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Posts: 164
| Still a lot of season left. But the snow is falling and I haven't caught a fish since mid-September. Seen quite a few and definitely lost my fair share of fish this year like I always do every year.
Buddy and I got out this weekend casting big rubber on deep weed edges. Pretty focused all day and wasn't going to let the muskies win during the cold front and heavy winds. Buddy was on the front deck with me, he was pulling a sucker I was working a bulldawg. We were bs'in with each other and my dawg balled up after the cast. I worked it hard back to the boat to get it out of the water and a proper retrieve back in the water. Buddy and I look down and there she is. 4 foot plus fish with flared gills ready to eat and wondering where her dawg went.
These fish just keep surprising me every year and keep us on our toes. Wondering how many people experience this and it will be the last time I try to get the dawgball back so quickly. |
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Posts: 2325
Location: Chisholm, MN | It happens a lot. I believe when the bait is coming through the water sideways, it’s pushing a lot of water and causing a big stir that draws a lot of attention. |
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Posts: 1209
| The speed of the dogball retrieve may have been the key. It has happened to me as well. Maybe try and duplicate the speed with pauses to let it sink again. |
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Posts: 255
| it's Murphski's Law that big fish often show up at bad times. I did have a dawgball turn into a 42" catch once, and i think my hard pulls led to the hit. |
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Posts: 4080
Location: Elko - Lake Vermilion | Same here, even had fish hit dawgs covered in weeds.
Stupid FISH ! |
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Posts: 552
Location: WI | The frustration of feeling that dawgball at the end of the line adds an extra 20% to retrieve speed. That’s the key there. |
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Posts: 105
| I'm working on a custom lure based on that exact scenario. Too many times do I see a fish cruising in when reeling a fouled lure at full speed. So I made basically a fouled lure haha, it pulls like a mofo and sinks, almost like a underwater popper. Still trying to get it to do what I want to do, but here hoping it works someday. Speed is key I agree, but they also seem to just move a ton of water and really get fishes attention. |
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| Fishing with my daughter a couple years ago, she was throwing a Fat B. and noticed a wake behind the bait. She kept a steady pace but said, "I have a bunch of weeds on the bait". The fish followed all the way to the boat and went around once in the 8 before swimming away. When she finally took the bait out of the water it had a huge ball of weeds on the leader and front of the bait. We just shook our heads that the fish followed that mess for at least 30 feet. |
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Posts: 390
| I have a dussa that only gets follows when if fouled. Had multiple fish chase wrapped up topwaters. It happens a lot
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Posts: 1276
| North of 8 - 10/23/2020 7:13 AM
Fishing with my daughter a couple years ago, she was throwing a Fat B. and noticed a wake behind the bait. She kept a steady pace but said, "I have a bunch of weeds on the bait". The fish followed all the way to the boat and went around once in the 8 before swimming away. When she finally took the bait out of the water it had a huge ball of weeds on the leader and front of the bait. We just shook our heads that the fish followed that mess for at least 30 feet.
This reminds me of a humorous encounter a few years ago. I was throwing a spinner bait through clumps of very dense weeds. There were little alleys between these dense clumps, and I was trying to work the alleys. The spinner bait was a very good bait, in that when you cranked it through the edge of a week clump, you could grind it through, and it would come out clean. Well, I got a little aggressive, and through a bomb cast that missed the mark, and I pulled it right into the middle of this clump of weeds about two cranks into the retrieve. The bait was buried in a wad of weeds, literally, the size of a volleyball. It was like cranking in a log. As this big wad approached the boat, we noticed a little sub thirty inch musky, following with it's nose right on the back of the wad. It was so heavy, I couldn't even lift it up, so I leaned over and started pulling hand-fulls of weeds off. That little musky sat there, staring at the wad, with great focus as I cleaned off the weeds. I started thinking that I would try to start a figure eight once I got the bait cleaned off, but he finally took off just before I got the last of the weeds off. |
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Posts: 752
| A coworker/friend and I were talking to a fairly well known fisherman he is friends with about things like this and he added that the best top water lure was a fouled Jointed Believer..  Never underestimate what a fish wont eat...
Edited by Mojo1269 10/27/2020 10:12 AM
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Posts: 1080
| Fouled baits being brought back to the boat resulting in follows, hits and/or hook-ups simply supports the fact that if it's in the water and it's moving: it's food. |
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Dawgball