Big Bass 101

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Date: December 27, 2002 at 00:24:20
From: ken, [pool-64-223-38-62.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Big Bass 101

Re: Tube and Worm Continued

Summer 2001

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Re: Tube and Worm Continued

From: Ken
Date: 24 Aug 2001
Time: 14:07:56
Remote Name: 207.180.0.8

Comments

There is much to learn from people who do know how to catch large bass even though they do not use fly tackle. Speed and depth control (the mechanics of presentation) and how the fish relate to their prey when feeding in their normal routines are the two major keys.
The modern salt water fly fishing techniques and methods that have been promoted as highly effective are not highly effective at all. A 36" bass is a large school bass. The reason for this is those modern methods have disregarded old fashioned truths about striper fishing and have re-written the norms about fishing for them to co-incide with ideas that are product oriented and easily mimiced by "experts" and are taught and promoted in schools but are inconsistant to say the least and produce very few large fish (I have only seen one and that was a picture on the cover of a book) even when they are aggressive. The presentation mechanics of delivering a fly to fish that are shallow (which is water 15' deep or less) have been overlooked and replaced by a dependance on a "Perception" that if a line sinks at a high rate of speed in still water that it will catch big fish for you. There is no mention of any limitations on control encountered with the sinking line at any depth and because of the directions on the box it appears that all that is necessary to catch the big ones is to cast the line, set the hook and pull in the big ones. Fortunatly for the fish it is necessary to learn the fundamentals of how current affects sinking line presentation.
Drag is the big problem that salt water fly fishermen have to face and address at some point if they want to catch larger fish with any consistancy with sinking lines in the type of heavy current holding water that big fish prefer to feed in when they are feeding in that type of water. Hoping for a blitz of big fish that are chasing bait and are easy to catch is like hoping to win the lottery, there have been more people who have won the lottery than there have been fly fishermen in on one of those big fish Blitzes. It happens sometimes and is wonderful to experience (I would rather win the lottery) but the fact is that most big fish are taken the old fashioned way, you have to work for them. Working for them does not and never has meant being able to cast a long line. It means knowing where to cast and how to manage your line so that your fly will be seen by the fish in the way the fish expects to see its prey. That is speed and depth control. This is the core understanding that traditional New England charter boat captains have and work with that the new fly fishing skiff guides and writers are unaware of. There is a big difference between catching a bass of 30 or more pounds and catching school fish. A big difference!
The cast and retrieve methods that are suitable for school bass are not the methods that are used by anglers who actually do catch big fish, whether they are professional fisherman or part timers, to catch very large bass consistantly. Casting a three inch jig 120' on a spinning rod and retrieving it in at a high rate of speed does not produce any more large bass in ordinary circumstances than does casting a weighted three inch fly with a sinking line 70' and retrieving it in with a hand over hand retrieve. These methods are school bass techniques that produce large numbers of small aggressive fish and some fish in the 36" to 40" range if they are mixed in with the smaller fish.
A good or even marginal eel fisherman knows more practical techniques for actually catching large bass then a whole generation of modern fly fishermen and guides who have been schooled to use those vaporus methods for catching them that have been published in all the modern fly fishing in salt water media put together so far. Catching big fish is not only about having the right tackle it is about using the tackle wisely to coinside with the fish's non-agressive (won't move out of position to chase food) feeding patterns. Stripers don't chase eels they wait for them to come to them or they range into current and intercept them. There are exceptions to this but it is the norm. Eel fishermen catch thousands of very large striped bass every year as do swimming plug fishermen and many other striper fishermen who use techniques that fly fishermen have no awareness of. The results speak for themselves.
The excuse that there are no big fish just a disregards the fact that conventional fishermen are doing just fine on big fish Fly fishermen that are somewhat new to striper fishing are unaware of normal big fish behavior and methods that have been developed to catch them for the most part and have been led to believe many myths about large striper behavior based on certain unusual behaviors observed in particular circumstances. Striper behavior will not change because we prefer to use fly rods to catch them. The techniques we use must be suited to the way the fish actually behave and not based on techniques that do not work with any effectivness even if executed perfectly because they are based on an erronious understanding of the large striped bass's behavior.
The old saw that 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish is not true about large stripers. 1 to 2% catch most of them. Actually the 1% is the real percent and the other percent is the person that is fishing with the 1% er. The fly fishing media is wrong and those fishermen who do catch them consistantly tell a different story about how to do the deed. It is not a "new," story but an old and respected one. There is a lot of real information about how to catch large bass in print and in the general non-flyfishing media as a whole and interestingly very little of it resembles the techniques that have been promoted in modern salt water fly fishing circles. That is the single reason that so few large bass have been taken on fly tackle in spite of the thousands of people casting flies in recent years using these modern methods. Being open to learning from those who do have success is not unintelligent. Fly fishermen will find that if they seek out and listen to those who do have success with other tackle they will learn many things that they can adapt and use to get some of that success for themselves. It's pretty simple really, keep doing what you are doing and you will have the same results, if you expect a different outcome using the same techniques that haven't worked for you or anybody else -that is documentable- so far and believe that the problem is based on your lack of skill in executing those techniques properly - then perhaps it is time to re-think and give yourself some credit. You probably do have all the skill that is necessary for those techniques to work - if they did. If they don't work for you - try to learn what works for conventional fishermen and adapt it to fly fishing yourself. I that if you do you will begin to catch larger fish than you have ever caught up to now.

Last changed: November 05, 2001

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