Happy New Year!

With 2014 drawing to a close its time to celebrate! Its also a time to learn from your experiences and make 2015 the best bass fishing year of your life! Taking the time to review what went right, what went wrong, and how you can improve is what separates good anglers from GREAT anglers.

For us, 2014 was a year of growth. We grew in numbers (Tim joined the team), we grew in size  (youtube hit 2 million views and nearly 10,000 subscribers! Thank you!) and the site has seen unprecedented support. We appreciate each and every one of you and hope that you've been able to learn something along the way that helped you grow in your fishing.

For fun we put together this compilation of some of our greatest moments from 2014. We hope you enjoy the video!

As 2015 approaches we know the importance of learning from the past and setting goals toward the future. All successful people have clear, concise goals that help them reach their target. In order to kick this year off right, Tim and I are laying out our goals for 2015. We encourage you to do the same! Whether your goal is to catch your first bass, catch a world record, or just have fun, we challenge you to leave a comment with your goals for 2015. Here are ours...

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Tim: 

• Help at least 3 friends break their "personal best" while fishing together
• Catch (another) 13+ lb largemouth
• Break a bass fishing world record

Matt:

• Help a minimum of 1 client catch a 10+ lb largemouth
• Catch a world record of any species (but I'd prefer an 11 lb Spotted Bass)
• Catch a 15 lb largemouth in Clearlake

Tactical:

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• Continue providing the best content we can, every Wednesday
• Reach 20,000 Youtube Subscribers
• Reach 15,000 Instagram Followers
• Meet more of you in person!
• Listen to at least 100 success stories from awesome anglers that have caught a new personal best and are inspired to share the experience with us (tacticalbassin@gmail.com)

We look forward to hearing your goals and growing together in 2015. See you next year!

Epic Battle On Light Line

You know that moment when you set the hook and instantly know you're not in control of the situation? This was one of those times! As soon as the hook was set it was very clear, Matt was in this fight for the long haul.

Its no secret, Matt will pick up a swimbait rod spooled with heavy line over just about anything else in his arsenal. Day in and day out the giant baits on heavy gear produce big bass. Even so, there is a time and a place for everything and on this particular day the bite was tough. A nasty cold front had blown in, bringing with it freezing rain and the threat of snow.

Matt spent the first half of the day probing likely areas with Huddleston and Trash Fish swimbaits to no avail.  After giving up on the big baits (It happens to everyone) he was doing his best to draw a reaction bite before packing it in and heading home.

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Just hoping for any bite and not really expecting a big bite, Matt had abandoned the heavy gear and was throwing a small crank on a light Crankbait rod, spooled with 20 lb braid and 10 lb leader. When the big fish hit she immediately surged away from the boat, the drag screaming as 20+ feet of line flew off the reel on the first run. Matt struggled to loosen the drag in time. Once the drag was backed off, cooler heads prevailed and it was a matter of waiting out the big fish as she burrowed under the boat in the open water.

While this big largemouth bass was unexpected, having the right gear and the patience to play the fish out made all the difference. With light line and little size 4 EWG hooks the fight could easily have ended in disaster. The whole experience just goes to show, its important to be a well rounded angler, willing to adapt to changing conditions. There are so many ways to catch a big bass. Its okay to fish your favorite techniques but when its not working, face the reality, change your presentation, and you might just catch a giant bass on a new technique!

Has this happened to you? Tell us about your most unexpected big bass catch. We'd love to hear about it!

Luck Favors the Prepared

As a serious angler one of my pet peeves is hearing someone say that fishing is "nothing but luck." Anyone who has put time on the water knows this simply isn't the case. We spend countless hours fine-tuning our equipment, studying weather, following fish movements, pouring over maps, and occasionally even fishing in order to keep an advantage on the water and eliminate as much of the "luck factor" as we can.  However, as this week's video will show you, sometimes it just pays to have a little luck!

I guess there will always be a very small part of bass fishing that involves luck. The vast majority of it is skill but you still need the fish to do what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it. On this particular day, the fish did everything right, even when things went completely wrong.

Its been quite a while since we just put up a fun video so this week we thought we'd do something different.

In case you don't understand what you're seeing, I'll give you some background. Tim is on Clearlake in Northern California. He's fishing a bait that we throw often, an S-Waver 200 in Light Trout. He's using a Dobyns 806H spooled with 65 lb braid and a 30 lb leader, afterall this is big fish country. Unbeknownst to him, he's nicked his leader and its no longer 30 lb.

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As you can see he gets bit several times but doesn't connect on the hookset. Now here is where the luck factor starts kicking in. In the moment, Tim just thinks he missed a bite, he has no idea (yet) he's enticed a wolf pack of big largemouth into attacking his bait. He immediately gets bit again, set's the hook, and breaks his weakened leader. On any other day it would be time to hang your head, shed a tear, and wave goodbye to your $35 lure and a BIG bass. But today, luck is on Tim's side. As a prepared angler he continues scanning the water instead of throwing a fit like most anglers would.

What he sees is a 2nd bass from the wolf pack try to steal the bait from the bass that broke him off. Now there are two bass (one on the front hook, another on the rear hook) fighting each other over the bait they're both hooked to. The fighting is so vicious they're actually doing cartwheels through the water. Tim springs into action with his net, scooping up not only his expensive swimbait but two big Clearlake bass!

There is no arguing that at this time, on this day, luck was on Tim's side. Too often things go terribly wrong. Gear fails, boats break down, bass don't bite, weather doesn't cooperate, but if you stay prepared the day will come when luck favors you and perhaps you too will have a day go from bad, to worse, to EPIC!

Congrats Tim and thanks for rolling the cameras so we could all see this crazy story play out. From cast to catch, one of the most amazing catches I've ever seen!

Monster Double Digit Bass Destroys a Swimbait!

If I had to choose just one way to target giant bass day in and day out, it would be the swimbait. Every year a variety of techniques put big bass in the boat but the most consistent option for the giants is the large swimbait.

On this day I had the pleasure of fishing with a close friend. We had put in a few hours already, catching just a few small bass on reaction baits in shallow water around grass. We had the choice of continuing to target those smaller fish or moving out to deeper water to try and get a big bass. We made the decision to move out and target the big females that were lurking on the ledges searching for easy meals.

On this particular day I used a Huddleston Deluxe 8" ROF 12 swimbait in Rainbow trout (there are no trout present in this lake but the bass don't care) and fished it with the stock jig hook. This allows me to work the bait through rocks without getting snagged on every cast.

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On just the 3rd cast, the giant bit. It just goes to show that throwing a big swimbait doesn't mean you're going to have to throw it for hours, waiting for the bite. When big bass are feeding, big baits work. In many circumstances they work BETTER than their smaller counterparts.

This particular fish was sitting on the top of a rocky ledge that transitioned from 6 to 17 feet of water. I set the boat in the shallows and cast off the ledge into the deep water. Wanting to avoid nicking the line in the rocks, I began retrieving the swimbait before it hit the bottom. As the bait came close to the top of the ledge the bass came up out of the rocks and intercepted it, resulting in a very aggressive bite. As you can see, the rest played out very quickly.