Confidence at All Costs

Confidence at All Costs

February 22, 2021

Confidence is a major player when you want to compete in anything. Bass fishing is no different. If you don’t have confidence in the area you are fishing, the bait you are throwing, or the rod you are using, you are not going to even think you are going to get a bite. Sometimes confidence can come in different forms. Sometimes confidence comes in the strangest ways. Sometimes you have to create that confidence.

How do you get confidence in bass fishing?

I have been bass fishing for almost my whole life. I have been all over the country and caught thousands and thousands of bass. I have lots of confidence to catch bass in many different types of lakes and rivers. I have caught bass on many different types of lures. If you don’t have that kind of experience in bass fishing, confidence can be harder to obtain.

Videos on bass fishing don’t give you confidence in a particular way to catch bass. They give you ideas. Articles can do the same. Your friends giving you suggestions should only give you ideas on how to catch bass. This is the first step into getting confidence in bass fishing. I highly advise getting multiple ideas to try for when you go bass fishing next. The way to do it is rotate between the ideas until you figure out what the bass want or what applies to where you are fishing.

It is all in the bite

Once you get those ideas, you are ready to hit the water. If you watched videos or had someone tell you about an idea, be sure to pay attention to all the details on the rod, line, weight, how they were fishing, and so on. Little things can make a difference. They can make a big difference.

For me, one bite on a new bait or in a new area can give me confidence. The key is if the bite coincides with all those details you remembered. That should immediately give you confidence in what you are doing. I would say this is what happened to me when I got my first bite on a Whopper Plopper. It is a crazy looking lure. It runs really fast. When I got around a grass line just like I had heard about and saw that bass explode on the Plopper, I had immediate confidence on this crazy looking topwater bait. Since then, I have caught hundreds of bass on the Plopper.

False Confidence

Be sure to avoid false confidence. One bite does not always mean you are doing it right or have found the next best bass fishing lure. Some bites are luck and not all lures work all the time. When you get that bite, make sure it fits into all those details about the proper conditions and way you are using it. Colors are also a big player for false confidence. When you catch a bass on a certain color, that does not mean that is the only color. It could be the water color. It could be the weather conditions. Some colors are triggers for bites but a simple bite on one color does not mean all bass are going to eat it.

You need to get confidence in what you are fishing with. I have utmost confidence in Missile Baits and the rest of my equipment. It is important to develop confidence in your gear when you head out to go bass fishing. Once you do, you will be sure to have more success on the water.