The making of a good angler

[WTL]

I think where one lives has a lot to do with how they develop as an angler. People are sometimes, if not products of their environment, at the very least heavily influenced by their environment.

That is not just technique wise. I think there is something else going on here. Everybody knows that guys from Carolina will throw crankbaits, and guys from California will throw swimbaits. I think the water they fish is just naturally given to making that lure a little more advisable to throw, so more people take the time to learn them. That is a given.

What I am thinking more about is patience and experience. So its story time.

Last year while I was working at a hotel I started talking fishing with a guest from Kansas. He was a real nice guy so I decided to invite him to go fishing the next morning at a nice little local water supply reservoir. He was excited to be in the South where the bass grew naturally large, but I spent the drive over informing him that it really wasnt so true at this lake so far as I knew.

So we get to the lake, and pretty soon I realize that this guy just fishes differently. He is throwing all this bottom hugging stuff peiced together from my tackle boxes that I rarely use. We go up a large bluff with sunken brush. I'm lazy cause I'm a local, throwing a spinnerbait and I guess I threw a fluke a little too.

He goes through my tackle until he finds a worn out SK Pro model jig, no skirt. Then he takes a 10 year old tequila sunrise lizard and threads it on the big jig. And he starts throwing it up against the wall and slowly working it back.

I'm thinking to myself that he was certainly lost. What a combo. And yet, I wouldnt relate this story to you guys if that were the case. No, this yank from Kansas after 10 minutes with this rig gets hung up. With a 5 1/2 pound or so bass.

Now why did he manage to catch such a nice fish out of water I had had trouble with?

I think the answer is not the lure choice, that was incidental. No, this guy was used to fishing tough lakes. He was from a marginal bass state, at least from my perspective. Which means, he knew how to squeeze every last bit of productivity out of the water.

I was raised fishing good water. It made me lazy. I throw the same baits trying to pick up active bass and I lose concentration and I retrieve too fast for a big bass to bother.

So when you put the two of us on a lake, and I looked at this lake like it was a problem child, he looked at it like it was an opportunity. I flinged the wrong lure around, cause I was going through the motions, and accustomed to it working on great lakes like G'ville or Kissimmee, and he was really fishing efficiently.

What does this example tell me? Sometimes, you make the best of a bad opportunity. It can sometimes be a good thing in ones developement, fishing wise, to do without and fish poor lakes for a period of time.

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There is an opposing example to that idea though. Young fishermen start out absorbing all they can from bassmaster, the web and all the lies that the infomecials can spew. Then you put them on a difficult lake, and since they really don't know where to begin, they start to struggle. Then by noon they are out of it.

So in their case, what they need is a shot of a little good water. It doesnt even have to have big fish, but fish willing to bite. Fish that will provide many opportunities for learning in a given day. After all, if a new guy makes 10,000 cast for 2 bites, he isn't really learning that much for the 10 hours time it takes. But if the fish are there in good numbers to oblige him say 30 times, over the course of all those bites he will learn a lot about the pattern that day and fish behavoir in general.

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So in one example, I say that a guy who learns to fish difficult water will become a good fisherman, and in another example, I say a guy who gets to fish productive water will learn quickly. Do they contradict? What am I really saying?

I think diversity of experience should be the ultimate goal in making a good angler. You gotta hit both types of places. You have to learn to be effective in good lakes, on good days with favorable conditions, and you also have to learn how to survive bad lakes and bad conditions.

Right now I dont like where I am. Not productive water by my standards. Not even compared to Tuscaloosa, which I considered very so-so. I want to go back to Guntersville, which I will do fairly soon in my life.

But, I have to tell myself to follow my advice a bit and realize I am here for a reason. I have to learn what I can and make good of this situation, and if that means learning the patience of the Kansas man then so be it. If I can get the patience and that concentration down, then I will be better off for it than the guy who has only ever fished G'ville and nothing else.