"Did you catched one?"
"Naw."
"I JUST saw you put it back!"
"...Oh, that one? That was my pet bass. I was taking it out for a swim."
Omar is the type of kid who will only go fishing if he's been told the fish are biting, so after seeing me catch a fish, he whizzed back home to get his bass gear and was back at the pond 15 minutes later as I was releasing another one.
"Did you caught another one?!"
"Shouldn't you be in gym class?"
We made a lap with neither of us getting a bite, and he asked me what bait I would recommend for him to throw.
"Throw a jerkbait. These fish are post spawn so they're either eating or guarding or both. You can cover ground and slow down if you need to. Plus you stay off of all the snot that is on the bottom."
"Naw, those jerkbaits you gave me never work. They're mid."
•
A few months ago, I let Omar raid my bass fishing closet (since I can't be buried with all this tackle) and he scored some pretty good stuff, and stuff I didn't even know I had. He left with 2 full Plano boxes, but what I found it curious is that he went after the baits that were brand new, instead of the ones that were beat to $hit.
"Omar, why aren't you getting the baits that look like they've been through hell and back? That usually means they've caught fish before, right?"
The hamster wheel in his head started turning and he picked up a few older LuckyCraft Pointers 78s that I had. You know the ones; the ones whose paint is falling off after the number of fish it has caught throughout the decades, and you've had to swap the trebles about a dozen times through it's life time. He still didn't quite understand the concept that if your hard bait's paint job is pristine, that means you haven't caught $hit on it. I see these guys at the pond all the time, showing people their hard baits that have caught 'hundreds of bass' but look like they were just opened from the box.
•
"Omar, I bet you that I can grab your rod and that jerkbait I gave you, cast right here where you've been casting, and catch a fish."
"Yeah right."
So, I grabbed his rod and made my cast right where he was casting, and went through some pointers, no pun intended, since he was using the jerkbait like if he was burning a crankbait.
"Learn how to jerk on slack line, that's key. Find the cadence they want. Sometimes they want a jerk, jerk, pause. Sometimes a jerk, pause. Sometimes they want a longer pause. Sometimes they want a shorter pause. But, for the most part, I've gotten the majority of my fish on the pau --"
And before I could finish my sentence, I had a fish on.
"And you said the jerkbaits I gave you are mid, eh?"
