Have you ever heard of Rookie Luck?? Trust me, there is such a thing and it could be YOU!!!!
So many times, I’ve been in a tournament and had a new angler in the boat with me or actually fishing the tournament and they either win or place really high up in the standings….WHY is that, if they are new and don’t have much experience?
Here’s my explanation and some other witnessed accounts of even experienced fishermen. New anglers, “Rookies”, have often watched so many YouTube videos, local angler videos, witnessed friend anglers, etc but sometimes, they do not really hone in and pay close attention to cadence, line size, reel ratios, etc. They may watch a video on fishing a crankbait and think they would be cool to try, so, at the next opportunity, they tie on a SPRO rock crawler, Strike King or Lucky Strike and get ready for a big one……and they catch one. How does this happen? As stated before, the new angler is so focused on fishing that “cool” or “pretty” crank bait that they don’t pay attention to how it is actually fished. Is there a right way or wrong way to fish it? Most crank baits are fished on lighter line and faster gear ratio reels and in all different ways “OFFICIALLY.” Unofficially, there are so many different ways that a crank bait CAN be fished. Lots of people, Kevin VanDam, for example, chunk and wind, long casts and fast reeling all the way back to the boat. Some anglers, Edwin Evers, utilizes several pauses, stops and starts and even does just a slow pull periodically as it’s coming back to the boat. New anglers often develop their own cadence and may not even realize what it is, because they may not have heard the “correct way” to fish them. They develop their own way and it’s usually NOT in a way that the fish are used to seeing so that makes it more appealing to them. Basically what it boils down to is, experience is great, but sometimes, the lack of experience works out pretty great too.
I do a lot of volunteer work as a boat captain for youth anglers and I’ve heard another boat captain talking about a couple of youth anglers he had in his boat one time that were “dead sticking” a whopper plopper. Dead sticking, actually is a terminology for just letting the bait sit still when cast towards a target and whopper ploppers are moving baits with a propeller on the back that rotates and causes noise and a wake behind the bait as it is being reeled back to you. I’ve also utilized a crank bait on a Carolina rig before and it works. It gives you an opportunity to get a shallow crank bait that has a different action than a deep diving crank bait, down deeper where the fish aren’t used to seeing a bait with that type of action.
Bottom line is, I think, newbies are always willing to think outside the box and lots of times…..it works.
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