Читать книгу Fishing For Dummies - Greg Schwipps - Страница 52

Familiarity breeds success when it comes to fishing. Show me a person with a shack on the river, or a bay house with a boat tied to the dock out back, and I’ll show you someone who can catch fish when others cannot. The more time you spend on a body of water, the more you get to know it, and the better you understand its personality as seasons pass. Living along a stream will acquaint you with the length of time it takes to return to normal flow after a flood. Visit a lake every weekend for a year, and you begin to understand when baby shad congregate in the shallows, and when bluegills spawn. Guides know their home water because it’s their job: They fish it five or six days a week.

But you can get to know a piece of water, too, even without quitting your day job. Just give the water time; even if you can only fish for an hour after work, every hour adds to your understanding. Now, I know some anglers only fish a particular place for a particular species, even if this place is far away: say, fishing for pike in remote fly-in camps in Canada. These anglers save up and go once a year, and that’s the sum of their fishing. Fine, but that’s not the way I do it, and I don’t think it’s the way to really understand and love fishing.

Locate a fishing spot close to your home or work, and fish it regularly. Keep your eyes and ears open every time you visit. Take note of the fish you catch: What did it bite on? Where was the fish (how deep) when it hit? What was the water like? The weather? Every fish you catch helps you complete the puzzle. Fishing a place regularly — and throughout the seasons — helps you become a better angler.