Caught my first Bass yesterday, now I am hungry to learn more.

[detroithiker]

I caught a small mouth I believe due to its red eyes.
I am just learning the key is to find the bass in the first place, I don't know much yet but through the use of youtube, I learned to look for spots with cover, I mostly fish from land but I own a kayak and plan to try that out.
Now I just started to fish a few weeks ago and could use as many tips as I can get so please give me some starting advice.

I use an open face spin cast about $60 medium weight, 8 lb line.
Green pumpkin KVD plastic worms.
And mostly Texas rig.

I think the things I need to develop the most is.
)locating bass
)how to make the worm move the right way to get a hit.

[TimH]

Congrats on catching your first bass and for your desire to learn more.  Bass fishing is an incredible sport and you will truly learn something new every time your on the water.  I am by no means a pro, but I would be more than willing to try and help you learn more about bass fishing.  Let me know if you are interested, and we can set something up.

[detroithiker]

Congrats on catching your first bass and for your desire to learn more.  Bass fishing is an incredible sport and you will truly learn something new every time your on the water.  I am by no means a pro, but I would be more than willing to try and help you learn more about bass fishing.  Let me know if you are interested, and we can set something up.

I would be grateful, lets set something up for sure.

[djkimmel]

8 lbs test line is a little light for Texas-rigged worms though it will work fine for light wire hooks and finesse worms which will catch both small and big bass.

Clearest way to identify a smallmouth bass verses a largemouth bass is where the end of the mouth lines up closed on the side of the face.

If the end of the jaw is directly below the eye center or shorter it is probably a smallmouth bass. If the end of the mouth is further down the body past the eye towards the tale it is probably a largemouth bass.

Here's a fish identification tool from the Wisconsin Sea Grant: http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/home/Default.aspx?tabid=604

[djkimmel]

Here's a picture I put together of a comparison of the smallmouth bass and largemouth bass mouth position to help in identifying the two apart from each other. Their mouths aren't closed but you can still see the red line indicates where the mouth ends in relation to the center of their eye.