(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Tournaments are won and lost by ounces, and while every angler has a story about “the one that got away,” the ability to minimize those memories makes the difference between a champion and an also-ran. While Australian Elite Series pro Carl Jocumsen has suffered his share of heartbreak, over the course of his varied career he’s come to believe that there’s a “perfect formula” of rod, reel, line and hookset angle for every technique.
It’s a theory he developed while fishing for barramundi back home. He called the cartwheeling fish the “masters of getting away,” and said it’s not unheard of to go 0-for-20 in a few days of fishing. Simply adjusting one element of your gear set-up can improve that percentage substantially.
“It’s not luck when you landed it,” he said. “When you landed it, you did something right.”
He took a lesson from Mike Iaconelli, whom he noticed checks the hook position of every fish he lands and essentially asks “Why did I catch it?” If the hook is buried, there’s a reason for that. If it’s not in past the barb, there’s a reason for that, too, and it requires an adjustment.
While rod, reel, line and the size of the fish all make a difference in how he fights them, he believes that the biggest differentiator is often hook diameter and style. With cutting-edge hooks, like those on Trokars, the “hookset doesn’t have to be as hard,” but they fail around rock and other hard cover, where needle-point hooks like Gamakatsus excel.
The amount of leverage a fish has also matters. With a lipless crankbait, where there’s a lot of weight right next to the leverage point, it’s important to neutralize the fish’s power, so he utilizes EWG or Mustad hooks. With a line-thru swimbait, the weight pulls away from the hook, giving the advantage back to the angler, so he might use a round-bend.
At least year’s Elite tournament on the Chesapeake Bay, he realized how much rod choice makes a difference. He used his “normal” spinnerbait stick for short range pitches with the blade, but missed more fish than usual. Then he realized that it was a rod made for long casts and covering water. He switched to a shorter, stiffer stick, and “couldn’t get the hooks out of the fish.” The same holds true when he throws a frog – the rod he uses for “bomb casts” is different than the one that he uses to skip into heavy cover, and so is the force and angle of his hookset.
He’s a fanatic about big swimbaits, but it took time to learn that with the monster lures “the hookset is everything.”
“You don’t want to see or feel the fish,” he said. “Just continue the same motion. It allows them to eat it.” In some cases he’ll use multiple split rings to keep the fish buttoned, and he’s quickly become a fan of Japanese Decoy quad hooks (four points instead of the usual three), which are super sharp, super strong, and hook many bass that just slash at the bait.
In his Bass University class, Jocumsen details many of his specific setups for highly specialized techniques, including blade baits, finesse presentations and jigs. The bottom line, though, is that frequently “We all say, ‘I got unlucky,’ but it’s far from unlucky” when you lose a fish. Usually there’s something you could have done better. Getting the bite is critical – what you do with it is just as important.
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