saturday morning bass

[tycomps]

hit a pond this morning to try out my frog trailer hooks that came yesterday (see my kermit post) and had to rig a worm using my old worm hooks since I didn't have my EWG's with me. sure enough this guy comes in gut hooked and bleeding. cut the line, removed the worm, and since I didn't play him long he swam right off. hope he's ok, gonna see if they make needle nose wire cutters so I can get in there and cut the hook.

[Lard Almighty]

If the fish was already bleeding, then he probably didn't make it. If I may ask, how long do you normally wait between strike and hookset with the plastic worms?

[tycomps]

feel the tap, lower the rod, watch the line, if it moves, take up slack from lowering rod and if there's tension pull firm to the opposite side of line direction. I use 10" worms so there's 8" of worm behind the hook.

and no lard, I don't mind, feel free to ask me anything and make suggestions :p

might pick up one of these:

http://www.dbarb.com/whydbarb.html

I like the magnetic tip feature for the cut piece of barb,

or one of these:

http://www.harborfreight.com/11-inch-long-reach-diagonal-cutter-37837.html

[Duck or Bleed]

Good morning nice fish i have been using gamakatsu 5/0 lock worm hooks have not gut hooked a fish in a very long time

[Lard Almighty]

Maybe try a larger hook that the fish can't get in his gut easily? I use 4/0 wide gap hooks for big worms and I rarely gut hook fish.

Also, are the worms you use heavily scented like Gulp or F2? In my experience, fish have a tendency to swallow those pretty quickly.

[tycomps]

already switched to EWG's but didn't have them with me. interesting about the gulp spray, I did spray the worm with gulp crawdad.

update: picked up 4/0 EWG's, the harbor freight long nose cutters (heavy), and shorter power worms. hopefully this will help, gut hooking a fish ruins my day!

[gcnj]

[QUOTE=tycomps]feel the tap, lower the rod, watch the line, if it moves, take up slack from lowering rod and if there's tension pull firm

Try--feel the tap---Lower the rod---Set the hook.....
Bass dont mess around, they inhale a bait.
If you are standing around after the tap watching the line and waiting for it to move you are going to gut hook fish.

[tycomps]

You're saying feel the tap, lower the rod/take up the slack and set the hook? That's what I do with my 4" wacky rigged senkos, these are 10" unweighted texas rigged power worms. I did that initially and 75% of the time the worm pulled out of their mouth as there's 8" of worm behind the hook if they inhale it from the rear. Feeling the tap, lowering the rod, and watching the line for movement (I have hi-vis yellow on order as well) before taking up the 3' of slack and hooksetting seems to have alleviated any resistance that might otherwise cause them to spit it and my hookups are at least 90%. This post was really to show that after previously switching from standard worm hooks because of gut hooking one fish a month fishing everyday to EWG's and not gut hooking any then having to use a standard because of not having my EWG's and immediately gut hooking one that the EWG's were the ticket. Also to highlight tools available for the fastest and safest gut hook removal to give the fish the highest chance of survival. Wow, my heads spinning I gotta go lay down now :p

I think lard came up with the answer of increasing my EWG hook size from 2/0 to 4/0 since that's what subsequent research has shown is the most popular size and it seems to make sense. I'll keep you posted. Thanks