You're Fishing Under the Bass — And 6 Other Mistakes Costing You Fish

You’re fishing under the bass. Not past them, not around them — under them, in the one part of the water column a largemouth isn’t hunting.

A bass’s eyes sit high on the skull, his binocular window points forward and slightly up, and he has a dead zone under his belly and behind his gill plates. Almost every common mistake we make out there quietly puts the bait outside that window. This is seven of them, in order, each one with the fish biology behind why it costs you fish and a fix you can make on your next trip without buying a thing: where to work your bait in the column, why you cast past cover instead of at it, what a dichromatic eye actually sees when you pick a color, how water temperature sets your retrieve speed, hook points and the moment to set, why the shaded side of every laydown is the side that holds fish, and how much of your approach the lateral line hears before you ever cast. Ends with a short checklist for the truck before you launch.

Old-angler wisdom, and the fish science behind why the old rules work. New videos on reading water, finding fish, and catching more of them.

Tight lines.

—

0:00 The old man who kept out-fishing me
1:34 Mistake 1 — You’re fishing under the fish
3:32 Mistake 2 — Casting at the bass instead of past him
5:05 Mistake 3 — Picking lure color for yourself, not the fish
6:57 Mistake 4 — Reeling the same speed all year
8:24 Mistake 5 — Dull hooks and a hookset on the wrong signal
9:43 Mistake 6 — Fishing the sunny side, and only once
11:14 Mistake 7 — Announcing yourself before you cast
12:27 Storms, livewell heat, release handling, state regs
13:19 The checklist for the truck
14:29 Next time — how to read a farm pond

—

#bassfishing #largemouthbass #fishingtips #fishing #smallmouthbass #freshwaterfishing #howtofish #anglerlife #bassfishingtips