If using the number of cast to the strikes I’d say between 5% and 10% for normal days then there’s the days when the number goes up into the 30% range but also other days when it’s in the 0% to 2%. Interesting post.

32 minutes ago, Tennessee Boy said:

This is what high percentage fishing looks like.

 

 

Haha! And that still only gets the top 10 or 20 feet of water 

30 minutes ago, OldManLure said:

Actually, a couple years ago a buddy and I kept track of average casts and catches for river smallies. We limited it to a particular stretch of the Shenandoah River and a particular stretch of the Upper Potomac, and did it for only 3 trips on each.  On both stretches, about 5% of casts resulted in a catch.   We both questioned if the information had any real value, but it was interesting to quantify something we had only given a passing thought.  What was most surprising was the number of casts we made.  Many more than either of us would have guessed.  The percentage was disappointing, but we did catch some nice fish, and on a couple of the trips one of us ended up catching what at the time was a personal best.  I think we both agreed that even a 5% catch rate was worth it when at least one of them was was a pig.

^best answer 

I'll have to say 5 percent on an average day.

as a newbasser, i'm a little confused by this thread... is it how many strikes one felt the bass make on your lure, which i guess would be a guess-timate based on strikes felt per hours fishing?

 

or is it how many strikes does the bass make ---- which one might or might not be oblivious to. now that would be an interesting number, at least to me....

 

for me, bass strike about 50% of the time... i miss 49.9% of them.  i mean, i'm totally clueless that they struck.......

 

that bigmouth forever video is pretty neat -----------------!  

6 minutes ago, fishhugger said:

as a newbasser, i'm a little confused by this thread... is it how many strikes do you think the bass makes on your lure, which i guess would be a guess-timate based on strikes felt per hours fishing?

 

or is it how many strikes does the bass make ---- which one might or might not be oblivious to. now that would be an interesting number, at least to me....

 

for me, bass strike about 50% of the time... i miss 49.9% of them.  i mean, i'm totally clueless that they struck.......

 

that bigmouth forever video is pretty neat -----------------!  

 

 

Original question below, which I take as, How many times do you put a bait in front of a bass and it then strikes it? Or, reverse it and, how many times when your bait is near a bass does it ignore it? I'm still hanging around the 95 percent rejection mark...but it's all theoretical and a guess on our parts.

 

On 12/20/2021 at 12:45 PM, Tennessee Boy said:

 

When a fish becomes aware of an angler's lure and has the opportunity to strike it,  what percentage of the time do you think it will strike?

 

I will give my opinion on this question.  I think the percentage is very low.  Probably less than 1% on average.  I think electrofishing results suggest that there are substantially more fish in the areas we fish than most of us realize.  A boater will quickly fish a stretch of bank and then move on if he doesn’t get a bite.  A bank fisherman will pick apart the same water for an hour or more and catch fish the boater left behind. 

 

My real question is,  should we focus more on trying improve our personal strike ratio.  If I could raise mine from 0.5% to 1.0% would that have a bigger impact on my success than using MEGA Live to improve my ability to find fish?  How much of a professional fisherman’s success is in his ability to simple get a fish to bite that would have ignored other angler’s lures?

 

It’s something to think about on a cold winter day.   

 

Thanks for your responses.

This is kind off an "off the road" way of answering your question but I find that if I catch a fish on a particular lure and keep throwing the same lure in the same spot, the bite often stops. Rarely do I catch fish on the same lure Immediately after or soon after I've caught one on that lure. Now that either means ... 1. Fish know it's fake and know not to take it.  2. The other fish disburse after they see the commotion of the fish I caught or 3. It's just my imagination. ?‍♂️

32 minutes ago, MacJig said:

This is kind off an "off the road" way of answering your question but I find that if I catch a fish on a particular lure and keep throwing the same lure in the same spot, the bite often stops. Rarely do I catch fish on the same lure Immediately after or soon after I've caught one on that lure. Now that either means ... 1. Fish know it's fake and know not to take it.  2. The other fish disburse after they see the commotion of the fish I caught or 3. It's just my imagination. ?‍♂️

 

I have experienced the the opposite. Catching 7 or 8 bass on the same lure in 10 casts. Other experiences of catching schooling bass feeding on shad near the surface for over an hour on almost every cast. It does happen. 

 

17 minutes ago, Tennessee Boy said:

I will give my opinion on this question.  I think the percentage is very low.  Probably less than 1% on average.  I think electrofishing results suggest that there are substantially more fish in the areas we fish than most of us realize.  A boater will quickly fish a stretch of bank and then move on if he doesn’t get a bite.  A bank fisherman will pick apart the same water for an hour or more and catch fish the boater left behind. 

 

My real question is,  should we focus more on trying improve our personal strike ratio.  If I could raise mine from 0.5% to 1.0% would that have a bigger impact on my success than using MEGA Live to improve my ability to find fish?  How much of a professional fisherman’s success is in his ability to simple get a fish to bite that would have ignored other angler’s lures?

 

It’s something to think about on a cold winter day.   

 

Thanks for your responses.

When I was tournament fishing I was always tried chasing active fish, which meant trying to establish some sort of pattern of fish that had bitten in practice that I could continually run until I matched up the timing or didn't.

 

Early on I found in the grinding tourneys I did better.

I could pick apart an area and put together a good limit on a few bites.

It was the ones where guys were catching 20-30 fish, I struggled until I changed my mindset.

Finding a pattern and establishing some sort of milk run between areas with active fish changed that. 

 

Sometimes(a lot) I'll mark a school of fish(2d sonar) and wont get a bite, come back 2 hours later and catch a few. Or I'll mark both bait and a school of fish but for whatever reason the feeding fest isn't on. Later, they're busting the surface smashing that same school. This is why I believe timing is a huge factor and although I have some skills, me presenting a lure better than someone else as the reason the fish bit my lure seems less believable.

 

If the fish are really active, 5-10%. 

Otherwise my guess is 1%. Case in point I sat in one high percentage spot this weekend where I caught one fish as I neared it... stayed for an hour and a half (so at least 100 casts), trying to figure out what was up for the day. When I figured it out it was like flipping a switch on. That first fish was the random one that was a little more willing to bite than the others.