6 minutes ago, Catt said:

 

Nope! Don't do that either!

 

My ability to "feel" comes from 50 years of night fishing from April through October. The first few years was during the New Moon phase. 

 

I've said it so many times y'all are probably tired of hearing but night fishing will change your prospective on "feel". Remember the first time you used tungsten weights how amazing the difference was over lead? Night fishing will do the same thing, especially with zero light. 

 

Ask @A-Jay with a quality rod you can "feel" everything that weight contacts. 

 

I ain't talking about night fishing a couple times a year but rather a whole year of if it.

First off, I have no problem declaring that @Catt 

is 'several levels' beyond me in experience & skill; especially when it comes to night ops. 

That said, I think many bassheads would be surprised to know that when it comes to

determining what my baits doing, as well as detecting a bite,

I almost never watch my line.

Day or night (obviously)

Some of that comes from a few decades of doing this,

as well as from fishing at night;

in both the saltwater & sweet water arena. 

While I'm trying to be observant and aware of everything within my sight & hearing,

staring at my line just has never been part of my deal. 

And still, I get a few now & then.

A-Jay

 

 

I don't keep my finger on the line but I have gotten more actual catches since I started watching my line. I didn't feel squat, I just saw my line going in a direction i didnt think it should be going so I reeled down and sure enough. 

 

I don't want to rely solely on either, I want to be good at both so i have that much more advantage to combat my terrible luck. I don't catch those "lucky bite" fish like some do. I have to earn them so I need to get better at feel BIG TIME!

31 minutes ago, Catt said:

My ability to "feel" comes from 50 years of night fishing from April through October.

I get your points and certainly don’t question your skills.   The sentence above is probably what distinguishes you from most.  Feel is something that can be refined and most normal ? anglers benefit from as many signs as possible.  Just like when you lose one of your senses and your other’s become more acute, successful night fishing also heightens those other senses.  I know my level of concentration is much more consistent at night.  
 

You have me by a few years experience but I am close and for my skill level, if I miss the “feel” of a bite it’s typically on the fall, especially if I throw a little slack to ensure a vertical fall (which I almost always do).  I will usually catch a fish or two every trip because the fall stopped prematurely and I caught that by watching the line.
 

I certainly don’t doubt that every bite CAN be felt (at least with a tight enough line to give feedback).  I just know that every bite that I GET is not felt.  And I think I have a pretty solid resume.

Never been a rod made more sensitive then your finger tips, feel the line! Daytime I watch my line where it enters the water make a V in surface if possible, sometime the lighting or wind doesn’t allow that.

Obviously night time you can’t watch line without a black light. The only lure where line watching is critical are weight less lose line Senko’s.

Tom

On 1/11/2022 at 9:42 AM, Luke Barnes said:

Two years ago was the best fishing year for me so far. I started around 2017 so I'm still new to bass fishing but I started with simple techniques. Texas rig and ned rig were my staples and I got confident in them. But in 2021 I got experimenting and playing with new techniques and barely threw anything that required feeling a light bite. I also caught way less and smaller than previous years and thought to myself, I need to go back to the basics of what actually worked best but my confidence is shot. I barely pulled out the new rig rod and suffered for it. 

 

How do you get your confidence back with something that you knew, but set aside for a while and lost the "touch"?

It might not have anything to do with you personally. From what you described, I would have to say that:

1) There weren’t any fish in that area you were targeting 

2) If there were fish in that area, then what you offered they didn’t want

 

We simply cannot catch fish where they are not, and if you’re a bank angler like me, it just sucks to be us in these situations. 
 

Another thing that inclined my conclusion to this is because you already know what the bite or take is from a T-rig and ned rig. This is my opinion, but that is enough experience to translate that take of most any soft plastic or even jig. At least you started that way instead of crankbaits and inlines and spoons like I did.  Steep learning curve for me, lol but I got over it. You already have the edge on the feel of the take. 
 

Lastly, too slack of a line equates to zero feel on your end — regardless of the line you are using or how amazingly sensitive that NRX or JDM rod is.

The line must be just taut enough to transmit feedback from the fish to the angler. This is where the other side of observation needs to kick in and that is line watching. Bigger bass can suck down your lure and remain stationary and if your line is slack at the time they take, neither of you will know about who is on the other end of the line until either side tightens that line. So when there is slack on the line, for such presentations I’ll remove the slack and await for any feel. A simple move of the rod or a few turns of the reel tightens line. Although the do the same thing, the end result is slightly different. Removing slack with the rod (you choose whether you want to keep the lure in place or to move it to another location) I can readily bring back the slack  positioning the rod to do so. Removing the slack with the reel and now line is shorter. If I needed to I can pull line off. 

 

Anything I feel that I know I didn’t put into the equation means there’s very likely a fish on the other end.  Bigger fish however, are strong enough that removing the slack might feel more like a snag — because they’re not moving. Tighten up and pull back to set the hook. If it’s a fish,  you’re on. If it’s a snag, we’ll, now you know, lol but no one else watching from a distance will. Hook sets are free.

 

The last big bass I caught last year didn’t budge. I honestly thought it was snag. As a bank angler, I step back and kind of wrap the line around me to break it off but as I was rotating away from the lake to break the line, that “snag” pulled my left arm that was holding the line back violently . Oh snap. Thank goodness instinct took over. My left hand dropped the line and I immediately turned back around reeling up line at the same time. I set the hook as my front side faced the lake and it was on. She sure felt like a snag. 
 

We just have to find them first. Then we have to entice them to bite. This gives us a fair shot. 
 

1 hour ago, A-Jay said:

While I'm trying to be observant and aware of everything within my sight & hearing,

 

Exactly ?

 

I'm not oblivious of my line, I know what's going on without staring at it.

 

Sometimes it ain't about what I feel as much as is what i don't feel. I know what it feels like when my lure contacts grass, twigs, hard bottom, etc. If I don't feel that I'm setting hook. 

Today I made some steps on and off the water to help me. Picked up my first tungsten worms weights to see if they make any difference, some Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon XL and hopefully it's better than yo-zuri top knot in every way, and some 7" Power woms in Tequila Sunrise to use for t- rigs. On the water I threw the ned a bit and focused on what i was feeling on the bottom and a drop shot and focusing on what the weight hitting stuff feels like. 

 

So all in all it was a good day. No fish but i feeling more hopeful and ready for warm weather!

On 1/15/2022 at 1:27 PM, RDB said:

I’m not disagreeing but my guess is your technique for presentations requiring “feel” likely involves having a finger on your line (as does mine).  For me, the sensitivity is night & day better than just relying on what is transferred through the rod.  I’m still a line watcher because it is one more data point and I do miss some bites that I catch with the line.  It is not uncommon for me to take up slack and immediately feel tension though I never felt the actual bite.  I’m probably most acutely aware on the fall and any presentation using a semi slack line.

 

i could not agree with you more.  I don’t agree with fishing like your a blind man.  You use all your senses, not just feel.  I often walk a fluke or Senko along the bottom through the bottom grasses.  This require slack line after a jerk.  My line will move before I feel it through the rod.  Too feel it you need tension on the line and this technique will not work without slack in the line.    Learning to walk a fluke on bottom catches me a lot of bass.  Especially during cold front conditions.

Reading this reminds me of the struggle I went through the last couple of years. I am not new to fishing, but I was a much better warm water fisherman than cold water. For years I struggled with cold water, then a few years ago I after buckling down and really focusing on it, I became much more proficient in cold water. Little did I know it would have such an impact on my warm water fishing. These last couple of years I feel like my warm water has suffered, and honestly it’s a mental thing. After struggling with warm water for a couple of years I finally now feel like i am back to where I was with it, and it didn’t affect my cold water performance at all. The mind games and mental blocks this sport can have on you is really amazing when you think about it. 

15 hours ago, Chris186 said:

Reading this reminds me of the struggle I went through the last couple of years. I am not new to fishing, but I was a much better warm water fisherman than cold water. For years I struggled with cold water, then a few years ago I after buckling down and really focusing on it, I became much more proficient in cold water. Little did I know it would have such an impact on my warm water fishing. These last couple of years I feel like my warm water has suffered, and honestly it’s a mental thing. After struggling with warm water for a couple of years I finally now feel like i am back to where I was with it, and it didn’t affect my cold water performance at all. The mind games and mental blocks this sport can have on you is really amazing when you think about it. 

Its so true. I stopped throwing the texas rig last year to experiment with new techniques and my catches went down. So I am sticking to what i know and working at building that confidence back up.