A lot of people spend too much time culling fish when they ought to be fishing. I don’t use scales to cull with; my theory is that if I just caught a fish, I’m either into them pretty good or they’ve just started biting and I need to take advantage of it while I can.
I like to keep two markers in my livewell; and I’ll put them on the two smallest fish that I hope to cull. How do I know which are the smallest? Because I’ve been a bass fisherman for a long time and I’ve gotten pretty good at judging a fish’s weight just by eyeballing it. I’m not saying I haven’t missed a few ounces here and there over the years, but probably not enough to make a big difference at a weigh-in.
If you’re not confident in your ability to judge a bass’ weight, train yourself through practice. When you catch a bass while you’re out fun-fishing, don’t just tell yourself it’s a 3-pounder or a 4 1/2-pounder; be precise down to the ounce. Judge its weight and then use a scale to see how close you came. Keep it up; you might be way off at first, but over time you can get pretty doggone accurate.
—- Castrol pro Darrel Robertson, Jay, Okla.