Bass that suck

I just got back from a California fishing trip,, some trip,, 5 days and
only 6 hours of actual fishing, Most of the rest was fishing industry
marketing meetings.

Anyway, When I was fishing, I found out that California bass Suck, they
don't strike. At first I thought it was bream or trout, sucking on my lures.

I was fishing with a tournament fisherman that fished this lake often
(Paris Lake), and a visiting professional (they flew out there) bass
fishermen, who like me, had never fished this lake. They put me in the
back, and they shared the front of the boat (I was back seated like
never before :-), On the first bites,, if you call them that, I kept
waiting for the bass to swim off with the lure, tug hard , hell anything
except that little bit of pressure I felt, I kept saying come on, go
ahead and take it, but they never did,, the guys in the front would
finally yell at me to set the hook, I would laugh at them,, but what the
heck, I gave a good yank, and how about that ,, that is a bass. All day
long these guys would take the lure, and just hold it for a second or
two, well sometimes for 30 seconds,, they would not pull, they just
would sit there holding the lure in their mouth, I just could not get it
into my mind to set the hook when I felt resistance,, I missed over 30
sucks that day,, I did manage to boat as many bass as them combined, and
mine were bigger, but the bite was the strangest I have ever felt,
sometimes I would set the hook, and the bass just followed my retrieval
to the boat, with out me even knowing they where hooked, until they saw
me, then all hell broke loose.

The guy that fished this lake often,, said this is how they strike soft
plastics, he was drop shotting, I was wiggling, and the other pro was
carolina fishing. (who only caught one fish)

This is an extremely high presure lake, on the weekends, they will
actually turn boaters away because the lake has too many boats on it,
their possession limit is only two bass per person. The biggest I boated
was around 3 and 1/2 lbs, most were in the two pound class.

You west coast guys,, is it normal for those bass to suck, instead of
strike :-),, or was this guy telling me a fib, and this was just a slow
fishing day ? Oh yeah , we started fishing at 11 AM , and fished to 5
PM, the fish were in 20 to 30 feet of water,

I did "steal" a fish from my front seaters, they were watching the
flasher and said there was a fish right under the trolling motor, I
flipped "under" their lines letting my weight and lure drop right next
to the trolling motor, 20 sec. later, I said, there is not one there
now, as I was un hooking it :-)

WE did have a ball, with a lot of joking going on through out the day,
it would have made a great fishing show
--
Rodney Long,
Inventor of the Long Shot "WIGGLE" rig, SpecTastic Thread
Boomerang Fishing Pro. ,Stand Out Hooks ,Stand Out Lures,
Mojo's Rock Hopper & Rig Saver weights, Decoy Activator
and the EZKnot http://www.ezknot.com