Top 3 Fishing Stories of the Week: 5 PB Bass Tips, Make Followers Bite, and the West’s Best Fly Fishing

From 5 Proven Tips to Catch Your Personal Best Largemouth, to Explaining and Converting Bass that Follow Without Biting, to Colorado’s premier fly fishing destinations, these stories captured our Sports Illustrated fishing reader’s attention on Fishing on SI this past week.

5 Proven Tips to Catch Your Personal Best Largemouth, to Explaining and Converting Bass that Follow Without Biting, and Colorado’s premier fly fishing destinations. | Justin Hoffman | 268373160 - Ken Desloover - Dreamstime.com | Jasper Taback

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1.) 5 Proven Tips to Catch the Biggest Largemouth Bass of Your Life

As anglers, our common goal is to catch the biggest fish possible. It's a game of inches for those who chase the elusive muskie, but for the fan-favorite largemouth bass, pounds is where it's at.
Where you reside, and therefore where the bass reside, dictates what qualifies as a trophy. Here in Ontario, Canada, the 'unofficial' mark is five-pounds. For those that fish the southern U.S. or California, a double digit fish gets the well-deserved recognition and fanfare.

Commonly called a 'PB' (Personal Best), this moniker gives credit to the milestone achieved upon landing your biggest largemouth ever. But raising the bar is what keeps us all fishing, because records are made to be broken.

Here are five proven fishing tips to help you catch the biggest largemouth bass of your life…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.

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2.) Why Bass Follow But Don’t Bite—And 5 Steps to Fix It

If you’ve been fishing for any length of time, you know the frustration. As your lure gets closer, you notice a large shadowy figure just under or behind your lure. It’s the bass you’ve been waiting for all day—maybe all year. It’s casually easing up closer to your bait, but it’s just looking, not attacking. Then as quickly as it appeared, it vanishes back out of sight.

Jerkbaits and glide baits are two of the most notorious lures that you’ll see bass following without striking. As maddening as that experience can be, that same scene likely played out many times that day, just out of your range of sight. But once you have a confirmed sighting, there are steps you can take to increase the likelihood of a strike…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.

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3.) The West’s Best Fly Fishing Isn’t in Montana Anymore

Colorado holds a special place in my heart – it’s where I learned to fly fish and really caught the bug, so I try to get back whenever I can.

Recently, the opportunity came up to spend a few days exploring trout water in a part of the state that was new to me, and I jumped.

The Gunnison Valley, tucked between the San Juan and West Elk Mountains on Colorado’s Western Slope, is best known for two destination mountain towns – Gunnison and Crested Butte. 

Both towns are great in their own right, but there’s a whole lot more to the valley worth experiencing…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.