panger
22-05-2003, 09:54 PM
I found this potentially useful tip on a yankee bass fishing site. Thought you guys might be interested.
'Now, you often hear advice that if you feel anything different, you should heroically haul off and set the hook. But if you do that, you will have a snag more often than you have a fish. What to do? Load increasingly steady but slight tension onto the line and rod tip by drawing the tip up or reeling in ever so slowly. If it is a snag, you will feel a lack of life, and you should back off to try to work yourself out of the snag before you get snagged too deeply. If it is a fish, you will feel one of two things:
1) weightlessness...absolutely nothing...like your jig is floating in space. Reel in to get slack out of the line until you feel weight, load the rod tip, then whack away!
2) vibrancy...some feeling of life...trust me, you'll instinctively know it's a live feeling of some sort on your line even if it is indescribable to put into words. Reel in just enough to begin loading the rod tip and whack away! '
'Now, you often hear advice that if you feel anything different, you should heroically haul off and set the hook. But if you do that, you will have a snag more often than you have a fish. What to do? Load increasingly steady but slight tension onto the line and rod tip by drawing the tip up or reeling in ever so slowly. If it is a snag, you will feel a lack of life, and you should back off to try to work yourself out of the snag before you get snagged too deeply. If it is a fish, you will feel one of two things:
1) weightlessness...absolutely nothing...like your jig is floating in space. Reel in to get slack out of the line until you feel weight, load the rod tip, then whack away!
2) vibrancy...some feeling of life...trust me, you'll instinctively know it's a live feeling of some sort on your line even if it is indescribable to put into words. Reel in just enough to begin loading the rod tip and whack away! '