Sounds like you learned a lot :) Too bad some learning experiences are really painful, but we have all been there. The bigger the bass are, the better they are at getting away. And when it's really hard to get a fish to bite your bait, sometimes you wind up making stupid mistakes because you are trying to push the envelope to get bit and you're doing things that might not be the best idea when it comes to landing the fish.

I'm big on the megastrike scent also. It is by far the best scent for putting on a big bait because it actually lasts and stays on the lure for a long time. Hot sauce is good, but megastrike lasts longer. And one tube lasts forever. I use it every trip and am still on my first tube.

When you get a really big fish on, sometimes it's uncontrollable and you just have to cross your fingers and hope it stays on. There are some fish that no matter how hard you might pull or how far you stick your rod under the water, the fish will jump completely out of the water anyway. There are a few things you can try though that might help.

If you see the fish eat your bait, you can try to set the hook across the fish's face so that you get a hook in the corner of the mouth. Setting straight up and down and getting a hook in the roof of the mouth only works if you get the hook completely through the roof of the mouth. It's easy to get roof of the mouth shots on 3lbers. The odds of that happening on a 10lb fish are pretty slim. It's not something you always have control over, but it's something you can try if you are quick enough to see what's happening.

The other thing is to just be aware of hook angles, especially when the fish is close to the boat. I totally try to lead fish around in a way that keeps tension on the line and on the hook so that the hook is always holding tight and not pointing in some weird direction. In my float tube or kickboat, if I can get a fish in pretty close to me, I'll catch it almost every single time because I'll start paddling in a circle really fast, leading the fish around and around and around until it's tired. I call that move the death spiral, lol. I started doing that for halibut fishing in the ocean and it worked really good for bass as well. Can't exactly do that in a boat though ;) That's when you need the 6' net handle and a huge net on the end.