I am goining to spend my time at what I do best;no new tricks for this old dog!

[Ebbetsguy]

Hey Fellas; No this is not a post about me being an A**HOLE
I have tried more stuff and techniques , over the last five years , than I did in my first 35 years of fishing.
I tried swim baits this year ( tore my arm up, caught some good fish) and some lipless cranks and even some spinner baits
Here is where I am at: I am a worm and jig guy to begin with. I catch most of my fish on Jelly Worms, Trick Sticks, Zoom worms and a lot of jig heads with various plastics on them.
I am a mediocre Crank Fishermen, and I will continue to hone that. I also love some top water action.
Bottom line I am a plastics and jig guy, so I sold or gave away all my swim baits and rods and reels associated with that. I gave away all my spinner baits and I kept a few lipless Rapalas, as they have worked for me. It started to become a job, I have decided to spend what ever time I have left on this earth to just honing my skills at what I do best, getting to be the best worm and jig guy I can.

[CamG]

I know lots of guys who only throw jigs and worms. They do plenty well! Fishing is only as complicated as you make it. Sounds like you eliminated some frustration for yourself, and now can just go fishing.

[Jrob78]

Nothing at all wrong with fishing your strengths and fishing the techniques you enjoy the most. I am definitely guilty of over complicating things from time to time, it can be counter productive.

[keithdog]

I really like your post! I know I have more junk than I really need. I'm not a tourney fisherman, and only fish for the enjoyment of it. When it gets to be a job as you said, thats the time to reavaluate what and why. There are various lures and techniques I don't use either because they havn't produced at all for me after years of trying to make them work, or I simply dont enjoy fishing that lure or technique. A few others as well. After all, fishing first and formost should be fun. So to me, this sounds like a Miller High Life moment. ^5 brother!

[Ebbetsguy]

Hows about I trade you the &*!@@#& I don't use for the (&*$@ you don't use?

[keithdog]

HAHAHAHA, I sold most of it at a garage sale recently.

[bcklash]

I love crankin and tex rig. Every once in a while I'll throw a spinnerbait or sumtin topwater. I hate drop shottin or anything finese (sp).

[bamabassman]

ebbits....if it works for you man................DO IT. nuthin wrong at all fishing what oyu are comfortable with the most. me? guess i just like collecting baits, hahahahaha!!!

[Ground Pounder]

Please don't take this as any kind of attack on what' been said here. I just wanted to drop in another view of using different techniques.

For the last few years, I've been an avid poker player. Reading this thread reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Doyle Brunson's "Super System Vol. 2". The passage, written by Steve Zolotow, is in the chapter called "Specialize or learn to play poker":

The Fox and the Hedgehog
Seven-hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Greek poet Archilochus distinguished between the fox and the hedgehog, saying "the fox devises many strategies; the hedgehog knows only one, but he uses it very effectively." As a gambler, which one should you strive to be? Should you try to learn a lot of games or just one?

I kind of relate this to fishing in the same sense. I have no aspirations whatsoever of being a tournament angler, but I do fish with a sense of purpose, and that purpose is to catch fish.

The fish starts out with every advantage in the game. In fact, until that fish bites my lure, he still holds every advantage. So the only thing I can do it try and coax the fish into biting my lure, and giving up his advantage. And in my opinion, it benefits me to try and master every trick in the book to get him to bite that lure.

Tricks, though, are situational. The water, the weather, the mood of the fish, and a thousand other things are going to come into play before that fish bites my lure. I need to not only be able to figure out what the best trick is given the situation, but also the best technique to pull that trick off.

Going back to the poker analogy - if you're a world-class texas hold 'em player, and you walk into a card room where everyone's playing hold 'em, odds are you're going to have a pretty fruitful evening. But what if you walk into the card room, and everyone's playing stud? or draw? or omaha? Sure, you can still play, and you might even be able to hold your own against the weaker opponents, but odds are that you're going to break even at best.

Fishing is exactly the same. If the worm bite is on, or if the jig and pig is killin' 'em, a worm and jig fisherman is going to tear it up. But if the situation changes, be it weather or water or whatever, odds are that same fisherman is going to have to adapt his approach to be able to catch fish.

That's my goal as a fisherman. I want to be able to reach into my bag of tricks to make them bite that lure, regardless of what game their playing. I want to be able to punch a grass-mat-buried lunker largemouth, who's sittin' in the shade on a hot summer day. I want to be able to drop shot a six-pound smallie in 50 feet of water on a cold November morning. I want to tick off a bedding female so much that she demolishes my t-rigged crawler, or make a feeding-frenzied hog smash my popper in the middle of a shad school.

So if I have my choice between the fox and the hedgehog, I'm going fox.

Otherwise, I may as well just be catfishing.

Just my 2 cents...

GP

[Ebbetsguy]

I used to gamble, thats all a dead end street . Ever notice that bookies alwauys drive nice cars, all great card players ALL OF THEM iether wind up broke or right books touting the system that eventually leaves them broke? I was a great 7 card stud player, a great horse handicapper, now I am a salaried worker and have money in the bank, Id rather be a hedgehog when it comes to gambeling, my one sure fire way to beat the 6 to 5 house advantage, I dont gamble, and any thing any gambler has ever written I find as useless as an Al Sharpton quote, and you can take that to the bank, of course I dont want qnyones feelings hurt here either, I was just sayin

btw my grandmothers, both from Italy always wore fox stoles, they didnt look that healthy either

ps I dont have to catch every or nay fish on a given day to be happy. I dont chase suspended fish for that reason if they are suspended, you will find me sleepin in the boat

[CMorg]

Great posts.. I was shooting to be a fox up until a few weeks ago. I too went back to what works for me. A jig. I fished in club tournaments for this year , and switched up and threw everything in my tackle box. The last time I went fishing I took a Jig box and trailers. They didnt really take the jig flipped in shade or cover well. But they sure liked that bad boy swam on bottom at a steady pace with a paca craw , them pinchers sure are tantalizing...by the way , the last time I caught more keepers in this one outing than I have in all the other tournaments combined.

[gonefishin3]

I fish worms all day. Dont get me wrong i have tons of cranks and lipless and buzbaits and spinners who dosent there pretty ... I say if there biteing on buzbaits and cranks there bound to bite on a worm...

[Ebbetsguy]

Except for a few Jitterbus I am on my way to going all
Plastic/Jigs
Jigs
Jig Heads
C rigs
t rigs
Wacky Rigs
my best fish come this way
Plastics+
trick Sticks
Paddle Tail Trick Sticks

Manns Jelly worms
Zoom Trick Worms

Craw Fish Immitations of all types

Tubes

French Fries

Time to do what I do best and bring it up a few notches
I am in the Zone