You'd think a day out on the water welcomes relaxation and tranquility. Not entirely the case if you're smack dab in the middle of a bass fishing tournament trying to get your first entry on the board. A bad day of fishing can be a lot like a bad day on the golf course. Once things start to go downhill, the mental part of the game overtakes you. You start to loose concentration and grow inpatient and the things that need attention start to lack attention.
Case and point: Me last Friday. The day started out slow. Fishing on a private lake in sticks before sunrise is always difficult. The odds are kinda stacked against you. It's dark, you're at an unfamiliar body of water and you don't know where the fish are located. Dave and I didn't spend a ton of time there. A couple hours at best. He managed to reel in a decent size catfish. I only caught two dinks nearly smaller than the crankbait I was using. We decided a location change might be best if we were wanting to land some bass for the tournament.
Once we arrived at a pond we were more familiar with the fish started biting almost instantly after Dave cast a couple times.
About 10 minutes later I had a good bite. I knew my hook set was good too. As I started to reel and the fish started to fight my line snapped. That would be one of five good bass that got away.
After some investigation and some questioning by my much more experienced fishing buddy, using the original mono line on a reel I bought four months ago was the culprit. It didn't help matters that I was down to my last 30 yards of line that had time to become weak and brittle. No wonder it snapped so easily.
I changed things up later on and started throwing my five inch senko on a Texas rig and was pretty certain I had found a spot where the bass were schooling. Hit after hit came but I was never able to get a good hook set. That is until I felt a bite that no doubt got hook. Seconds later as I reeled him in on an extremely tight line my bait and hook disappeared and I came up with an empty line out of the water. Bass #2 ... gone. Turns out with this one and #3 I had been in a hurry and tied a very fast clench knot that quickly came unraveled.
Bass #4 snapped my line again due to my drag being way to tight. By this point I was starting to become frustrated while Meanwhile Dave pulled bass after bass out on his braided line without issue. In fact, he scored a 5 pounder that smashed his jerkbait (pictured).
So the moral of this story is being unprepared when it comes to your equipment does no good at all and it's likely you will have a very rough day. Old line and weak knots = the fish winning every time. Tie new knots before your day begins. Check your drag on each setup and make sure your line hasn't sat forever (especially mono which has more play than braid). Hoping the tone of my next blog entry will be more upbeat.
