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Peter Cammann, The Streamside Guide
Overthinking
28th April 2008
Whenever I fish someplace new, or fish in a location I don’t know all that well, I make the same stupid mistake. It’s like a little switch inside my head just turns on and I start to question everything I know about fishing. I look out at the water, considering all of the variables. How much wind is there? Is the water temperature favorable for feeding fish? Is there any cover? Where are the likely places to find fish? Are there signs of bait in the water?
So far I’m not in any trouble. These are all worthwhile things to consider. But once I’ve gone over my checklist and my gaze turns to my tackle box, all of my good sense goes right out the window as I ponder the arsenal of lures and flies at my disposal. At that moment, I feel like a man who has one shoe nailed to the floor trying to walk through an open door at the other end of the room. I go around and around in circles.
In other words, I freak out.
This happened to me on a recent canoe trip. The guy I was fishing with started by calmly tying a black and silver Rapala onto his line and making casts while I mulled over whether to use a crankbait, a plastic grub on a weedless jig, a spoon, or a top water lure. By the time I’d made my choice (the jig) my friend was into his first fish of the day. I tossed the jig for about a half hour without success and switched to a top water lure.
Another half hour went by. My friend had caught and released two more fish and I still hadn’t had a strike. I turned back to my tackle box and tied on crankbait. I cast for ten minutes with no results as my friend hooked and lost a small fish. I tried a silver spoon, a gold spoon, a plastic worm. I changed lures again. And again. And again.
My friend stopped fishing. He was laughing too hard to cast.
I took a black and silver Rapala just like his, tied it on and on the very first cast, I threw it directly into the waiting branches of a bush along the shoreline. My friend, now convulsed with laughter, dropped his fishing rod and it fell into the bottom of the canoe.
I began to wonder what kind of a friend he really was.
After disengaging my lure from the shrub, I took a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe I was going about things the wrong way. Perhaps I had ought to consider changing my tactics? At least I should slow down a little?
I reached for my tackle box and drew out a spinnerbait, a lure I use when I really don’t know what else to do. I can fish a spinnerbait in my sleep and I love ripping one across the top of the water, watching as bass and northern pike chase it down. It’s a lure I fish well too. I’ve probably caught more fish on spinnerbaits than on anything else. I know what it will do in the water and how to make subtle changes in my retrieve to entice fish off of sunken logs, out of weed beds, and out from under overhanging ledges.
I know spinnerbaits. I own that lure.
I was into a good-sized largemouth bass within minutes. I kept fishing that spinnerbait all through the rest of the morning, catching plenty of healthy bass, matching my friend fish for fish for the next couple of hours. He looked over at me at one point and asked what kind of sacrifice I’d made to the fishing gods that could possibly explain my change of fortune.
All I’d done was revert to the style of fishing I was most comfortable with. I’d relaxed, ignored all of the variables, the nuances, and unending scenarios that were presented at the start of the fishing trip and I had just fished by reflex. I chose a lure that I was comfortable with and tossed it out on the water without thinking about it. Thinking is a terrible thing. It distracts you from what’s right in front of you. It can make you forget that your best weapon on the water is experience. Thinking can turn you into that man with one shoe nailed to the floor and that’s no way to fish.
On the other hand, it can provide endless hours of entertainment to those who fish with you.
