today i went to a local place that's mostly fished out. i go there alot, and i rarely catch anything, because i only fish for bigs when i go there.  so today, i am throwing a  5"divine swim bait on a weighted hook. 4 times, i watched a HUGE bass strike at my lure, but i couldn't hook it.  i could see this fish clearly.  i changed lures several times, and couldn't get it to strike again. i went on down the bank and fished for a couple more hours. on the way back, i tied the swim bait back on but different color.  i hooked 3 nice bass, but not the giant i saw earlier, but in the same exact spot. the thing is, all 3 of those bass came off.  one of them i fought for a couple minutes, and he even pulled drag.  i just started fishing this lure this way, so can someone tell me what i did wrong?

 

edit:   i'm not sure why this got moved to "fishing reports".  i'm trying to figure out what i wasn't doing right in this situation,  the fishing talk was only for context.  eventually i'll figure it out and put posts in the right section. 

What size hook, rod, and line were you using? One of those items, or a combination of them, were likely a contributing factor to why you lost those fish. 

15 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

What size hook, rod, and line were you using? One of those items, or a combination of them, were likely a contributing factor to why you lost those fish. 

 

#3 ewg for the hook, rod is a curado 7' 4" med/hvy moderate action   with 12lb flouro on a curado dc

2 hours ago, cheezyridr said:

 

#3 ewg for the hook, rod is a curado 7' 4" med/hvy moderate action   with 12lb flouro on a curado dc

My guess is the plastic was getting gobbed up and the hook wasn’t penetrating the fish’s mouth well enough to land. If I’m using a 5” soft swimbait, I want the biggest hook I’ve got in it