RSS Feeds: Good Students Make The Best Fishermen
Using the services of a good fishing guide is advisable for someone who wants to learn quickly the basics of catching a certain species of fish as well as learning the water where you plan to do a lot of fishing for your new quarry. However, if you want to learn from the guide, instead of just "sitting back and enjoying the ride", you need to take the attitude of student instead of casual fisherman. View the guide as a skilled craftsman that you paid to observe and learn from.
Observation means a lot in the sport of fishing. Some anglers fail to note good procedure in angling, even when they go fishing with good fishing guides. They take the fishing as a matter of course, never noting the way the bait is cut and arranged, or the care with which the guides rig up. Likewise, while they may look around to get a general idea of the areas fished, they generally fail to observe exactly these locations.
Here's an example of good observation from a fellow fishing for tarpon on Florida’s west coast. The guide said: "Watch it. There’s a tarpon near your bait!" Sure enough, it wasn’t more than a moment when a tarpon took the bait. Inasmuch as the water was not clear, there was considerable wave action, and the man was fishing at least 30 feet back of the boat with the bait about four feet below the boat, he was at a loss to know how the guide knew about the tarpon.
Practicing good observation, the gentleman asked the guide about it and the guide said he would show him the next time. A little later, the guide stopped rowing and said there were tarpon around. The fisherman asked him how he knew and the guide pointed to some bubbles on the surface of the water. To this casual fisherman they looked like the same bubbles made by the wave action.
"Look at them closely," the guide advised. "You’ll see a difference."
So the man looked closely and saw that the bubbles the guide pointed out had a sort of iridescence. They were slightly oily. The tarpon, the guide pointed out, let these bubbles of air out, and the slight oiliness came from the fish.
Think of your fishing guide as a master craftsman to closely observe and learn from and, pretty soon, you might just become the ace your friends come to for those good fishing tips!
Similar Articles:Van Michaels is the publisher of Fishing Tips Online… a place to find good reading for good fishing.
