No offense taken Joe, I know you do very well bass fishing and I read all of your reports.
I make the linkage for a few reasons.
The most obvious to me is all tournaments and most bass fishermen use artificials and though the nice bass you caught were on artificials it is my opinion that the truly biggest bass in any water are solitary and need to be targeted specifically with huge large baits like a 9" fallfish or something equivalent. Few fishermen bother with that kind of preparation for any species.
That is how I target trophy walleye with my biggest in Ohio being 35", NY 30", Pa 33" and Ct 30 -- all on huge baits in water devoid of smaller walleye.
Or the Manitoba trip with Blaine where we had 12 Master Angler pike, the most of any group in Gods Lake that year, each fish over 43 1/2". The big pike were up on deep grass flats surrounded by deeper water and there were relatively few smaller pike. You catch a hundred small pike by fishing the shallow bays.
Or monster fluke. When I had my place in Montauk in the 70s before it was so crowded out there you could get trophy fluke by fishing deep holes and rocky areas especially around Labor Day when they were on the move to offshore locations. That is where and when the world record was caught and where I had a 16, 14, two 12s, and many above 10 and I have those pictures and may have put them in the gallery on the site a few years ago. You didn't catch any small fluke because you were not using a strip bait, you were using the entire filet of sea robin trimmed to a diamond shape or whole live bergalls and snapper blues.
There are state record brown trout swimming in at least three different state lakes and they don't feed on herring anymore, instead targeting much larger baits like stocker sized trout and kokanee. These fish don't get caught by trolling five colors.
So in my mind there is a difference in bass fishing too. Just like I hunt rack bucks instead of just going deer hunting I would hunt a trophy bass by avoiding the average bass and fish deeper with huge baits. I have inferred that this will work because it works on other species.
I think if you are a versatile sportsman who has mastered many of the hunting and fishing strategies in saltwater, freshwater and in the woods and fields then you can translate that into other strategies that you may not participate in much.
That is why I own a 3wt, 5wt, 7wt and 10wt flyrods plus multiple glass fly rods yet I am not a fly fisherman. I live 5 minutes from Candlewood and have fished it since 1984 and have graphed the entire lake knowing it like the back of my hand catching hundreds of quality smallies over the years but I am not a bass fisherman.
Last year on a local pond I had 30 trout to 4lbs and 20 bass with a half dozen over 20 inches until I ran out of bait but I was neither a trout fisherman or a bass fisherman that day. Just a guy out for the morning.
So I don't think it is necessary to be a fly fishing entomologist to be a knowledgeable trout fisherman nor a tournament bass fishermen to be knowledgeable about bass and their habits. I think a versatile sportsman who is competent in many different disciplines can translate that knowledge into other areas.