"Setting the Hook"

This weekend I landed an 18 inch Largemouth on Saturday and then a 21 1/4 inch Largemouth on Sunday.  Both of them were hooked with a green 7-inch power worm on a Texas rig.  I am fairly certain of two things which enable me consistently catch really big fish; 1) Fishing deep water 2) Using a big bait.  

But today I wanted to share my knowledge on how I set the hook on these big fish.  

The first thing I do when I feel a fish pick up my worm is to point the rod tip at the fish and slowly reel in any slack.  Once I feel I have taken up all the slack, I know I have pressure on the line.  The next step takes a bit of imagination, but at this point I imagine the bass' mouth is shut and he is swimming around with my plastic worm and hook inside his closed mouth.  I will then raise my pole from the 9:00 position to about the 10:30 position, or until I feel the weight of the fish.  What I am trying to do here is bring that worm and hook to the front of the bass' mouth.  For an analogy, imagine somebody pulling a spaghetti noodle out of your mouth and all you can do to try and stop it is to hold the noodle with your lips; unless at the end of that noodle there was a big meatball you could hold on to.  This is how I imagine the fishing line coming out of the bass' mouth.  At this time the eye of the hook is at the front of the bass' mouth (with the worm) and the pointy side of the hook is resting against the inside of  the bass' mouth, lined up like a surgeon resting the head of a needle against your skin.  When I bring my rod from the 10:30 position to the 12:00 position, I simultaneous give a the line a quick jerk by flipping my wrist to "pop" the hook quickly through the bass' mouth (hopefully, the top).

 In all, it is a little exhaustive process but I feel it gives me the strongest hook-set without without "ripping" the fish's mouth, gutting him with the hook or poking his eye out.

Here is the 18 inch Largemouth I caught Saturday using this hook set technique.