We're not side drifting for these fish. It's straight boondogging. Oh, and you are only seeing my edits. I put the "whiffs" in there for fun!

Here's my take on it:

I will suspect if you're waiting for summer fish to hook themselves, you're probably going to be missing a ton of fish.

Some fish committ suicide and swallow the bait (no brainers. Line is screaming. You got fish. Reel now). Some fish will just pick up your bait and swim along with the boat, only to spit it out. Some fish will chomp on the bait, but not committ. If you don't set the hook on these fish, you will *NOT* get them by waiting.

Unlike a winter run, which doesn't want to move too much for your bait, the summer run will happily move a great distance for a bait. You can see this in the video when I hook that "chaser". That fish easily traveled 20 feet from it's hiding slot to get my prawn that I was retrieving to the boat! Because these fish are fiesty, they like to grab the baits and swim with the boat. The only indication you might get that you have a fish is either a slacked up line (dead giveaway you should set the hook NOW), or some very subtle on the ol' IMX 1141s. The 1141 may, or may not fully load up on you.

Since the winter run fish likes to stay put, all you have to do is keep moving the boat, and the fish will probably just hook itself. That has been my experience in boonin' for winter/spring fish. They tend to easily hook themselves.

I'd say the majority of these summer runs have inhaled the baits and it probably wouldn't make a difference if we set the hook or not.

But, try getting me to "wait" with a 1141 and a summer run. Yeah, I'll wait until number 3, and it's all over. Set the hook and bust the rod, 'cuz it's fish on time!

We see guide boats full of clueless clients catch fish all the time. So, that tells you the "hold the rod and look stupid" method of boondogging does work.

Maybe it's not necessary, but we're not missing fish because we're setting the hook. Of the fish we do miss, we always tend to feel that we waited too long for the hookset.

Feeling the "bite" and the 1141 loading up, followed by a good, hard hookset, is 99% of the fun for me! Past that, you can reel up the fish for me.