A Lost Fish Doesn't Always Signal Hook Problems

"It could be mechanical. It could be your rod, reel or line. It could be your bait selection or the color you used. Going through such a mental checklist can be useful..." or so says bass pro Keith Combs (right).

He doesn't advocate that using this mental checklist will solve all the problems of lost fish, but he does feel it will minimize the losses.

Combs cited a bass tournament in which he was fishing a chartreuse and blue 6XD. He had dodged a bullet several times early in the day, barely landing fish that were poorly hooked. Later, he did lose one that would have gone more than 8 pounds. Luckily, he still managed to win, but the loss of that big fish ate at him until two days later, when he fished the same crankbait in a shad pattern.

"The fish were absolutely choking that bait," he said, content that he had put together another piece of the puzzle that likely would help him somewhere down the line.

The Texas bass pro also went on to note the importance of matching your rod to your bait.

"The same rod that you use to take up a lot of slack at the end of a cast with a single-hooked lure usually is entirely wrong for making a long cast with a crankbait," he explained. "For example, a friend and I went out to test some new rods, flipping deep hydrilla in 15 to 18 feet of water. We thought we had the right one, but it soon became evident that something was wrong, because we had lost 10 in a row. We decided to switch rods, and after that, we never lost another fish. It wasn't a major change...just a half-power or so...but that made all the difference."

Just as that lesson showed Combs the importance of rod action and power, his experience as a guide on Falcon Lake taught him a lot about selecting the right hook for a particular application. It showed him that there are a lot of sharp trebles on crankbaits, but not a lot of strong ones.

"Those big fish would jump, the bait would rattle back and forth, and they'd send the crankbait flying back at me with a straightened hook," he said. "When I figured out the right hook for each bait, those losses went way down. It no longer was a matter of 'losing a few is part of the game'."

Combs also admitted that, when the vibrating jig craze came along, he jumped on the bandwagon, figuring that he could fish it on the same rod he used for spinnerbaits. Those early days with the Strike King Pure Poison were painful for him, however, because, in his own words, "I was losing a ton of fish, and I simply didn't have the confidence to use it on tournament day.

"I could have chalked it up to being the nature of the bait," he continued, "but another very talented angler discussed it with me and told me that the rod I was using was way too stiff. Rather than thinking of the Pure Poison as a spinnerbait substitute, I had to think of it more like a crankbait. With the stiff rod, I literally was pulling the lure away from the fish. With one simple change, and a little bit of time relearning the technique, it became one of my confidence lures."

The bottom line, according to Combs, is that "it's unproductive to settle for losing just a few. When you're completely dialed in, you'll lose very few. With a little bit of analysis and experimentation, you'll be surprised at how quickly you can minimize the losses that you previously accepted as part of the game."