zara spook

[RangerboatsZ21]

I was fishing a tournament one morning in November. I was using a Zara Spook. I had
7 or 8 strikes on the Spook but I missed them all. Later that day after the tournament was over,it was almost dark and
I did catch a nice one on a Spook. Do you think I pulled the trigger to quick or was the fish just toying with it. Or could it be my hooks? This same thing happened to me a week before on another lake. What am I doing wrong??

[mofish]

Oh my fishing a Zara Spook gets my heart pumping.. Its hard to say why you didn't catch them. If you set the hook when they blew up on the bait and didn't feel the fish, you may have jerked it away from them. It could have been something as simple as changing colors of the bait, or changing the speed of your retrieve.. I use all kinds of different retrieves when fishing the spook till I figure out which one they want.. In a tournament I fish not to long ago the fish were hitting the bait and knocking it out of the water but were not taking it.. So I worked the bait a bit faster and then they started hooking up. Sometime you have to slow down and walk it two ro three times and then let it sit for a few seconds.

Sometimes you may want to try a Pop-R too. Ive seen days they would not touch a spook and then work the same water with a Popper and catch the heck out of them..

Or try a soft plastic fluke and work it just under the water.. dang thing about fish is they can be so picky on some days and then the next hit anything you throw at them..

Next time it happens try these things and see what happens..

[johnnie crain outdoors]

Good stuff from Conley. Could be you simply set too soon, you should always feel the weight of the fish before setting the hook on any top water. It takes nerves or steel or a blank mind, of which I have one, to do this, but it usually works.