With the new season here and another Classic in the books, a lot of anglers are itching to hit the water as they tend not to fish as much during the colder months.
That is up to the individual in terms of when they feel most comfortable fishing but if you’re one of those folks who don’t do a lot of chunking and winding when it’s cold, you should consider making it a goal to do more fishing late this year as you may find that with the decrease in pressure on your local lake, you could have some great days.
But this is just an aside as the real purpose of this article is to give you something to think about once you do decide to get out there and pursue your favorite species of fish.
I’m intentionally vague as it really doesn’t matter what particular finny critter floats your boat when it comes to applying what we’re going to discuss today.
A long time ago I was fortunate to learn a principal that has been invaluable to me. Simply this, look for what you can do right—not for what is wrong—and focus on what you can find, not what you’re missing.
Yeah, this seems kind of preachy but, if one chooses to really get their head around this concept, it can make a world of difference on your next day on the water.
So how do you put this into practice? Let’s look at our last fishing trip to see if this kind of thing is similar to what you may have experienced.
A Cold Day In A Hot Place
We go out on what becomes the coldest day in two weeks, bar none. This is SoCal. So snow here, unless you’re in the mountains, is for the most part unheard of. The exception being a blue moon if you get my drift.
It’s cold, rainy and windy to start the day then it all goes downhill from there. Eventually it morphs into a full blown snow storm with flakes the size of half dollars. Less than ideal conditions, right?
All things considered, it would have been easy to just pack it in and come back another time. But then again, I just hate walking away just because most other folks are.
Our predetermined pattern had to be scrapped almost immediately due to the conditions so we decided to see if we could put something else together. We actually ended up switching from pitching style lures to faster moving baits including a 3/4 ounce double-willow leaf spinnerbait, a lipless crank, a square-bill crank and a soft plastic jerkbait. All of which produced.
What prompted this switch was the fact that we saw some baitfish moving at a good clip in depths of about 4 feet. It doesn’t much matter what drove them there. The fact is, they were there. So after seeing them and applying the universal fishing axiom of bass follow the bait, changing lures made sense.
I hope that this example is clear enough. We could have spent our time sticking with what we intended to fish and had pre-rigged. Likewise, we could have spent most of our day moaning and groaning about the conditions.
Instead, we chose to see if we could find something that would give us a clue as to what we could offer the fish that day to get bit as opposed to wondering why they weren’t biting our creature baits, jigs and other more traditional cold water offerings.
Focus On What You Can Do Right
When you focus on what you can do right as well as what you can find, not only do you tend to more rapidly eliminate those things that aren’t working, but in being open to identifying what’s going on around you, you invite solutions.
We all can get bogged down at times and it can take some real effort on our part to look at things with a fresh perspective. But until you give it the old college try, don’t discount it completely.
Next time you find that things just aren’t working for you, see if you can look for what to do right and what you can find.
Worst case scenario, you’ll probably have a lot more fun. Best case, you’ll make a switch, find what they’re hitting and put a bunch of fish in the boat!
See ya’ on the water…