What I Learned While Learning How To Fish

With the benefit of a nearby Walmart with curbside pickup and Amazon, I started outfitting myself. Looking back, my first gear choices were almost comical. But it started me on what has become a hobby that is both fulfilling and humbling, relaxing and heart-pounding, and a constant source of learning.

It’s called “fishing” not “catching”

Fishing is full of bumper-sticker-worthy truisms. The adage of “that’s why it’s called fishing and not catching” is usually trotted out in response to the frustration of being skunked (catching nothing). It’s also very true. 

Patience is paramount: whether it’s through long stretches of boredom where nothing is biting, waiting to set the hook on a bite, reeling in a big fish that you need to tire out before trying to land it, or steeling yourself to cast again after that big one broke you off or got away. 

There’s also patience required by different fishing techniques. Finesse fishing describes a series of techniques where you’re slowly dragging or hopping a bait across the bottom of a body of water. It’s in contrast to the “chuck and wind” techniques of casting and quickly retrieving a topwater, crank bait, or spinner bait. I love finesse fishing because I’m moderately successful with it, but it doesn’t allow you to cover as much water as quickly as you may like. My kids initially disliked it because it was boring to them. But your patience is often rewarded.

You can also be too patient. Spending too much time at the same spot with no results is not only frustrating, it’s missing opportunities to catch fish in other places.

Eliminating water

Another truism in fishing is the concept of eliminating water: it’s just as important to know where not to fish as it is to know where to fish. It’s the same concept as “strategy is what you choose not to do.” I use both interchangeably in work situations. 

I’ve found myself in what looked like super juicy spots and spent way too much time fruitlessly casting, telling myself that there’s got to be a fish next to that log/dock/weed line. “If I were a fish, I’d be right there!” Guess what? I’m not a fish. Just like a CEO isn’t their customer. I’ve lingered in favorite spots that were productive last year or just last week, but somehow yielded nothing all of a sudden. Either switch baits quickly or move on.

I don’t often have entire days to spend out on the water, so I have to make decisions about where to fish and when. Even experienced anglers who spend all day at it know that you need to make the most of that time. As I figured things out, I learned to eliminate water both by trial and error as well as by understanding the biology of how fish behave. 

It’s an art and a science

It’s amazing how much you can learn about how moon phases affect the spawning behavior of largemouth bass. Or air temperature. Or water clarity. 

Largemouth and smallmouth bass are ambush predators, and their behavior – like any other living thing – is dictated by a lot of different factors, including:

• Time of day

• Time of year

• Air and water temperature

• What’s available for them to eat 

• Spawning cycles

• Water depth

• Availability of places to hide or find shade

• Who else might be fishing for them

• Weather and barometric pressure 

At the end of the day, you’re out there on acres of open water of varying depths, chucking a lure that’s a couple of inches long into the void. So you use the available information you have to figure out where and what the fish might bite. It’s a series of educated guesses, constantly informed by more experience and data. Sometimes that juicy looking spot turns out to be juicy.

If I caught something decent quickly enough, it allowed me to experiment more with new lures or new spots because I was satisfied with at least having landed something. So I could take risks or try to learn a new technique.  

My goal wasn’t to win. My goal was to catch something worth weighing in. My first two tournaments I was in the top 5 biggest fish caught. It was an incredible validation, especially considering many of the regular, serious anglers were still in their boats, not bothering to weigh in what they caught because they knew it wouldn’t compete. It felt great.

It can be a team sport

Fishing can be as solo or collaborative as you want it to be. It’s incredible to be out on the water by yourself, with not a single person in sight, simply the sounds of the water and nature around you. It’s also fun to fish with a buddy or family member, telling stories and cooperating as much as you’re competing. After all, catching a fish isn’t a zero sum game. 

Even in tournaments there’s a fun camaraderie. There are rules, of course. Explicit rules like no live bait or trolling in tournaments. But also unwritten rules, like not jumping in front of someone as they fish a shoreline. I’ve mistakenly asked someone where they caught a huge fish, only to be met with a look and quick shake of the head. I get it, people have their spots, and they’ve worked hard to find them and learn them. But they will gladly tell you what bait they caught it on, or how deep the water was. I’ve had a fellow angler cruise by in a boat and recommend a specific spot nearby that I should try. My kid has become so popular with the local anglers that they’ve shown up to tournaments with pre-rigged baits for her, even offering to take her out fishing sometime (they’ve never offered baits or trips to me!). She’s a kid, and they love watching her learn and love the sport they’ve been pursuing for decades. 

It’s continuous experimentation and learning

I love the fact that, at this stage in my life, there’s still so much I can learn professionally and personally. Whether it’s picking up playing guitar in my 50s or trying out a new top water bait, learning can be frustrating and fun at the same time. 

In fishing, there’s no shortage of new gear or techniques to try. There are endless combinations of rod, reel, line and bait that can be tailored to a specific fishery, species, and time of year. There are so-called confidence baits (for me it’s a Texas rig or chatterbait) that you know and trust and pick up when you absolutely need to catch a fish. But I also love trying something new, whether it’s a bait I don’t have a lot of luck with or the new hot bait that just came out. It’s all data that I can use later to apply to the wide variety of conditions I can encounter. 

Along with the evolving understanding of the biology of the fish, there’s also new technology to find them. Right now there’s a huge debate in the fishing community about the value of forward-facing sonar, and whether it’s taking the sport out of fishing. I personally don’t have the advanced gear that my fellow anglers have, and that’s OK. It leaves more room for experimentation and learning, more “fishing” that hopefully results in more “catching”. 

It’s meditative

There’s something so restorative about spending 4 hours out on the water, and only looking at your phone screen when you take a picture of something you just caught. 

Fishing is meditative. You have to focus on what you’re doing, especially if you’re out on the water on a boat or kayak. Losing focus momentarily can be the difference between setting the hook or losing a fish. Especially with finesse fishing techniques, where you’re dragging and hopping a bait across the bottom of the lake. You’re constantly trying to sense what you feel at the end of that line: is it a rock, stump, branch, grass or a smallmouth picking up your bait? Is it a pesky bluegill pecking at your plastic worm, or did a largemouth just inhale it? You’re doing this for hours. 

It’s that kind of meditative pursuit that actively fights things like burnout. Dr. Sahar Yousef and Professor Lucas Miller recommend cognitively intensive tasks like this to “help your brain recover from stress”:

Do a cognitively demanding task to give your brain a break. It may seem counterintuitive, but doing a cognitively demanding task such as taking up a new hobby or doing a crossword puzzle actually helps your brain recover from stress. This type of cognitive demand precludes using your brain to ruminate, plan, or analyze, thereby giving your brain relief from the deluge of administrative demands it constantly deals with all day.

Spending hours in nature focusing on something that has nothing to do with work, and actively prevents me from thinking about work, in order to help my brain recover from stress? Yes, please. 

Letting go

Sometimes, fishing is about letting go. 

I’ve watched the sun come up over a completely silent, mist-covered lake with only the sound of geese landing nearby. I’ve watched a pair of foxes roam the shoreline I was fishing. When I’m getting skunked, I remind myself of where I am and how lucky I am to just be there. 

There’s nothing less effective than the first cast I make after I’ve lost a fish. I’m frustrated and “casting angry”, reeling in too fast, not feeling the bottom of the lake, throwing too hard at the wrong place. This is when I need to take a deep breath, and remember that it’s about the fishing, and not just the catching.

In the last tournament we fished in, my kid experienced losing a fish for the first (and second, and third!) times. Up to this point, she’d been incredible: not just hooking a lot of fish, but also landing them. She’d never really experienced a fish spitting the lure mid-retrieve, or breaking the line right before you can get it in the net. I was as heartbroken as she was! There were tears, of course. I honestly thought she might quit. 

I focused on driving the boat so she could fish. I wanted her to catch something – anything! – in our last tournament of the summer. With about 15 minutes left until weigh-ins, she turned to me and said: “You know what Daddy? I’m OK if I don’t catch a fish. You caught some, and I got to fish with you, and that’s all that matters.” This time, the tears were mine. She let go.

Seven minutes later, she caught her first fish of the tournament.

A version of this piece was published on LinkedIn.