Bazoo

Awesome! We need more details. How many did she catch, and on what?

I forgot to mention that I've never caught a fish on a chatterbait. Hmm

Thanks. I thought they'd work well by themselves, but haven't done much with them yet.

Awesome. Hope it turns into the best trip you've ever had!

I often take a break from certain lures that I'm comfortable with to focus on learning one technique or lure. My self assessment: I am very confident with a lipped crankbait, Texas Rigged soft plastics, Beetle Spin, topwaters to include: Spit'n Image, popper, frog, and the Jitterbug. I'm pretty confident with a spinnerbait, buzzbait, and Roostertail. Somewhat confident with, jerkbaits, lipless crankbaits, spook and ploppers. Not very confident with jigs, neds, or some of the more weird soft plastic techniques including neko rig, wacky rig, drop shot, shaky head. Lately, I've been building my skillset with soft plastics. I've been moving away from the Texas Rig, and learning the Carolina Rig and Split Shot Rigs, as well as Flukes. I figure that soft plastics are the most useful thing for me to focus on. I suppose my goals are to be very well rounded. To be able to catch when others aren't, year round. What else should I focus on, and what am I overlooking?

I don't use a trailer. I do use a trailer hook if I'm in the notion. I forgot about those. I have had a couple of them a friend gave me, sure does look good, I might have to give them a try. I did try them as stand alone bait, rigged on a ned head. I didn't get anythign the couple times I tried it, but that's not much of a test.

Thanks yall. That's what I thought too.

Thanks for explaining.

To my knowledge I haven't ever caught a Spotted Bass. But I generally check them over. I caught this one and it had a small patch of teeth on the tongue. I think it's a Largemouth, what do yall think? You can see that dot in the center of the tongue, that was teeth. I take it that Largemouth with teeth are uncommon?

Interesting discussion, thanks all for sharing. Nice one, and awesome story.

Thanks for everyone's replies. I almost always grab the bass with my right hand, then... switch to my left hand for pictures/weight/unhook. I can hold the fish left handed, but need my dominate hand for unhooking and working the phone. I don't follow. It seems that what you describe is that of reeling the fish in, but I am talking about the transition to when you go to actually grab the critter.

I am wondering about your reel hand when landing a fish. Lets say you catch a fish, you have the reel and rod in your left hand, the fish gets close to shore (or boat for that matter). For whatever reason you don’t want to flip the fish and you don’t have a net. Do you move your reel hand from the reel seat and put it somewhere up the rod, or perhaps hold the line? Or do you keep your reel hand on the reel seat? I’ve done both, and I feel much more confident when keeping my reel hand on the reel seat, but I find myself almost instinctually grabbing the rod about halfway up. I also don't feel like I have as much control because with the fish being close, the rod tip is up and it doesn't have as much spring pressure on the fish. But I feel like this is a mistake. So I want to know what’s best and why, then I will ingrain this into my habits. Thanks, Bazoo

I'm not familiar with the reels mentioned. Abu Garcia Black Max combo is about $70 or so from Walmart and is a decent rig. I use both the reel and rod, but separately currently. The rod is as much or more important than the reel in my opinion. The way the rod loads with the lure weight is very important. A reel with dual brakes is better because it allows you to dial in the help where you need it in the casting cycle. The Black Max only has magnetic brakes, but is easy to work with regardless.

Found this awesome Ott Defoe video. He really shows the knot well.

Howdy @Fishing_Rod, did ya ever hook up with that crankbait?

Thanks. I had no idea it was a thing, and I didn't know how to search for it. When I searched soft split ring I started getting some results.

Some time back I saw someone post a fish and a list of the gear used to catch it, which included a lure that had hand tied split rings using braided line in place of the metal split rings. I think it would change the sound of a crankbait, and that might be beneficial. I've been giving this some thought. Would anyone like to share if you've done this and why? What kind of knot did you use?

I have confidence in the plastic worm. Ranging from, Berkeley power worms, Zoom finess and trick worms, Zoom lizards and U tail worms, Zoom Fat Albert grubs, GY Senkos. Confidence in those is not that they make me feel good, but rather, I've caught bass with plastic worms all seasons when the bite is hard. I can't think of anything else that will work year-round, but if the bass can be caught, they can be caught on a plastic worm of some variety (and by that I mean something "normal" not the latest and greatest). Now if I had to pick a specific color and such for my confidence bait it would be split shot rig with a watermelon color Berkley Power Worm, followed by a Zoom Fat Albert in green pumpkin. However, the former must be rigged carefully to keep it from spinning. Barring the plastic worm, am I confident? kinda. I know that bass ain't going to hit a lot of the other stuff at any given time, and I could likely catch a few fish here and there, but not nearly as many.

Split shot for me has become my favorite. Before that, it was a weightless Texas rig, which of course still sees action. The split shot I can throw on my baitcaster, while the weightless Texas rig is normally a spinning rod proposition. I can throw the heavier worms with casting rods, even down to a Zoom 6" lizard. Right now, my favorite worm is a Berkley Power Worm in watermelon, followed by a Zoom Finess in either watermelon red or green pumpkin.

Interesting that others say they don't have success with many of the lures I don't have success with, or much success with. I rarely have had success with a lipless crankbait. I've had a little bit though, so I do fish them, but never had the success nor the confidence with them that I do with a regular crankbait. Flukes, I've had some success with recently and starting to build confidence with them. Jerkbaits... I haven't had anything on them in a long time. Jigs, I've had 1 fish on a swim jig. I'm learning though.

I haven't fished a plopper much, but I I've never landed a bass with one, though I've had several hits. For whatever reason, they just don't hook up. My buddy uses them with good success though.

As far as printed issues, I prefer print and I'm only 40. My wife prefers printed as well. There is several problems with digital media. The first is, you stare at the screen all the time, and your brain sort of goes into a different mode, almost like a defensive mode. I retain information better when read in a printed form. The other thing is, I separate my electronics from my printed material. I have a computer spot, and I have a chair where I keep various books that I'm reading along with my Bible. So, I often will read the Bible some, then read some in a book, especially with some of the harder to understand/read parts. I set in my chair, read, and drink my coffee. Another issue with using the computer, is I find myself going to use the computer for something, but I get sidetracked and end up looking at the bass forum, the knife forum, the gun forum, tinkering on my website, looking up something unrelated. I prefer to have a printed tangible item in my hand, I like the feel of it, and I do like the smell of it.

Lots of opinions both ways, thanks all. I do enjoy looking at printed material as well as being on an interactive forum. I am partially considering it for my son too. Having a subscription to BASS when I was a kid was instrumental in building a love of fishing. I also read in fisherman. But, I know it's multi-species, and I am not. I have a handful of old fishing magazines from the 2000s that me and boy look at. I found them in the recycling drop off. But now that have a sign up stating it's illegal to remove anything from it, so I don't go searching for treasures.

Very interesting discussion. Thanks @bulldog1935for sharing that about the wrist snapping. I realize that I have done that and have had to move past it to learn how to use a casting rod, but I didn't know what it was or how to verbalize it.

Sounds like you need a lot more practice. If you're getting backlashes, you're not using enough thumb pressure... probably at the end. No shame in turning the brakes up as needed either. I still practice in the yard during the times of the year I don't fish nearly daily. I still backlash sometimes, but very rarely in a manner that isn't easily cleared. I would rather have accuracy at short/moderate range, than distance any day.