Guide Lines: Good Luck – Or Is It?
When I’m at public accesses, bait shops, and gas stations, people often ask me if I’d had any luck. I know it’s a friendly way of asking another angler if they’ve caught anything, but I work really hard to find and create good fishing so I stumble on that question. I do feel “lucky” sometimes, but I don’t usually assign what I’ve caught, or what I’ve been catching to luck.
“Luck” is finding a good parking spot at the landing on the walleye opener. “Luck” is when your fishing partner snags your hat with a Dare Devil and not your eye. “Luck” is when your line breaks after you net a large walleye—not before you net it. It seems that most of the luck I encounter in fishing is keeping away from all of the crappy and tragic things that can spoil good days on the lake. I save luck for what I don’t want to happen. When it comes to catching fish, I choose effort, perseverance, and stamina. I’m in forward motion when I fish. I press onward, drawing from a cache of refined techniques and lots of calculated guesses. 
Fishing is enjoyable. It’s fun and luring and engaging. It’s a sport in which we stand on banks or float in boats and soak in sunlight, or feel the touch from rain and smell it’s humid smell. Fishing is stepping away from all the things that create stress. That’s fishing. Catching fish, however, adds something more to the fishing experience. It makes it both fun and rewarding. It’s rewarding because what good things happen on the end of your fishing line, are products of hard work and refined techniques, and when they work they give us a sense of accomplishment. Productive days on the lake, the ones we look back on and share in conversation circles, are the results of practice and perseverance.
It helps to have a positive, commanding presence. If catching fish is your destiny to be, then I say take control and be your chief executive commander and find your inner fisherman. Guide yourself from the moment you launch your boat. Remember the last best fishing outing you had. It will charge you up. Let it be the fuel in your fishing machine, but be careful to let it drive your machine the wrong direction. You need to be current—in the now. Make calculated guesses based on information that you are working with in the present and keep pressing onward.
Think of fishing as a problem-solving event. Fish are like puzzles. Trying to figure out where each piece fits takes guessing and trying and deducting and more guessing. You have to try and determine if pieces suite a space and if not, it’s time to put the piece down and try another. It’s the same way in fishing. It’s a matter of deduction. If one color, leader, lure, depth, speed, etc. doesn’t work, keep eliminating ideas, and spots, and zones and even lakes. Many times over the years, I have left lakes because I just couldn’t get things going. It’s ok to start over. In fact, restarting renews in us hope. Hope is the root of fishing—we fish hoping that something BIG will happen. Moving from spot to spot and lake to lake creates a new sense of hope.
The key word is work. Making multiple guesses and accepting small amounts of rejection and then persevering takes an amount of stamina and endurance. It does become work-like. But like a project at home, things are usually a mess before they come together. When the big project comes together, then all of the work becomes reward—and that makes us feel good. Good “Luck” on the lakes. Work hard and feel good about the catch that you made!
By Ross Hagemeister, Meister Guide Service (218) 495-3140.
