You can't teach courage. You can't teach heart. Etc.

[J Francho]

2 hours ago, A-Jay said:

I do not fish tournaments.

So there's no need for me to compare myself or be better than another bass angler.

I am however, forever competing against the bass and myself.

Consistently learning any aspect of the sport and any success I may have are my measuring sticks. 

Net, scale & camera use tells the story for me. 

Some trips I manage it all, others, not so much.

I do not feel like I was born with any angling skills. 

But I fell in love with it early in life.

And over the years have built a decent set of usable angling skills through time on the water as well as trial & error.

Finally, I'll never know it all, nor would I want to. 

YMMV

A-Jay

 

This pretty much describes how to be good at tournament fishing, other than not fishing them.  It's ironic, I know.  

[813basstard]

Ability to not get discouraged..

 

 

Thats about it really
 

[jbsoonerfan]

5 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

I go fishing more often and for longer than most. I figure the rest will take care of itself. “Time on the water”

This is a big part of it when there are certain things out of ones control (and this being whether or not the fish are biting) because let's face it, there are days where you just can't catch em. But if you are there more often, the chances of catching them increase. A buddy of mine who has been fishing since he was 10 (now 38)was over the other night and we were looking at some of my pics from this year. His PB is a 6-04 and I caught 5 fish in 2 weeks that were over 6-04 and he was basically telling me how crazy it was that I was able to catch that many fish that beat his personal best in just 2 weeks. I explained to him that I wasn't any better at it than he is, I was just on the water every day for those 8-10 hours a day for those 2 weeks. I spent more time in those 2 weeks on the water than he has this year total. 

 

Kind of like killing a big deer. The more you sit in the woods, the better opportunity you have at killing one. 

 

I don't consider myself a good angler at this point, but someday I might get there.

[BassNJake]

I tried the tournament game very hard for about 10 years.

Fished as a co angler and pro in a few different BFL divisions so I could get experience on different types of lakes.

Along with any local tournaments I could fish.

Playing sports growing up taught me about work ethic and how it translates into greater success.

The wrestling room opened my eyes to how far I could push my body under gruelling conditions.

Practice, practice, practice there are skills that you can always get better at, there is always another bar to set.

 

Knowing the seasonal patterns of bass and what the bass eat can lead you in the right direction.

But that like saying to fish the points on Beaver lake or fish the weeds in Florida.

TVA lakes have 3 distinct areas up river, mid lake and near the dam all three have a time where one is better than the others. Having the experience, using the knowledge already learned

 

What I noticed all throughout my life are the people that are better at anything put in more effort and achieve results in a more efficient manner.

The best guy working the grill, the best landscaper to the best pitcher on a team.

They all have a set of skills that they continue to expand, while working tirelessly to try and perfect in the most efficient way. No excuses, no shoulda, coulda, woulda. They rely on their experience and their confidence to make decisions based on the current situation.

 

Think Jacob Wheeler or Jordan Lee are "naturals" at fishing?

That is a slap in the face to how hard these guys have worked starting at a very young age.

I believe both of these guys had to have their parents drop them off at the lake to fish in their john boats because they were that young. 

 

My old coach used to always say he'd take 10 guys that worked hard over 10 guys that were "naturals"

One of these groups will ask how they can get better, the other group would tell him how good they were.

 

 

 

[Big Hands]

Passion.

 

 

This is one answer where my normally verbose tendencies are not an issue.

 

 

Everything else is/are merely details.

[plawren53202]

Thought provoking topic, OP, so kudos for contributing this.

 

I think your observation is dead on. I also think it can be applied more broadly than bass fishing. I see the same thing in my other hobby, playing guitar. I see people in this thread pointing to fishing-specific skills. But I think there are certain character traits that underlie those fishing skills, and led to developing them.

 

I posted a separate thread a couple of weeks ago about fishing my first tournament, an Angler's Choice tournament. The boater I fished with I had only met online and on the phone until morning of the tourney. It didn't take long to tell that he had "it," whatever "it" is, that we're discussing in this thread. 

 

For me, I think "it" is a combination of three things. First, if I'm going to do something, I go all in. It's almost like it's a competition against myself, to see how well I can do at it, and against the standards of greatness that I see in that particular activity. Like, I look at Jacob Wheeler or Jordan Lee, or the long timers like KVD, I see how great they are and recognize that they have worked their butts off to get to that point. So how much can I work at it, and how good can I get? 

 

The biggest way that I see this determination or bull-headedness or whatever it is manifest itself in fishing is the pace that people go at it. I see a lot of people--in fact most people--for whom most fishing is more like a leisurely stroll by the water or boat ride with a little fishing thrown in. Even if I'm by myself, fishing a pond on the bank, I just can't fish like that. Wish I could sometimes. I'm fishing at tourney speed (at least the extent that I am able to) any time I'm on the water. I'm also thinking at tourney speed, if I'm not catching them or getting enough bites, why not, what bait should I change to, where should I move, what detail like wind or sunlight or weather am I not thinking of. It's thinking at a hundred miles an hour. I know it drives my dad and family crazy sometimes when I'm running the boat for them. But I can't help it, that's just how I am if I'm near water.

 

The second thing that contributes, for me, is I think I do a good job at processing a lot of information and boiling it down to the essential points. This was a skill developed out of necessity; I don't have a particularly great memory so a lot of my classes in school, college and law school, there was just too much information to straight up memorize. I had to get good at figuring out rules or patterns, boiling 100 points down to one or two rules or patterns. I think this works really well for fishing, especially today with a gazillion YT channels. Info comes at people from all directions. It's easy to remember that so-and-so said use this squarebill in this color around this cover. But there's a million "so-and-sos" who say these things, some accurate and some not. It's a lot more helpful for me, and easier to remember, to figure out why that squarebill in that color worked around that cover, and then the "why" becomes a pattern that I can apply in other situations, other baits, other seasons.

 

The final thing, and I think this goes for all of us, is that I just love fishing. The thump of a hookup or hard bite gets my pulse and adrenaline going in a way that a lot of people around me just can't totally relate to. In a way it's purely biochemistry, I'm sure there are adrenal and dopamine and serotonin and other reactions going on that just don't happen to the same extent when fishing for a lot of people...they've probably got other things that trigger the same biochemical reactions for them and would have little impact on me. I think on the most foundational biological level, it's that reaction that fuels the first two things I described, although I'm sure the interplay between them is a lot more complicated than that. A lot smarter people than me could probably analyze it better.

 

All that aside, though, it's funny because even though we each have our own unique factors that contribute, I think we all "know it when we see it." I did when I met my boater partner before the tournament a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure I would if I met most of you on here in person. 

[Mobasser]

It's been said that if you really love something, you'll learn faster and become better at it than others. It could be anything, but, things we love keep our interest, so, it's only natural that if you love fishing, you'll continue to improve at it. It still takes much time and practice to get good at it. 

[Bird]

Time on the water is # 1 for me, it allows you to toggle through baits until you find something the fish want.

 

#2  I simply don't allow myself to be overwhelmed by the zillions of tackle options that are available today, stick with proven baits and adjust with the season. 

 

Perhaps closed minded or limited resources between the ears but a good example of how simplistic I am.

 

Next spring, cool water temps I'll be exclusively throwing the same baits I have for years. 

If the fish are hitting them, keep throwing them. 

Betting I put over 100 miles on a pearl Jerkbait in clouds. Lol

 

Enjoyment creates success. 

 

 

 

[Jaderose]

6 hours ago, Koz said:

Are you a really good angler or are you just familiar with the waters you fish?

I think this is a key question in all this.  To the original question, I'm a good frogger.  I got that way through tons of practice and endless casts and empty hooksets and studying mats.  I can look at a scum mat and pretty much tell you what kinda depth is under it by appearance and can tell you where the bass are most likely to be.  When I'm really dialed in, I can just about tell when strikes are coming.  A lot of times I will cast past a target and bring the frog within a couple yards of whatever I'm targeting.  Then I stop and usually light a smoke or something.  When I refocus on the frog, I give it a twitch....BOOM!  As far as water familiarity, I think this is YUGE!  I usually struggle with new water.....except when it comes to froggin.  Where those mats or froggy areas are at no longer matters to me.  My skill level is high enough, I guess, that prime frog water can be anywhere and I will most likely sniff it out.  I guess I'm proud of the fact that I'm good at something that is hard but I certainly wasn't born with it.  I've friggin WORKED for it

[FishinBuck07]

4 hours ago, 813basstard said:

Ability to not get discouraged..

 

 

Thats about it really
 

Could you send me some of that ability!

[Brian Martalus]

To be a good fisherman, or good at anything for that matter, you have to have passion for it.  In fishing, that passion will fuel the patience and perseverance required to catch fish.  That passion cannot be taught and sometimes resembles an addiction or an affliction. The passion allows you to put in the time and work to develop an encyclopedia of knowledge based on experience and research. The passion also fuels the focus required to fish successfully by reading the water and detecting strikes. Sure, basic finger dexterity and hand eye coordination play a role in being a good fisherman, but without the passion, it’s nothing. Where does the passion come from? That depends on the individual-for me it’s communion with nature combined with the warrior sense of adventure combined with the need for focus in a chaotic world.

[TnRiver46]

41 minutes ago, FishinBuck07 said:

Could you send me some of that ability!

I can! I’ve got unlimited supply of that haha. I fished 14 hours the other day and I think we got 5 bass between the two of us. I didn’t want to go home when it got dark 

[SmallieKing7]

For me, its the fact that I can identify spots that hold bass, and that I can (occasionally) entice them enough to bite.  Second part of this is the fact that I can look back on a day where I caught nothing, and still be happy that I got out on the water.

[txchaser]

(Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Many of the behaviors I talk about below I saw in the more experienced and skilled anglers here at BR, so thanks in advance. I hope someone else gets some benefit from this giant wall of text.)

 

I don't think I'm great at it. But I think I know what gives me a shot at being great at it:

 

1) willingness and desire to learn, sometimes very very far down the rabbit hole. Some of it is just useless data, much of it conflicts, but every now and then I find some new information that really matters. Why do bass eat red in the spring? Turns out no one seems to know. Just guesses. But they do. Testing knots with my specific brand of line, the way I tie them, because a better knot is worth at least a size down in line. 

 

2) I never blame the fish. "They aren't biting" is angler-speak for "I'm not good enough to figure out what will get them to bite right now"

 

3) Details matter.  @plawren53202 says above "what detail like wind or sunlight or weather am I not thinking of. "The water is full of little details like this and they all add up. Sometimes it is the tiniest clue that changes everything. All the information you need to catch fish is there (assuming you have the basics down like what season it is.) So I'm constantly asking what detail did I miss. Did I look in the throats of anything I caught, or see if there was crunch in the belly? Did I put out a craw trap to see the color of the craws? Last trip on new water I got out the beetlespin to catch a gill, because coloring can be very different in different places or bodies of water. This water had really yellow gills, which seems rare in these parts. Or on a weedbed where any cast angle less than 45 degrees wouldn't get a bite, but the same lure and presentation with more than 45 would get bit a lot. 

 

4) as @Catt says, eliminate unproductive water and duplicate productive water. 

 

5) Big fish don't do little fish things. I'm willing to get off average fish to get on bigger fish. Conversely, if I'm on a big fish spot and caught a fish, it's really hard to pry me off of it, unless it is so small that it probably only holds a single fish. Was frog fishing recently, caught two nice fish in a channel in the weeds that opened up on to a small ledge to deep water. No more bites on the frog. But a WP is different so I threw that, and caught another. I knew they were willing to bite on top, so it's worth a shot right? And last but not least, put on a buzzbait. Sure enough, that buzzbait called out the biggest fish I've caught in this lake. Right in the same spot. Dumb luck? Maybe. But there was an active bite on a great spot. Only fish I caught all day on the buzzbait. 

 

6) After action reviews - every time I fish, on the way home I'm running an after action review - what worked/went as expected? what didn't work or go as expected? what tools helped? what should or should not be repeated? and perhaps most important, with the benefit of hindsight, are there any key learnings or "aha's" like a presentation I didn't try, or a type/place I ignored, or I got stuck on where the fish should have been instead of where they were. 

 

7) there's been a lot of discussion of structure and cover, I'm often obsessing about where is the best of the best, assuming bigger fish get the best spots. Knowing how to read a topo map makes a difference.

 

8) Similar to number one, I try really hard to be willing to be wrong about something and/or have an open mind. As an example the last two people I fished with are great anglers, and they both fish 20lb flouro almost exclusively. Seems crazy to me - that's giant line. On the other hand, we are in Texas so heavy cover is more common than sparse cover in many places. 

 

9) I'm absolutely willing to try new things, especially new or different baits. Sure did read a lot of stories of people ignoring the senko/ned/chatterbait/etc. There's a shadow side to this though, mostly that I carry my body weight in tackle and could spend more time covering water and less time fiddling. 

 

10) Not sure if this helps or hurts, but I'm willing to experiment on the water. Two out of four of the last fishing trips the absence or presence of flake was the difference between bite on and bite off, even across both bottom and mid-column presentation. One was no flake, one was must have flake. No flake was a sunny day, must have flake was a cloudy day. Seems backwards. Without that change they were probably a one or two fish day. 

 

10.5) Willingness to experiment to build a hypothesis. Kind of like #10, if I find something that works I'll often stop fishing it. Crazy I know. But I want to know if it is presentation, depth, color, pace etc. because that might be a new clue to a bigger pattern. 

 

11) Willingness to do what others won't to get a result that I want. It is really dang hot in Texas right now. Like "son, what's wrong with you" hot. Don't care, going to fish through it. Usually pays off. Or this: my PB was in 40mph wind. Didn't care, that's big fish weather. This Saturday had a four-handle on the wake-up time. But maybe the pre-sunrise bite was going to be on today. 

 

12) I found bass resource!

 

13) I often get the chance to teach other people, and getting them on more or bigger fish than they have ever caught brings me a lot of joy. And I have to understand it well enough to explain it. 

 

14) I'm stubborn enough to believe I'll always be able to figure something out. Might not be this trip or the next, but I'll get there. 

 

13) Perhaps most importantly, I'm "hooked." Badum-tiss....

 

Things I'm wrestling with right now:

 

1) the "what is tied on already" inertia. Sometimes slow to change when I need to change, especially if it is a confidence bait tied on. My solution for fixing it is if I get the hunch or urge to do something different, I'm just going to do it right then. I think it'll break the habit. 

 

2) I'm still struggling mightily with slowing down a presentation. That changes when it works, but when confidence is low and the presentation is slow, I'm losing my mind. 

 

3) I'm in the performance trough of I got a lot better really fast, and then I got a bit of info overload, so I'm having to re-learn some stuff or get used to holding two conflicting ideas in my head at the same time. It is part of the process where I get worse at something for a while in the middle, but if I keep at it I'll probably get through it. 

 

[Big Hands]

Have you ever fished all day (got up in the dark, stopped fishing when it got dark), maybe you didn't even get a nibble, and still didn't have time to eat a bite the entire day because you were too busy fishing?

 

And you still want to get up early the next morning and get back after them.

 

It's not something I was taught or was supported in doing. I grew up in a family of water skiers and speed boaters (before fishing boats were ever made to go fast) and was ridiculed endlessly for my interest in fishing. I grew up loving fishing in spite of how the rest of my family felt about. I'm not sure I was born with the passion for fishing, but I certainly had it from a VERY young age.

[Spankey]

I’m not putting myself in any category. For how and where I fish, I do alright. I have a passion for it and I never give up. On hard and bad days I just stick with it and try to reason with it. I do not know everything. I do not have the answer for everything. I know what my weaknesses are. Many I’ve overcome.  A couple of them I’ll work on in a couple of year when I retire. I’ll have more time to do it. 
 

There is not much skill difference between many of us on here and the pros or whatever you are calling them. Majority of us are working stiffs and don’t have the time that they do to be on the water. It’s a full time job for them. Many of them have paid their dues, many are paying them now. Must be a tough living for some of them. Passion and following a dream for many of them. Can’t take that away from them. 
 

 

[Hook2Jaw]

15 hours ago, Jaderose said:

I think this is a key question in all this.  To the original question, I'm a good frogger.  I got that way through tons of practice and endless casts and empty hooksets and studying mats.  I can look at a scum mat and pretty much tell you what kinda depth is under it by appearance and can tell you where the bass are most likely to be.  When I'm really dialed in, I can just about tell when strikes are coming.  A lot of times I will cast past a target and bring the frog within a couple yards of whatever I'm targeting.  Then I stop and usually light a smoke or something.  When I refocus on the frog, I give it a twitch....BOOM!  As far as water familiarity, I think this is YUGE!  I usually struggle with new water.....except when it comes to froggin.  Where those mats or froggy areas are at no longer matters to me.  My skill level is high enough, I guess, that prime frog water can be anywhere and I will most likely sniff it out.  I guess I'm proud of the fact that I'm good at something that is hard but I certainly wasn't born with it.  I've friggin WORKED for it

I would love to see a thread with picture examples with your analysis on frogging!

[Tatsu Dave]

19 hours ago, jbsoonerfan said:

This is a big part of it when there are certain things out of ones control (and this being whether or not the fish are biting) because let's face it, there are days where you just can't catch em. But if you are there more often, the chances of catching them increase. A buddy of mine who has been fishing since he was 10 (now 38)was over the other night and we were looking at some of my pics from this year. His PB is a 6-04 and I caught 5 fish in 2 weeks that were over 6-04 and he was basically telling me how crazy it was that I was able to catch that many fish that beat his personal best in just 2 weeks. I explained to him that I wasn't any better at it than he is, I was just on the water every day for those 8-10 hours a day for those 2 weeks. I spent more time in those 2 weeks on the water than he has this year total. 

 

Kind of like killing a big deer. The more you sit in the woods, the better opportunity you have at killing one. 

 

I don't consider myself a good angler at this point, but someday I might get there.

There it is in a nutshell so they say. Nothing makes you better than time on the water, thats in school so to speak. I have only two things going for me I never want to come off the water.....I think that would be an addiction  I have an intense interest in STRUCTURE its what everything else with finding fish is connected too.  

[DanielG]

"what makes you think you're a good angler?"

 

I don't. I kinda suck at it actually. I have a lot of fun on the water. Nice sunrises, smooth water trolling rides, etc. Sometimes the wife comes along and reads. But a good angler? A work in progress and not much progress at that. I'm 66.

 

Actually, I'm just in a funk this summer. Last  year I caught enough fish we could have lived off of them had I kept any. This year it's just the opposite. We'd have starved to death by now. They lowered the lake to rebuild the dam last fall. Baaaaddd year. But, like I said above. I am having fun anyway.

[Catt]

On 8/24/2020 at 7:58 AM, A-Jay said:

I am however, forever competing against the bass and myself.

 

Tournament or not ?

 

Winning a tournament for me is not about being better than the other anglers, it's knowing today I beat the bass. 

 

Tomorrow ?

[J Francho]

I know this about fishing, but I do believe courage can be practiced, and that you can get better at it.

[Jaderose]

3 hours ago, Hook2Jaw said:

I would love to see a thread with picture examples with your analysis on frogging!

I've thought about it but I don't do anything that you can't find on a million other videos and stuff.  Plus, that's not my style.  I've never actually even taken a picture of a fish I have caught.  I'm not against it or anything I just don't have a camera and my phone stays in the truck.  When I'm fishing, I isolate myself from the outside world because that is what I need.  I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't even want to hear myself talk.  I don't want to be connected.  PLUS.....as soon as I started doing that I would have a day like a had a week or so ago.  Buncha blow-ups, not a single fish boated.  Timing waaaay off.  It happens and makes me strive to be better.  Maybe next time I go out, I'll take my phone and snap a few pictures.....

 

[Teal]

11 hours ago, txchaser said:

(Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Many of the behaviors I talk about below I saw in the more experienced and skilled anglers here at BR, so thanks in advance. I hope someone else gets some benefit from this giant wall of text.)

 

I don't think I'm great at it. But I think I know what gives me a shot at being great at it:

 

1) willingness and desire to learn, sometimes very very far down the rabbit hole. Some of it is just useless data, much of it conflicts, but every now and then I find some new information that really matters. Why do bass eat red in the spring? Turns out no one seems to know. Just guesses. But they do. Testing knots with my specific brand of line, the way I tie them, because a better knot is worth at least a size down in line. 

 

2) I never blame the fish. "They aren't biting" is angler-speak for "I'm not good enough to figure out what will get them to bite right now"

 

3) Details matter.  @plawren53202 says above "what detail like wind or sunlight or weather am I not thinking of. "The water is full of little details like this and they all add up. Sometimes it is the tiniest clue that changes everything. All the information you need to catch fish is there (assuming you have the basics down like what season it is.) So I'm constantly asking what detail did I miss. Did I look in the throats of anything I caught, or see if there was crunch in the belly? Did I put out a craw trap to see the color of the craws? Last trip on new water I got out the beetlespin to catch a gill, because coloring can be very different in different places or bodies of water. This water had really yellow gills, which seems rare in these parts. Or on a weedbed where any cast angle less than 45 degrees wouldn't get a bite, but the same lure and presentation with more than 45 would get bit a lot. 

 

4) as @Catt says, eliminate unproductive water and duplicate productive water. 

 

5) Big fish don't do little fish things. I'm willing to get off average fish to get on bigger fish. Conversely, if I'm on a big fish spot and caught a fish, it's really hard to pry me off of it, unless it is so small that it probably only holds a single fish. Was frog fishing recently, caught two nice fish in a channel in the weeds that opened up on to a small ledge to deep water. No more bites on the frog. But a WP is different so I threw that, and caught another. I knew they were willing to bite on top, so it's worth a shot right? And last but not least, put on a buzzbait. Sure enough, that buzzbait called out the biggest fish I've caught in this lake. Right in the same spot. Dumb luck? Maybe. But there was an active bite on a great spot. Only fish I caught all day on the buzzbait. 

 

6) After action reviews - every time I fish, on the way home I'm running an after action review - what worked/went as expected? what didn't work or go as expected? what tools helped? what should or should not be repeated? and perhaps most important, with the benefit of hindsight, are there any key learnings or "aha's" like a presentation I didn't try, or a type/place I ignored, or I got stuck on where the fish should have been instead of where they were. 

 

7) there's been a lot of discussion of structure and cover, I'm often obsessing about where is the best of the best, assuming bigger fish get the best spots. Knowing how to read a topo map makes a difference.

 

? Similar to number one, I try really hard to be willing to be wrong about something and/or have an open mind. As an example the last two people I fished with are great anglers, and they both fish 20lb flouro almost exclusively. Seems crazy to me - that's giant line. On the other hand, we are in Texas so heavy cover is more common than sparse cover in many places. 

 

9) I'm absolutely willing to try new things, especially new or different baits. Sure did read a lot of stories of people ignoring the senko/ned/chatterbait/etc. There's a shadow side to this though, mostly that I carry my body weight in tackle and could spend more time covering water and less time fiddling. 

 

10) Not sure if this helps or hurts, but I'm willing to experiment on the water. Two out of four of the last fishing trips the absence or presence of flake was the difference between bite on and bite off, even across both bottom and mid-column presentation. One was no flake, one was must have flake. No flake was a sunny day, must have flake was a cloudy day. Seems backwards. Without that change they were probably a one or two fish day. 

 

10.5) Willingness to experiment to build a hypothesis. Kind of like #10, if I find something that works I'll often stop fishing it. Crazy I know. But I want to know if it is presentation, depth, color, pace etc. because that might be a new clue to a bigger pattern. 

 

11) Willingness to do what others won't to get a result that I want. It is really dang hot in Texas right now. Like "son, what's wrong with you" hot. Don't care, going to fish through it. Usually pays off. Or this: my PB was in 40mph wind. Didn't care, that's big fish weather. This Saturday had a four-handle on the wake-up time. But maybe the pre-sunrise bite was going to be on today. 

 

12) I found bass resource!

 

13) I often get the chance to teach other people, and getting them on more or bigger fish than they have ever caught brings me a lot of joy. And I have to understand it well enough to explain it. 

 

14) I'm stubborn enough to believe I'll always be able to figure something out. Might not be this trip or the next, but I'll get there. 

 

13) Perhaps most importantly, I'm "hooked." Badum-tiss....

 

Things I'm wrestling with right now:

 

1) the "what is tied on already" inertia. Sometimes slow to change when I need to change, especially if it is a confidence bait tied on. My solution for fixing it is if I get the hunch or urge to do something different, I'm just going to do it right then. I think it'll break the habit. 

 

2) I'm still struggling mightily with slowing down a presentation. That changes when it works, but when confidence is low and the presentation is slow, I'm losing my mind. 

 

3) I'm in the performance trough of I got a lot better really fast, and then I got a bit of info overload, so I'm having to re-learn some stuff or get used to holding two conflicting ideas in my head at the same time. It is part of the process where I get worse at something for a while in the middle, but if I keep at it I'll probably get through it. 

 

I dont know what you do for a living, but you should come to a few Rca (root cause analysis " meetings with me. 

 

That was a pretty good break down.

[J Francho]

As an Agile coach, I've facilitated a few RCA meetings.  They're only really fun when people start pointing fingers, lol.  

[Guitarfish]

I'm stubborn.  That trait kept me on the water all night sometimes.  I wasn't leaving until I caught 'one more'.  And it let me observe nature.  I told fish ' Aha, I see where you are now'.  I would see all kinds of behaviour that I didn't see during the day.