A lot of bass fishing is “hurry up and wait.” Get up 2 hours before daylight, race to the ramp, wait in line to launch the boat, jump out and get it in the water as fast as you can, then park the boat and pole down for 30 minutes til blast off.
Fish all day, race back to check-in, bag your fish to weigh them and it’s time to wait in line again. As soon as you’re off stage, you hit high gear again and get back to the house to prep tackle, scarf down some food and pass out.
Again, a lot of bass fishing is hurry up and wait. That’s always the case in the grand scheme. But this week, it’s been hurry up and wait every cast for anglers like Gerald Swindle and Hunter Shryock.
To get bit on the Mississippi River this week, there are basically two schools of thought: find a wad of fish and camp out on them, or cover as much water as possible. Most anglers tried to find the schools, but those that couldn’t had no choice but to cover water.
What this second pattern looks like this week, is making what likely feels like a million casts a day. Most of these anglers who are covering water are targeting bass with hollow-body frogs. They’ll cast their bait up into thick vegetation, work it slowly out to the edge and then burn the bait back in and bomb it out again.
By reeling their bait in as fast as they can once they’ve left the supposed strike zone, anglers are able to add a few dozen casts to their total throughout the day. It’s an exhausting way to fish, and nerve-racking. You have to basically give up on each cast at some point, to trade that cast in for a new one.
And inevitably at some point, right as you start to burn the bait in, a big one explodes on it and misses the bait. This throws an angler into mental turmoil as he has to again adjust his calculations for the next cast.
Fun to watch, not nearly as stressful on this side of the lens.
