I been fishing the same places with two of my buddy's everyday.  Lately the success has been way off.  I meet with them the other day and they admitted the fishing was really bad.  I threw out a money minnow and had strikes right away.  My question is i can't hook them up?  The strikes happen so fast.  My money minnow lost an eye yesterday and it had teeth marks in the head too.  I did notice i had two very fast strikes.  Why do i get so many misses?  I'm using a 5/0 and 7/0 hook in the mid size and larger size.

are you skin hooking it? If not then that's the cause of a lot of misses

are you skin hooking it? If not then that's the cause of a lot of misses

That's the only thing I could think of.

Are you pausing before setting the hook, like you would do with a top water?  Other than that, maybe they aren't hitting it to eat so they aren't taking it in fully.

Small pickerel strikes.

You could tie some line to the hook and tie a treble hook on the end of the line and stick the treble hook into the back of the bait so if the fish strikes short it will grab the treble hook.

x2 on the pause before setting the hook.  The first few times I went out with a paddle tail swimbait I missed the first few until I started pausing.

I use the screw in type swim bait hooks.   I always open up the gap of the hook with pliers so the point lays flat on top of bait instead of pointing back down into the bait towards the eye of hook.  Not so open you can't skin hook the point.   I also open up the belly cavity so it is a slit at the bottom so the bait collapses away from the hook point on a strike.   Get some 'mend-it'.  These don't last long without repairing them.   Also using a softer (crankbait) type rod helps let the fish get it in it mouth totally.

Roll Tide

I run the hook the way you would do a tube.  And back up the point just enough to cover it weedless.   I maybe sleeping at the controls a little too.  At first I was using a med rod and now I mainly use my med/hvy topwater rod with 12lb test.  I guess I have to focus more on hooksets.

I was watching from shore a big fish tearing up the weeds/lilly's in this one spot for weeks every morning just out of my reach.  One day she came within my cast.  I nailed a 6lb1oz lmb and as i had her in my hands i watched the water in the lilly's still churning up.  So there are more than one big fish in the small pond.  She missed my topwater bait on the first pass and swirled around to make a second pass.  Luckily i didn't move it when i seen her turn around.  I have caught pickerel that looked like northern pike there too. (28")

try nose hooking it so its not weedless

They hit the middle sized money minnow over the smaller one for some reason.  I haven't thrown the largest one yet but i did buy an assortment of sizes and colors to test them all.

Bigger bait, bigger fish.....