KnightFisherman18

Thank you again guys !! Yeah, I actually am using spinning gear. I only have one rod so far, a medium 6'6 Ugly Styx GX2. I know that they're cheap but I figured that it would be a good place to start. I'm actually moving up to the St. Augustine area in the fall and if your from Florida then you know that means fishing the St. Johns River and i'm very excited about that. I'm hopefully going to pick up a couple more rods while i'm up there!! I'm getting better at NOT being disappointed when I go out to fish and don't catch anything. At first, it was really really hard and demotivating but its getting easier

Oh man, thank you all so much for these response. Truth be told, I was really worried that I would be told that Im just not great at fishing but those responses lead me to believe that there some things I can change and improve!! With that, my action plan is going to be to swap over to a HI-Vis braided line - Most likely 10 -lb Suffix or Powerpro - so that I can see the line better and a Fluorocarbon leader ( Convenient because I need to re-spool soon). I will also grab a few 1/4 oz weights - Probably Tungsten … although im not sure if I understand the hype and why its supposed to be better. I will definitely set the hook faster and more often when I feel weightlessness or any tics on the line as well and I will give the Wacky Rig a shot - I've been weary of using it just because it seems …unlikely to me that a small bass can actually inhale an entire 6 in Senko + the hook. I just always figured that a bass would try to inhale the bait and only get like half of it or something. Once again thank you all so much !!

Hello, I am pretty new bass fishing and i've been having a problem detecting bites. Recently i've been using both weightless/weighted Texas rigged worms (Senkos, Zoom Trick Worms) to fish a couple of ponds near my house (A 1.5 acre pond and a 12 acre pond). Now, i've caught fish with this rig and I know it works. I also know that the "finesse worm bite" is said to be ...different/lighter/harder to detect but I don't think thats the problem. Whenever I LAND a fish with this setup its because I felt the fish DEFINITELY hit and take the bait. I've also been learning what the bottom/hydrillia/weeds and muck feel like with this rig and I think that, for the most part, I can feel the difference. So heres the rub... Sometimes I get what feels like little bites or it feels like a fish inhaled the bait or I see other signs like the bait moving on its own, little tics on the line, weightlessness or a sudden extra weight. When any of those things happen I try to reel down and wait just a second to sort of double check that thats what I feel before i set the hook (A lot of times I feel that feeling and I reel down, "set the hook" and my bait comes FLYING out of the water). The problem is I almost NEVER land the fish that feels like that. It would be easy to say that I was clearly hung up on weeds but I don't think thats the case because.... THE PROBLEM My line, (10-lb Berkeley Vanish Fluorocarbon) is almost always really really "loose" and floating on top of the water (See Image below). Black - Pond bottom/Shoreline Blue - Water Surface Green - Senko Purple - Rod Red - Fishing line My line is ALWAYS on top of the water. I can only get my line to be tight or even semi-tight right after a cast or if i'm fishing a different lure (Spinnerbaits, KVD 1.5 the line will be tight. Rebel Pop-R the line is also loose like that). Even when the line gets to the guides of my rod it is NOT TIGHT. It doesn't matter if i let my bait fall/sit for 30 seconds, or if i reel in the slack and let it fall again (Line gets loose), or if i raise my rod tip up (Raising my rod tip seems to just move everything closer to me without making the line any tighter) or if I have a 1/8 oz lead sinker on my bait. And thus my question. What do I do about this? Should i move to lighter line? Braid? Monofiliament? Or is there something else that i'm doing wrong that I am unaware of?