strat54

Yes that is quite true, and I agree if I intended to make my goal 'learn how to catch bass on a lake' but I Yeah, I agree and I know you're giving solid advice to many people who study hobbies without actually doing them. I understand my experience is limited in scope by putting me in a reservoir so I need to learn these reservoirs, but I'm not interested in simply learning how to put up numbers or how to have a good day on the water. I think this quote from BILL SIEMANTEL in BBZ is on the nose here— "Strangely enough, someone who is just getting started in bass fishing may have a better chance of utilizing this information than a veteran angler. Without preconceived notions and ingrained ways of doing things, a neophyte could easily be the one who excels. So it is not ability—or the lack of it—that holds anyone back. It is simply an unswerving devotion to the cause of catching big bass." Maybe it's me romantic exercising it, but I truly respect specialization in whatever field it's in. I don't think the Indy 500 reference necessarily is accurate but either way I'm not a beginner. Sure I'll be in for a lot of surprises, but I understand structure. I understand how to avoid dead water by using sonars mainly for depth and then nowhere I should be targeting and if the fish aren't there, then I try to find out why. So basically I don't know everything about being on a bass boat, but I know what I'm getting into. I know what path different fisherman can take. I think a better analogy than the Indy 501 would be if students decide between medical school or law school. Neither of them can perform law or medicine, but they have to make a decision about what they want to do and understand you can't really be both at once. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm coming off rude but when I've talked about trophies and 10+ pounders and stuff so many people will give me advice like I've been getting in this thread which I know is good hearted and well-intentioned. When the topic of 10+ pounders comes up they always seem to tell me there's no need to study and buy live scope and all that fancy stuff just hit the water and a giant will come, that's just how it is. And usually they maybe have one or two trophies to their name, but are so adamant that they know enough to catch consistently. So I guess maybe I'll fall my face and not succeed but my goal of learning trophy catching is not of naïve or thrillseeking mentality it's about really trying to understand as much as possible something which is already extremely unlikely and how to at least maximize the chances even if that means spending hours and things with no activity and that's perfectly fine with me and pretty much how I've approached fishing anyway. If I want to catch a 30 pound fish, I'll put some corn and catch a carp or something for the thrill of it. Thanks for your response. I know this is a great form and I'm just trying to add to the conversation even if I hardly disagree. I truly just wanted to start a conversation with how trophy hunting was going with other people in the bass fishing community and how they learned what they knew. Trial and error is great and necessary inefficient even when the stars align fish sometimes don't bite. But at the same time when your goal is already pretty unlikely to happen even when you do everything right it's best to have some sense of direction when choosing how to approach it. So just my final thoughts on that is that I think the right approach is to make sure people at least know what they're getting into, but not discouraged an entirely different type of fishing strategy. Most of the pros seem to tell you at the beginning of almost all of their books which is it is gonna be really hard, take a really long time and nothing is going to happen. And that's it means for days weeks months you won't be putting fish on the boat you show up every day and after a year, you might catch nothing. But if you really want to catch a giant you're being increasing your chances from tiny to very little, but with enough time, hopefully that increasing odds will put a giant in the boat one day, but don't count on it Anyway, just wanted to share my two cents. I realize my answers have been super long. I just figured out voice to text lol but appreciate the comments you made, and thanks for welcoming me!

I am the opposite lol but I need structured method of learning because when there's a lot of moving parts often times they're not brought up all at once in an organized way, so I often find one YouTube video leading me to figure out another and then googling blah blah blah you know how it goes sometimes. I was having trouble when I first got live scope and you might think I'm an idiot but I paid like 50 bucks or something for a PDF guide to live scope. I won't mention the name so I don't look like I'm being a shill. But everything I mentioned has some sort of planned structure. It was not you know a guy talking for an hour remembering what he wants to say as he goes. The issue I'd have with life scope was that don't tell you in the video sometimes like if you affect color gain it messes with other things and then you might feel like you want to change the noise level or the ghost reduction, etc. like when in reality, you probably didn't need to do the color game or maybe lower it. You see what I'm saying there's 1 million moving parts I want someone's explanation to be like one continuous thing Anyway, that's why I really want to get one of these books and have you even been so much that they're gonna hand me the answer and I'll be expecting a gigantic bat my first time after reading of course not it's just one approach followed diligently sometimes works better, especially for me than getting a little tan bits here and there. So before I chop down hundreds of dollars for Bill Murphy I was hoping to get insight from everyone. Because I'm kind of glad I didn't have to buy the other book. Everyone says I must read witches, knowing bass because it was not what I was looking for informationally.

I actually do have FFS I have live scope. I’ve actually never owned a watercraft until recently. I got a pretty nice kayak with spotlight and heading sensor trolling motor and I have not yet been to any major lake to speak of. So reading about how to find the fish actually helped me a lot because at first, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And I recently bought a trailer for the kayak so within an hour or two of me there are some pretty good trophy lakes that are famous but I’m in a kayak at the same time so it’s difficult. I can’t just cruise the whole entire lake. I have to be really careful with planning before heading to the water you know? Thanks for your response. Yeah, I’ve looked on YouTube. It’s just I feel like there’s a lot more information that can be conveyed in one video, not trying to sound snarky, but obviously if it was easy to watch a video and do it, everyone kind of would. I think from what I’ve gathered so far on the topic and I’ve caught on pretty quick going from bank fishing to on the water. I think the biggest advantage of doing research to be hunt trophies is not that they tell you what spots to go to. It’s more like learning when it’s not worth the time to do something and eliminate variables that are not really putting you in the strikes zone of opportunity.

I absolutely agree, but at the same time it can’t hurt to get more informed on a subject and help get you in the right mindset once you’re on the water you know what I mean? But yes, I agree. It can be easier to spend too much time watching videos on how to learn something

Hey everyone, glad to join the forum! I got the PDF of the book that I thought was a holy grail but I realized it wasn't as interesting to me personally getting in the weeds of biology. I dont think there are ebook versions available so I am going to have to spend a pretty penny and dont want to make the wrong move here— if my goal is to spend long periods of time with a very limited scope of tactics with the goal of catching a trophy, which book would you hedge your bet on to give you the right tools for the job and the right mindset? It's hard for me to pick because I can't even scan the contents of the first chapter lol with all of these books being off the market. Both have a great reputation. I'm not a verse of the idea of using live bait, but that's the main turn off that I've heard people say about Bill Murphy. I like the idea, though of picking one book and just running with whatever it says even if I start saying that sounds outdated or whatever so if you have any experience with reading Bass books, these were the two I've pretty much limited to, but I'm open to ideas. My goal is just to pick like a legendary source. I'm not even sure if Doug Hannon's book I think it was paired with movies and DVD so he would be a good option for me though as well. Even if it's cliché, I just don't know that which authorities used to rely on today so at least these are the tried and true ones. I'm gonna actually be having a lot of time but I'll be on the water because I have nothing to do. I'm not working for the next year or so and I want to focus my effort on low percentage but high possible reward fishing. I want to get on this share list by the end of the year. I'm gonna do my d**n best here in Texas!