As far as I can tell, it often seems to be true that in fishing that the more you want something and the harder you try, the more difficult it becomes and the longer it takes. Personally, I reckon this is because with that desire comes a whole bucketful of negativity when things don’t happen in a timely fashion and negativity is the kiss of death in fishing. If there’s one thing a good fish hates, it’s a negative angler fishing for it. They must be able to smell or taste the bad vibes because nothing seems to send them scurrying for cover like an unhappy angler unhappily chucking his unlucky bait in their vicinity.
I’m pretty well convinced that confidence is one of, if not the most important part of fishing tackle you possess. The best kind of confidence is the end product of knowledge, experience and instinct, and you can see this at work in very seasoned and successful anglers. Although they might have completely different styles and personalities from each other, the common ground is that they are usually much less prey to the kind of anxieties that can sporadically plague the angler on the long and steep learning curve to mastery. Part of some good anglers’ game is a kind of calculated carelessness that fish really like. Sometimes it’s almost as if the less intense attention they seem to pay, the more the fish thinks that they’re not looking and tries to make off with the bait. This isn’t to say that if you have a great mental game you can do without the technical stuff. All the technique and knowledge is like the bra that supports the heaving bosom of your fishing ego. To some extent though, having things squared away in the mind can sometimes compensate for lack of technical expertise. A good example of this would be the bass angler who fishes with cheap old tackle, changes his line about every ten years and turns up to the beach without any bait, using whatever he can find in the rockpools. This guy probably catches at least one bass over 8lbs every year but he is only really in his element doing exactly this type of fishing (although he’s usually pretty handy at mackerel feathering too, when he can cast without snapping his line). He doesn’t care about high modulus carbon and magnetic brakes, he is comfortable in his own bubble and he knows as much as he needs to know. It seems to be a bit taboo to talk about how good of an angler you are (or think you are), but I think a bit of honest self-assessment is healthy, if done in a constructive way. Most of us have goals of some kind or another, a vision of where we would like to go with our angling and what we want to achieve. I think it’s good to realistically assess where I am in terms of where I want to be, and I don’t aim too high either, I’m just going for the next rung on the ladder. Thinking like this has helped me highlight areas that I’m weaker on and got me started on sorting them out. I can tell that I’m making progress as I can now do well in situations that a year or so ago, I may have struggled in. I also like to bear in mind that progress can sometimes happen in big leaps so although the next stage might seem like a long way off, it could happen overnight. One of the biggest challenges for me in my angling is supressing my natural instinct to want to be in control of everything (typical only child!) and having the confidence to just let things play out as they will. I will change things around when they aren’t working, of course, but I first make sure that the ideas are coming from the right place. I can usually tell when an idea is from instinct as it arrives suddenly and has a positive or neutral feel to it. Either that or I find myself doing something without really thinking about it. The wrong kind of ideas almost always begin with reeling in prematurely and end up with short cast times and nervy rod-watching. Definitely to be avoided. Important also is the need to stay positive and at ease. It can only take one fish to turn a poor session into a top result and poor sessions themselves are nothing to be scared of. After all, it’s been said and written many times by many great anglers that there are often as many things to be learnt from the leaner times as there are when you’re catching well. Lastly, I think it’s important to remember to enjoy yourself as much as possible. Recreational fishing is supposed to be fun and all the notions of targets and personal goals can get in the way of that sometimes, so I think it’s important to enjoy each session on its own merits and in its own context. If it was a tough day and you still caught, that’s a success in my book and definitely something to feel pleased about. |
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September 2016
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