How I Learned to Catch Bass at age 48
I caught my first bass October 14, 2017, at the age of 48.
This is my story.
I have wanted to learn to fish since 2010, maybe earlier. At the time I had a romantic notion that I could learn to fish, live down on the Texas coast and fish for my dinner. Living a life of eating redfish, drum, and speckled trout. But in the mean time, I would learn to catch bass in and around my local area honing my craft.
After countless…. and I mean countless hours of watching youtube videos and FAILING. I stopped trying and just settled on watching youtube videos. It was sad people. Sad.
Then in early October of 2017, I was having a morning coffee at my local Starbucks watching a fishing video on my laptop when my Starbucks neighbor leans over and asks if I fish. I confessed that watch videos of fishing and dream of a day that I can call myself a fisherman.
It turns out his name was Dave, he proceeds to ask me a couple of questions about what I have done, where I live and what my intentions were and I disclose that I really just wanted to catch one large mouth bass. Just one.
In a short few minutes he teaches me about plastic worms from Gary Yamamoto called Senkos and how to tie said worm “Texas Rigged.”
Then he asks me if I am aware of the church pond in our neighborhood. It turns out Dave lived in my hood. I was aware of that pond. He then draws me a “map” on a napkin of the best place to fish the Texas rigged worm and he tells me to walk a path that he has carefully drawn on the napkin and cast my bait for one hour. If I cast for one hour and I am faithful to the process, he promised. I would catch my bass.
You can guess what I did. I did what he said and with in 15 minutes I caught my first bass. In the picture. That smile on my face, that is my most natural and excited face I have. I felt like a kid who still believes in Santa Claus opens the perfect gift and wonders how Santa knew what I wanted.
What Dave gave me more than tactics, is he gave me confidence. With his “map” in my pocket and they way he assured me I would catch a fish — I BELIEVED I was going to catch one.
My attitude went from hoping and knowing I would never catch one to full confidence. Dave believed in me. I started to believe in myself.
Now I fish a couple of times per week. 2 hours at a time, sometimes a little more sometimes a little less. I *generally* catch one modest bass per outing but as it has gotten colder that has decreased.
For a modest investment of around $50 or even less if you have some of the gear in your garage you can get started at any age.
At the end of the day, I derive more benefit from being outside, alone, not looking at my iphone and thinking about life than I do in the catching of the fish. Ok who am I kidding, I love catching fish.
As a note, I am very careful when taking the hooks out of the fish mouth and I try hard to follow proper release procedures as not cause harm to the bass.
I record a weekly vlog call the Weekly Grier, and in this section you can see my wife and me in action.
Thank you for your attention. Learn more about me at terrygrier.com
