Part of that has to do with the player, as said - mebbe most of it. As I am my own bassist, on those occasions, I play it again.
When mixing others' stuff, I generally hand-ride the gain; I'm ITB, so I often just go in and find the offending note and lower it destructively, right on the track - it's typically easy to see and usually in the same place (ex., start of the riff.)
If I'm inna hurry, then heavy compression and limiting, with mebbe a pass filter if it's the low E.