I get asked multiple times a week: What lure? What colour?
This is somewhat relevant, but not as important as putting the lure close enough to a fish to get BITE.
We use the term TIME ON THE WATER but it has many meanings and I hope to break them down to a few main points.
Most people have been in a sport in some way shape or form. You never see any athlete just turn up and perform, they train and hone their skills to become better. Let’s use golf as an example. If you went and played golf once a month, would you ever become number 1 in the world. The answer is a solid NO. So how do you get better? You may go to the driving range or you may play more but this is only half of the story. If you go to the driving range and only hit 1 wood will you improve your short game.
So let’s get back to fishing. Most great tournament anglers don’t have time to practice casting in the back yard so they use TIME ON THE WATER to improve their casting. They don’t go once a month they are out 2-3 times a week.
Now let’s break that down some more. What improves with TOTW? The easy answer is: everything. Its not just about catching fish. Things like muscle memory and previous experiences start to improve. More casts in the strike zone will equate to more bites. I catch myself saying all the time, wow that cast should get a bite but really its 1 cast in every 10 that I’m hitting the spot. With TOTW you reverse the ratio to 9 in the strike zone and 1 bad 1.
We hear it all the time: fish where the fish are. If you are not making 90% of your casts your chance of catching a fish is obviously very low.
Now lure choice and color are important but how do you decide which one to choose. You guessed it! TOTW! If I fish Lake A every week and then go and fish Lake B will the same lure and color work?
Maybe I hear you say, and you are correct, but we don’t work in maybes.
So how do you choose? It comes down to previous experiences with what you have done in the past, what has worked and what hasn’t. Most good anglers use a diary to look back on and the important stuff like weather patterns, time of year, moon phase or tides and wind including direction. So when I go to Lake A I have an idea of where to start and when I go to Lake B I look for similarities to things from the past.
It’s never luck. Sometimes it feels that way. If you look back you can see where your subconscious has told you to do something – because of TOTW. Very rarely do you just pick out some random lure and catch fish; there is always a reason behind the choice. You don’t have time to waste on random things.
Great fishermen have bad days, but they find a way to turn the bad in to good really fast by
concentrating longer than the average angler and again how do they do this? Yep you guessed it! TOTW.
The old saying Practice makes perfect is pretty much what we are saying with time on the water.
Good Luck out there and remember.
HAVE FUN
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