Fightin' words.

Straight outta Dunlop.

Bass are not trout. I say this because I have seen many fly fisherman who don't adapt their game to match the species. Specifically I want to talk about how to fight bass. I'll tell you now, you are far better off emulating the Bassmaster pro's than you are some flyfishing T.V. hosts.

With trout, we often fish light tippets. With large fish on light tippets, there are all sorts of ways to pooch it up. A 20+" fish on 6x is going keep an angler on there toes. Too much pressure your poing to pop the leader, to little and the fish will take forever to tire. Got to find that happy medium.

Bass? Well, we're not talking light tippets are we? My standard rigging is 10lb monofilament. No tippet material needed. No way on earth is any smallmouth going to break that..................assuming it has been nicked. Even the largest bass can be absolutely manhandled. The only time your going to want to let it tire is when you get it by the boat. Then all your going to do is basically hold it in place. It will try to dive, and you may have to feed it a couple of feet of line, but I do this as I'm more concerned about my rod tip than I am the leader.

Beat the crap out of those fish! Don't ever let a bass dictate the fight to you. You beat the drum. On of the best pieces of advice I received from a fellow angler was from my buddy Pete. he told me " If your scared of losing a big fish, your never going to land one." Although he was talking about big browns at the time, this advice has always held true.