FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL

So I have a ton of things on my mind going into the holiday season.  Not holiday shopping because I'm pretty sure Lana and I both have ours done already.  Thank heavens because as much as I love Christmas, don't think I'm risking this Covid-blizzard anymore than I have to.

My thoughts are starting to turn the direction of lure creation again. As well as a lot of research into salmon fishing, downriggers, walleye and trout behavior, trip planning and some other minutiae most of which no one but me wants to understand anyway. 

I look for natural baitfish patterns and try to put my own creative spin on them and try to plan when and where I plan to use them.  Matching the hatch so to speak.  Not always a great option, but as I've learned over the years, those patterns stay fairly consistent. 

I'm a firm believer in planning.  Lure creation, research and trip planning are no different.  Its the planning aspect of angling in general I feel gets lost in the excitement of getting on the water.  When anglers don't feel the need to do some homework on new waters before they even get into their vehicle and drive to it, the odds of a "skunking" increase greatly.  And really who needs that?

So here I segue towards the meat of this little article.  Don't know about some of you, but I'm pretty damn happy when plans come together, especially on a lake I've never fished before.  While the trip might be amazing, for me it loses a little luster if I go and get skunked.  Scenery and camaraderie don't fill up the frying pan or send your heart racing as line peels off your reel.

Think of each trip, each lake as a puzzle.  In order to successfully complete that puzzle, it would be helpful to have all the pieces.  

Now having all the pieces before hand is never going to happen to most anglers.  I've been fishing for

almost 50 years and I'm still waiting for it to happen.  

But what does happen is that I take the few pieces I have, put them together and extrapolate several possibilities to try and complete it.  In other words, to catch nice fish.

Here's where it should get interesting for folks.  

Failure is usually looked at in a negative manner.  Indeed, the whole premise of this article is to encourage people to plan to avoid failure.  But sometimes, no matter how much we may plan, conditions happen which make failure a certainty.

This is where we all have two main options:

• Roll with the failure and forget about it
• Analyze the failure and try to learn something from it

The first option, for me, is unacceptable.  I'm a result-orientated person when it comes to angling.  I keep very few but I love catching a bunch of them. I,m also an opportunist and failure is an opportunity to improve my "end game".  Not going to let that pass me by.

So, with that in mind, I understood fall and spring were the worse times of year for me even though they are typically noted as being the best times to catch big fish.  They are usually close to shore and accessible to shore anglers.  But there are some drawbacks to these seasons. 

 For spring fishermen, most of us are coming out of that winter "funk" and getting on fish can and often does take some doing.  You may have a few honey holes you've found over the years and know just exactly what choices you have regarding presentations and if fish are going to be there or not.   Still doesn't mean you have all the pieces, but its a fair start.  But what if the options you decide upon net zero fish? Refer back to option #2...

I can tell you from experience, especially when it came to walleye fishing, that I had to ask myself some hard questions about what I was doing, where I was doing it, what I was using and a whole slew of other questions.  I basically had to retrain my way of thinking to find the correct "mode" and I am still not sure I've totally got into the groove.

So after the last few skunkings last year I opted to get serious for walleye and salmon seriously this year. 

I dug up old articles dating from the late 60's through today from my fishing magazine archive, did my research, analyzed my particular lakes of choice and made some decisions on what to use where and when.  This was another reason for the continuous days.  I needed to see and to learn the hard way, to verify results and failures because Im a firm believer in experience being the best teacher.

End result?

I did catch more walleye than I ever have out of a lake I hadn't caught a walleye in for almost 14 years.  Got me a 25 incher, a 23, a bunch of 21's and a host of smaller keepers and unders.  Had some really good days at Oahe and Chamberlain.  Not too shabby but still plenty of room for improvement.  

The salmon.  I put 2 in the boat , lost 2 chinooks at the boat, and popped a 30 incher from shore..  Not exactly the results I was hoping for but still better than the year prior so it is improvement.  

Why the difference?

Lots of reasons.  For starters, the days I can salmon fish are fewer and farther between given the distance I have to travel to get to the fishery.  Second,  there aren't exactly a lot of articles pertaining to fishing salmon on the upper Missouri Reservoirs.  There are some applicable methods used on other fisheries but not much.  The Dakota reservoirs are not the great lakes or the Pacific Northwest coast.  Additionally, the guys that are successful tend to be a little tight lipped.  There were a lot of days spent fishing for salmon with "zero" at the end of the day...a bitter pill to swallow especially when you drive 5 hours one way to fish for them.

Contrast that with the trove of walleye information available on the Dakota reservoirs and reservoirs in general to those who want to learn to be more successful by angling pros.  

And still I plan. Month after month, if I am not out on the water or crafting lures, I'm digging through that archive of information, pouring through older notes, putting together multiple strategies and then ultimately putting them into action to see how they work.

Bottom line?  Put in a bit more effort and you'll see your success rates on the water improve.  Time and experience are the best teachers but observation and research are your best friends.  Use them all to your advantage.

See you on the water