Watching Josh play he can reach from fret 1 to 6 or more it seems like and not even look like he’s stretching… Alien I’m sure! 
I don’t have small hands but I do have short fingers and having broken all of them over the years some are even shorter than they used to be I can’t reach very far without my palm touching a string and then when I move it makes that string ring.
My motivation has been to watch others with small hands play and see what they do and try to emulate it. Josh goes over moving the hand instead of stretching but to see someone like Yonit Yonit Spiegelman - Live Funk | Bass Improv - YouTube do it is pretty awesome. - YouTube
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Ha! Yeah - never watch Josh’s fingers and try and do the same thing. He is an anatomical anomaly designed to shred bass above and beyond the ken of most mortals.
Moving the hand is clutch - keeping the hand loose is very important! Loose but strong!
Yes - move hands, don’t stretch fingers. If you’re used to placing your Left Thumb in the middle of the back of the neck, it is an excellent pivot. You can rock around from that to get all kinds of groovy reaches.
Best of luck!
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Some inspiration from superstars with normal to relatively small hands 
Combine with “good music Friday” :
Kiyoshi:
Boh:
F-Chopper Koga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ahaMOMIDpc
Peter Hook:
Misa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tRxT76DDY8
Reita:
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If you heard anything you liked there, here’s some background for those artists since many people don’t follow JRock or post-punk. Despite living here a decade I am still getting in to JRock myself.
Unlike JPop, JRock trends bass-heavy and hard so it’s a fertile ground for kickass bass players.
Kiyoshi is the bass player for Marty Friedman’s (of Megadeth fame) band. She is also full time in at least two other bands and has a solo career with three albums (so far) of just her and a drummer. She’s my favorite recent discovery and definitely worth looking in to - I would say she is the best of the bunch for originality and (except maybe Boh) technical skill. That video is just of her practicing form, like we all do, but much faster.
Boh, in addition to his own stuff, is the bass player for BABYMETAL. If you have written off BABYMETAL as a gimmick idol band, don’t - the producer that formed them had the brilliant vision to back them with a really tight metal band and they are a huge act now.
F Chopper Koga is the bass player for the band Gacharic Spin. They and their side project Doll$boxx are kind of quirky slap-bass-heavy hard pop/rock - and they are all solid musicians.
Peter Hook is the bass player from the original post-punk band Joy Division and subsequently the '80s genre-defining band New Order, my favorite bands and my favorite bassist. He’s cited as an influence by many indie and alternative rock bassists primarily because he pioneered a unique style.
Misa is the bass player for the theme-metal band Band Maid. There’s a story behind this one but the basic gist is a maid cafe waitress got fed up and convinced a bunch of extremely talented music school grads to form a very aggressive rock/metal band - while still dressing as maids as a theme for contrast and irony (and presumably ticket sales).
Reita is the bass player for The Gazette. They run the gamut from (very) hard rock through metal to punk. While Reita’s hands pretty much look normal size to me, he can do superhuman stretches with them.
And none of them have large hands 
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This thread is an inspiration for me. I don’t think I have “small” hands (I wear size medium glove), but I was getting frustrated watching Josh spanning 5 or 6 frets effortlessly, and thinking this is the way I’m supposed to do it. I tried, and it’s physically impossible for me to span more than 3 frets, and even that’s a stretch. I was ready to give up bass playing.
Now that I’ve seen videos of great bassists sliding their left hand around the fret board like I’ve been doing, I’m stoked.
I’ve been focused on spending a couple hours a day doing intense fretting drills and working on accurately and quietly sliding on the fret board.
Wax on…wax off. Wax on…wax off
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Yay!
Here’s a couple more
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@PamPurrs, I really don’t have small hands, but finger span can be a thing for even shovel-handed people. My fingers don’t look like a bunch of bananas (they’re closer to a fistful of sausages) but they’re not long & flexible so I find anything more than 4 fret spread hard at the low end of the neck (headstock end) and it slows down my scales and long arpeggios, so I was interested to see how some good players manage, and you’ve hit the nail on the head in spotting the amount of left hand movement.
I still struggle to keep the left thumb lightly touching the neck so the idea of drifting the hand up and down the neck baffled me and I kept ending up trying to span, which led to rolling my wrist around to get any pressure on the frets with my little finger.
I guess we all have to find a way around our limitations, and ways to extend those limits, so that we can play our beloved instruments. When you sit down and watch dozens of players you’ll soon see techniques that teachers will tell you to avoid at all costs, or that look impossible to us, but these players have found what works for them. A classic example is Tommy Ioni who lost the tip of a finger at work (well before Black Sabbath) yet he’s now considered one of the best rock guitarists out there.
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I saw them live at Carolina Rebellion a few years ago. It was an odd mix of pleasure and shame: I really enjoyed the music, and they DO have a fantastic metal band, but they also are(or look) like they are about 14 years old…so its a little awkward sometimes.
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I saw my friend from Japan a couple of months ago and asked if he had ever seen BABYMETAL. He laughed and said, " Uh, No. Because I’m not a pedophile." 
We were at a funeral and didn’t have a chance to talk further about it.
@howard Do you know what he was talking about?
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He was probably commenting on the fact that it’s a metal idol band whose gimmick is it is fronted by kids, I would imagine - though they must all be in their 20s by now, that was definitely their gimmick.
There’s a lot that’s skeevy about the idol band thing in Japan - primarily (or entirely) the fans. I have made similar comments to what your friend said many times. I remember one time someone asked me what “AKB48” meant and I said something like “It’s Japanese for ‘dude she’s 15.’”
The reason I said they shouldn’t be written off above is that although they are a gimmick idol band, they are a gimmick idol band backed by a super solid metal backing band. And they almost singlehandedly kicked off a musical genre. Their producer is a genius - but yeah they have a lot of skeevy fans.
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Like @howard said, when the band started the three singers were 14,14, and 16 I think. So they should all be into their early 20s now. However, they still look like they are 12…but Asian women tend to look very young for much longer than other areas in my experience.
But the whole schtick is that you have these three young innocent looking Japanese girls singing mostly bubbly sounding lyrics over a hardcore metal band that is super raw and aggressive…but REALLY good too.
So it is a weird juxtaposition of worlds.
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Another band I mentioned up in that post, Doll$boxx, has funny video kind of skewering the whole idol band skeevy fan thing. The band is the musicians from Gacharic Spin with the singer from Unlucky Morpheus and it’s kind of like what Hole would have been if Hole had come from power-pop/rock/metal and not grunge. (And been made up of world class musicians.)
I like the flipping back and forth between what the 30-something band actually looks like vs the costumes. Some nice bass slapping there from Koga as well.
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Thank you! I can’t wait to watch them!
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The best thing about this kid is his bass face
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That kid’s got a great future ahead of him!
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I think I’m becoming a convert to all sorts of Japanese music, and it’s all your fault @howard.
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Confession: I used to think I probably couldn’t play bass because I have hands like a girl.
Then I stumbled across this lady’s videos and was just like “Oh… I’m a dumbass…” 
These days I’m thankfully a little more educated about bass players.
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But you’re also in here, so you can e a badass instead. 
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You arent the only one that has the flying pinky issue… as beginners/intermediate players Im sure most of us struggle with that!
And I am also like you…so driven to the point of detriment to myself. If I cant be “Good” then I dont want to do it. I have to keep telling myself that “Good” at bass will take a long time and a lot of patience. Just enjoy the moment, learn something new every day, and in time all of this will come together!
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