Hey Brian Latimer - thanks for the instructions on how to land a big fish. I had just watched the video Tuesday night where you were telling your tips for how to land a big fish and Wednesday morning I tried your method for opening the bail and thumbing my spool to work the fish in. This was the first time I had ever tried it. How'd I do? I did land the fish and he only had a single hook in him so I was pretty pleased with using your method for the first time.

I fought him for over 2 minutes - of course I had to trim this video way down.

I fished this rip rap bank for a little while using this little jerk bait. I varied how I was fishing multiple times trying to figure out what they wanted. I fished it using light twitches and I tried fishing it with sharp heavy jerks and some retrieves I would mix it up light and heavy jerks in the same retrieve and also periods of just straight medium speed retrieve without any jerks or twitches. Oddly enough - the straight reel retrieve was what got this smallmouth to hit. I did start the retrieve with a few little twitches - so maybe that got his attention and he decided to go for it on the straight retrieve. I don't know 🤷🏽‍♂️ What do y'all think?