Catching the Dink in Front of You

[SFL BassHunter]

When bank fishing many times may be having a hard time catching fish. Unable to figure what they want or how they want it on a particular day, especially fishing the highly pressured ponds and lakes i fish.

This is why I always take the opportunity to catch one of those dinks that's in sight hanging around the bank. Here are the reasons why:

1: by throwing my bait over to the bass I can determine its demeanor towards my bait. I find this helps me understand what the majority of the fish are doing when I make casts that I can't see the fish on.
I move the bait around in different ways until I get a reaction out of the fish and it eats the bait or swims away.

2: If I can catch the fish i won't need one of those skunk awards that our good friend Lip hands out lol!

So what do I do when a bass just outright swims away from by bait. Obviously I've offended it. So I make a change in bait. At this point I've determined that the fish just aren't interested in what I'm throwing. They told me by not biting and confirmed it by having a bass actually swim away from it.
I make make a major color change or bait type change.

If the bass hangs around the bait and is interested but nothing I can do gets it to bite I may make a subtle change. Same bait different color or similar bait same color.

Sometimes I'll even change the weight I'm using. Going from a 1/8 to 1/16 or even weightless. Or the other way around. If I've been throwing my bait on a 1/8 oz that thing is going down the water column pretty quick and if they want something with a slow drop rate I found the problem!

If I can get it to bite the new bait then I'll stick with that and continue fishing. Many times I've found that I have caught several more fish after studying the dinks actions.

It sounds dumb when I say it out loud but it sounds great in my head...

What do you guys think of this theory/technique??  Have you ever employed it to study the mood of the bass?


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[Princeton_Man]

One of my old fishin' partners would do that. If we were having a particularly poor day, he'd spend an hour or more trying to catch that dink locked onto a stump or laydown along the shore. He'd try different baits. He'd work his way down to a one inch piece of Creme worm and a Crappie hook. There were times I was sure he'd be willing to spend the night there dangling and twitching that bait trying to get that fish to bite, just to save a skunk. Sometimes he did save the skunk but it told us very little as far as what the fish wanted. He'd just aggravate the poor fish into submission. 

[SFL BassHunter]

One of my old fishin' partners would do that. If we were having a particularly poor day, he'd spend an hour or more trying to catch that dink locked onto a stump or laydown along the shore. He'd try different baits. He'd work his way down to a one inch piece of Creme worm and a Crappie hook. There were times I was sure he'd be willing to spend the night there dangling and twitching that bait trying to get that fish to bite, just to save a skunk. Sometimes he did save the skunk but it told us very little as far as what the fish wanted. He'd just aggravate the poor fish into submission. 

That's funny! I don't spend that much time on them though. Five, Ten minutes max.

[Lipripper]

Sounds good to me Rick but some day is a skunk day np matter what and you just have to accept it and the award and move on. 

[SFL BassHunter]

Sounds good to me Rick but some day is a skunk day np matter what and you just have to accept it and the award and move on. 

No doubt about that.