Here I will share my secret. See I threw out my plug waaay past where I thought the fish might be and waited a bit for the splash to settle out. Then I swam in back very very slowly because the water was about 48 degrees. Luckily for me there was a big ol' fish that had lived in that tree for probably quite a few years. She had seen a lot of baits, but the one that swam by probably didn't look quite like anything she'd seen before, and so she decided to come have a look. At the last minute, in a rare moment of stupidity, she woofed my plug thinking it was a trout. There are secrets to throwing the big baits, but believe me it's nothing you can't figure out on your own. You gotta think about the fish and what they are doing and where they are living. You have to realize they have seen a lot of baits and heard a lot of trolling motors go by, and they know when you are nearby. You also just have to go a LOT and try to increase your odds of being there on the right day at the right time in the right place. It's hard to catch big bass, I have a very hard time myself. I'll tell you one thing though. I have an open mind and big ears. I listen to everything that I hear about fishing. But when it comes down to it I always do what I feel is the right thing to be doing. I try not to copy what other people are doing. I might adapt something that someone else is doing to a technique that works for me, but I always seem to do best when I am doing "my thing" that I figured out on my own.

Every day we have new posts on here from guys wanting to know what is the best swimbait/plug, what is the best rod, what is the best retrieve, what is the best time of year to throw the big baits etc etc. I might tell you one thing because of my experience but don't just listen to me. Go yourself and figure out your own thing. Maybe you find out that you can get them to bite a floating plug on the surface in the dead of winter. Maybe you find out that trolling very slowly in the summer works great at a certain lake. Maybe (unlike me) you find that you can get them on 9" sinking swimbaits in 60 feet of water. The point is that it's always best to have your techniques, your stuff that you have confidence in. Vince, I'm not picking on you but these are just things I have been thinking about this past week and the past few months really.

PS - If Mike Long says in Bassmaster Magazine that if you're targeting big fish you should fish slower and deeper, and then after that you should fish even slower and even deeper, I would listen to that too.

PPS - I fished for over 10 hours in the last three days and caught one fish that weighed 2 and a half pounds :-)

-Rob