Hey, you've got the shift right before mine! I'm guessing we've passed each other at the time clock a few times, but both of us were too blurry-visioned to notice.

Very true lol, it doesn’t matter what time it is. Always a good time to go fishing as long as the weather’s safe that is.

[Kirtley Howe]

On 1/24/2024 at 12:29 PM, king fisher said:

I loose fish, snag, backlash, tangle line, cast high up in trees, cast two feet past my target, two feet short of my target, try to catch fish on dry land, miss strikes, set the hook in to almost anything that is not a fish, and swear far more than I see anglers do on You Tube videos.

Don't forget that the YouTube guys can go back and edit out any swearing......

[Mbirdsley]

everything i’ve ever read about crank fishing says that you need to bang them off of stuff or digging the bottom.  i’ve never done either except pilings when available.  i’m a pretty decent crank fisherman and ideally i want that crank 1-10 feet off of  the bottom.  my most productive crank fishing is on a drop off.  that drop off could be 5 ft or 30 ft.  generally i like to be on the deep side of the drop off cast shallow and bring the crank deep. i also like paralleling the drop off.  this can also apply to chatter baits.  

 

up here we don’t really have exposed rock banks except on the great lakes.  we have natural lakes and older resivours that have been silted in. generally speaking if your crank is hitting the bottom it’s getting hung up in weeds. 

 

if i see fish on my sonar hanging around 15 ft over 20-30 ft of water i’ll target that 15 ft.   sometimes it’s a pike just hanging out but, usually they are bass that suspended. 

 

growing up fishing the shiawassee river for smallies and beating the banks. casting a rapala or other crank it was certain to the crank if it touched the bottom which, would get snagged up and ultimately lost. 

[Boomstick]

I’ve caught a few fish walking a popper but the vast majority come from popping in a cadence or popping it and letting it sit over where the fish are.

 

I will often fish a jig or TRig by casting it out, letting it sit and lift it up a couple of times. If I don’t get bit I will more aggressively stroke it back to the boat and try again. This way I spent less time in areas I’m less likely to get bit

[KP Duty]

A couple of difference makers I do....

 

-Jerkbaits on spinning rods with the lightest line I can get away with (usually 8lb sniper).    Beat my boater several times in T's doing this.

- When fishing cranks in shallow wood...I make contact/deflect with every cast.  I will cast a couple feet further than the target on the opposite side, and then hold my rod out to the side for maximum contact...often giving the bait a quick rip to create a bigger collision.  I'll do this with football jigs as well.

 

 

 

[Cdn Angler]

The only thing I can think of that I do that I never hear about is when fishing rivers with heavy to medium current, usually bigger rivers in shallow areas.

 

I'll fish a small shallow crankbait, cast it and let the current take it with my spool open, basically until it is close to unspooling a 4000 series spinning rod. It's probably a couple minutes watching my crank float away. Then flip the bale over and reel it in against the current extremely slowly. I can cover what feels like hundreds of meters. This is usually a wading or shore thing, but I've done it out of my kayak too when I don't want to go down a set of rapids. 

 

There's actually one other "pattern" that I haven't heard of, which has happened to me multiple times. I've encountered areas where the fish will literally follow my kayak around like it's a floating dock, usually LMB in summer in clear water. Toss a senko at them and boom, fish on. They then seem to learn their lesson and I don't target them as it isn't exactly sporting. But I can't think of anyone else saying they've caught fish like that on multiple occasions. 

 

Third one, kind of stupid. If I know I'm going to be stopping to use my phone or to go rifling through some tackle, and I'm fishing a topwater, I'll usually make a commotion and then kill it on the surface while I do whatever. I've had enough scenarios where a SMB will explode after 30s to 2 mins of a bait just sitting there to think it just might work. It rarely works, but I keep trying. 

[Swamp Girl]

10 hours ago, Cdn Angler said:

There's actually one other "pattern" that I haven't heard of, which has happened to me multiple times. I've encountered areas where the fish will literally follow my kayak around like it's a floating dock, usually LMB in summer in clear water. Toss a senko at them and boom, fish on. They then seem to learn their lesson and I don't target them as it isn't exactly sporting. But I can't think of anyone else saying they've caught fish like that on multiple occasions. 

 

Cool story. Thanks.

 

10 hours ago, Cdn Angler said:

I've had enough scenarios where a SMB will explode after 30s to 2 mins of a bait just sitting there to think it just might work. It rarely works, but I keep trying. 

 

I like the way you think and fish.