Today made me so mad at murray because my huddleston snapped off. Before it snapped off tho the bass were all over it. I was fishing over near the boat dock with daniel and this kid mike and the bass would follow it up and hit every cast. The first time made me knees shake when i wasn't expecting this 8 pounder to come out of nowhere and nail it. There was a school of about 5 fish ranging from what it looked like 5 up to 12 pounds and all of them were taking swipes at it.When they seemed to dissapear for a little while i make a long cast and nothing seems to happen for a while until i look up and feel a large thump. Set the hook but it flies right of it's mouth. Then the bass starts thrashing the bait on top of the water and i must of hooked it 5 times that same cast. I finnaly think its hooked good about 15 feet from shore and the fish starts pulling hard. Next thing i know my huddleston flies back at my face. I got too excited because the bass were so aggressive and i could see 4 or 5 nice ones following it when it flew back at me. During my hyperness i go to cast very quick behing the fish when the line tangles around the tip of the rod and all i hear is pop and dont feel any weight and i new what happened imediately and i got pissed off. x( I did catch one fish dropshotting shortly after around 2 or so pounds and that was it. I'm still very pissed off and can't keep wearing myself out thinking about those bass that i lost. I better go out and get me a new huddleston soon and head out to murray again.

sounds like you were lucky enough to find a wolfpack. lol you need to calm down.

I can almost picture you out there in a panic trying to wing the hudd. It's like watchin my dad bed fish, he gets so excited and can only seem to hook tulees.

order another hudd and get back out there.

I keep replaying every strike i had today on the bait today thinking of what i could have done different. Im sure if i wouldn't have snapped the hudd off i would of caught my first hudd fish and a couple other nice ones. When i always walk over by there this time of the year i always see that same school or one with similar sized bass in that same area chasing trout but ive never had a large swimbait with me to throw untill then. What really freaked me out was not sure if it was a carp or catfish but this HUGE white tail came out from under the dock with big long sweeps and then went back under quickly. Whatever it was it looked at least 50 pounds. A fish that made my knees shake today was when i casted along the dock and my friend i think is messing around with me just starts freaking out saying theres a bass at least 15 pounds darting at my bait from under the dock and i go haha ya right and then my rod gets ripped out of my hand and i see it flash. I look up at him surprised and he just looks at me like i told u so u should of listened. If i wasn't so pissed off i would have enjoyed seeing a video of me go crazy today but for now i just want my hudd back. I better get a job i dont have enough money to pay for a new hudd today and i dont want to order one online and stand by the door waiting for it to get here so i can go fish it.

its a carp. i saw it too

kill bass, they eat fry. - its a joke!

Ya i think it was a carp also. I thought it was a big koi fish when i could see half of the body but then realized it wasn't. It just surprised me because ive never seen a carp anywhere near that size in the lake. I have seen a couple cats around that size and one saw a cat around 100 pounds right after the bass spawn ended last year by the dock. Scared the hell out of me i had 4 pound test and was throwing mini jigs for trout and not thinking rigged that pole up and threw a piece of mackeral at it. It gobbled it up and before i knew it that thing had me spooled like there was never even line there. It was kind of funny just to watch the line shoot off my reel and it was about time to get some new line anyway.

Stuff like this can happen... I know I get excited about seeing big bass eating my bait :)

Some things to consider for the future that might help...

- The time to get excited about big bass is after they are in your hand. Getting excited before that is seldom good. Even Ike doesn't scream when he hooks them, he waits until they're in the boat.

- Big bass are equipment breakers. It takes a long time to realize this for a lot of people because it takes a long time to get a lot of bites from big bass. Sounds stupid but it's very true. What kind of equpiment were you using? Rod, reel, line, knot?

- Big bass make you lose your form because you get excited. No one talks about form but form is really important in fishing. I see people fishing swimbaits when I'm on the lake and one look can tell you if a guy knows what he's doing or not.

Your rod should always be under you armpit, always. If your rod butt isn't long enough to go under your armpit, its not a good rod for swimbaiting. Big bass can pull your rod tip down faster that you can blink and that's a missed bite when that happens most times. You said one of your bites almost got the rod out of your hands. That should never happen. The fish should hit and the butt of the rod should already be wedged under your armpit where it can't be pulled up so that you have immediate positive hooksetting action the second the fish strikes.

With baits that have the hook on the top (like ROF12 or 16 hudd) your line should be below your rod tip and you should have the rod just about pointed at the bait at all times. When I say that the line should be below the rod tip, I mean that if you look at the rod tip, the tip of the rod and the line coming out the tip of the rod should form an upside down V shape. If your line is above your rod tip forming a right side up V shape, you're out of position for a good hookset. Your set with a top hook bait should be about 2 to 3 o'clock. Watch the Butch Brown videos on www.huddlestondeluxe.com if you need to see it in actoin.

For baits with the hooks on the bottom (like Slammer or ROF 5 hudd) you should have the rod out to the side ready to sweep set like with a rattletrap. Setting upward with baits like that just knocks the fish's mouth open.

Anyway, these are just things to think about. Losing big ones sucks but losing them over and over again by making the same mistakes sucks worse.

Thanx for the info Rob. My rods good and is always under my underpit with big baits. Okuma 7' 6" big bait rod. The problem was my line and i know it. It wasn't good line and it was only 15 pound test. I wasn't planning on throwing swimbaits that day so i didnt bring better line and i made sure the drag was good if did hook up with that weak line but i couldn't help it getting rapped around the tip of my rod.If i had stronger line i wouldn't have lost it. I had stronger line today and the bill of a castaic snap on swimbait was snapped in half and the hook bent from a fish. Maybe when i fix it ill loosen the drag a little more with that swimbait so it doesn't break again.

you guys are crazy throwin hudds on 15.



Rob, i liked what you said about the different methods of hook setting, due to where the hooks are positioned.

sometimes the simplest things are overlooked

Thanks Rob,
I had always figured that I lost fish on Topwater/shallow hardbait presentations more often from my Kick than from shore because I wasn't getting as solid of a hookset sitting in a movable chair as opposed to standing with both feet firmly on the ground.
Now I realize many of the fish I missed because I was setting upwards in the kick as opposed to sideways and a little downwards from shore.
Tight lines,
Wade

I can't take credit for the thought on hookset angles, I got the thought from an article I read where they interviewed KVD and he was explaining how to sweep set on crankbait fish to draw the hooks across the fish's face. I just expanded on the thought into swimbait fishing and wrote it down here. I'm sure lots of people do the same thing whether its conscious or subsonscious.

Taking this thought a little further, think about when you are fighting the fish. It pays to consider what type of hook you are using (and how you just set the hook) when you decide how to play a fish. For example, if you stick a jig fish close to the boat, odds are the hook is in the roof of the mouth. If the fish is going to jump, sticking your rod down isn't always the best thing, you could just be twisting the hook out. Sometimes it's much better to keep your rod high and try to keep that hook set in the roof of the mouth.

Other times if you think the fish is hooked in the corner of the lip or in the lower jaw with a treble, pulling down to prevent jumps and then pulling across the fish's face is the best thing. Reading how a fish is hooked by the angle of your line or visually - and then responding immediately is really important. This is the kind of stupid stuff you can learn over time and if you train yourself mentally to do the 'right thing' you really can land more of your bites. I'm not the kind of fisherman who gets a lot of bites so I have to make up for it by landing most of what I get, and trust me... landing fish isn't all luck :)