[ The bite, if you could call it that, was the fish putting the minnow in its mouth and just holding on to it.

Fishers since that type of bite occurs so frequently we have coined a term for it so as to have a universal means of referring to it. We call those irritating so and sos Hitchhikers. I don't know why but it seemed to fit. By the way I am impressed by the way you stuck with that and figured something out that worked. Nice bag of tricks!