Nothing beats time on the water.

[dytmook]

i like videos for ideas. But I think the most  success I've had learning things is on the water and slightly out of desperation. The first time with plastic jerkbaits. I was just learning to bass fish and lost my confidence crank bait. I had a 2/0 hook and a bag of flukes my daughter randomly bought. it was was amazing. The second one was fishing a wacky worm randomly out of frustration on my second trip fishing after having heart surgery. Nothing else would work, put that on and it got me two quick fish to end the night. Great feeling. 

[WRB]

Overload is very easy with today’s sources of information and mis information via the internet/utube/fishing forums etc.

Back in the dark ages all we had to learn how to bass was time on the water and hopefully a mentor. My education for all types of fishing from High Sierra Golden trout on size 24 flies to Blue water big game fishing for tuna and Marlin.

My advantage for fresh water bass fishing was living on the water working at a boat landing and having mentors available to teach me casting skills, knot tying, lure selection and how to add action to get bass to strike. This was and is a lifetime of trail and error and decades of time on the water.

Way back in 1974 I put what I had learned my 1st decade of serious bass fishing into:a presentation called “The Cosmic Clock and Bass Calendar” in an effort to understand bass behavior as I knew at that time.

Basically breaking down Seasonal periods using water temperatures at the depth bass are located and prime times to focus fishing and where to bass should be located. A lot to put into a chart and 2 pages. 

40 years later I still standby my original presentation for the regional area I fish, mostly Highland deep structure reservoirs.

 

Tom

[Swamp Girl]

And you keep paying it forward, Tom.

[TnRiver46]

40 minutes ago, galyonj said:

 

Junebug is my registered emotional support color.

Don’t forget our weekly meeting 

[1024cwalker]

14 hours ago, Team9nine said:

I’m going to take a slightly different tack and say that while time on the water IS still important, in the overall picture of fishing/catching these days, it has never been LESS important than it is right now, IMO. I could go down the rabbit hole of reasoning, and I still might, but I’m currently just pecking away at my cell phone while writing this and don’t feel like trying to write a small booklet with just one finger  ?

Interesting take. I respect open discourse more than anything but I disagree wholeheartedly, fishing videos can put you in the right direction but bass are gonna behave differently body of water to body of water. they conform to their habitat and because forage and the habitat itself are diffrent (also depends on fishing pressure) only way to know what baits their eating/ what mood their in is to be on water. Scratching my brain as to what could be more important or if you're jus playing devils advocate.

[Team9nine]

7 hours ago, 1024cwalker said:

Interesting take. I respect open discourse more than anything but I disagree wholeheartedly, fishing videos can put you in the right direction but bass are gonna behave differently body of water to body of water. they conform to their habitat and because forage and the habitat itself are diffrent (also depends on fishing pressure) only way to know what baits their eating/ what mood their in is to be on water. Scratching my brain as to what could be more important or if you're jus playing devils advocate.

Totally serious. I’m looking at it from the changes I’ve seen over a lifetime of fishing, largely in the area of tournaments. Technology has erased nearly all the advantages experience and time on the water used to give an angler. The best anglers by and large were the ones who spent the most time on the water. It’s why so many professional anglers started their careers out by guiding, and guides were frequently banned from fishing tournaments on their home waters.
 

Maps were crap with 10 or 20 ft contour intervals, if you could even find one of your lake. As such, there were still “secret spots” to be had, found only by spending countless hours on the water graphing just using flashers and paper graphs, which required some mental abilities to interpret - no SI, DI, 360, FFS, Google Earth, etc. that gives you near perfect images of everything underwater. It was largely all fishing trial and error, day after day - time on the water to learn these areas. There were no hi-def 1’ contour maps to look at and study on your iPhone or laptop at home or on the water, or “live mapping” options.
 

When you found these spots, you had to mark ‘em on paper and try and find shoreline references to return to them (no GPS). You also had to learn boat control, be able to hold on a spot with the wind blowing one way, the current pushing you another, all while trying to cast, hook and land a fish without spooking the school or ending up 40 yds downlake off your spot - now days just drop your PowerPoles or hit Spotlock on your trolling motor and forget about boat control - just fish, you’re boat isn’t going anywhere. Need to move up the breakline a bit? Just hit “jog” on your trolling motor.

 

After finding all this stuff, then winning the big regional tournament, you hid your baits and tackle, maybe a little white lie or two about what and how, and basically told your partner to keep his mouth shut - lol. A hot new technique you developed could be kept from most of the rest of the country for 2 or 3 years before they ever even heard about it by reading it in Bassmaster magazine. Even then you’d only get part of the details. And even locals took a while to figure out what you were doing through word of mouth and following you around the lake. These days, your results are posted online the next day, the live cameras follow you around with drone and ‘in boat’ coverage. You can’t hide or lie about what you used. The writeup comes a day or two later on another site or a similar site. I can go to your YouTube and get all the specifics, and/or watch a replay of the tourney coverage and see how you did it all; your casts; how you worked your baits; your hooksetting technique; how much time you spent on each spot and rotated through your holes; how often you rotated through baits; how you played your fish; even get your GPS tracks, time of your fish catches and their sizes by being a paid channel subscriber.

 

Now I go online to Tackle Warehouse that night, order your exact rod, reel and line setups, two dozen of your baits in the same colors and sizes, and have it all delivered to my house before I hit the water next weekend, where I’ll be fully ready to apply your stuff on the water for the first time, just a week after learning about it.

 

Yeah, I’ll have to still figure out nuances with presentation, feel, decision making and such on my waters, but i’ll just watch how the bass react on my FFS to see how all those little changes I make change their mood. If I’m close enough to where you fished, I might even take a weekend trip and rerun your exact holes to see if I can repeat what you did, all within a week or two of your headlining success.

 

Experience and time on the water aren’t anywhere near as important these days as they used to be. They still play a role in fishing success, but a much smaller one. A technologically savvy twenty-something kid can now whip the pants off a 40, 50 or 60 year old guy who spent most of his life gaining experience  on the water, most days, largely because of these technology advances. We see it every week on tour. The tournament results don’t lie. 

 

[WRB]

^^^^??^^^^

Tom

[Pat Brown]

@Team9nine I agree with most of what you're saying but I still think if you can't cast or dangle in a way that makes the green slimy ladies wanna mingle, it's a lot of smoke.  Now sure, if you got some skill, all that technology and information sure as heck gonna put you in a position to win but where 'time on the water'  still matters (even for these young tournament hungry electronics experts) is actually getting fish to bite lures which takes the same amount of practice and nuance and understanding as it ever did, if not more because of how smart and pressured the fish have gotten.

 

It's kinda a dragon eating its tail and always has been and we keep getting older and bass keep getting smarter and new anglers hit the ground running with the whole tool box and it feels like they aren't working for their success, but they are.  They just have the ability to maximize their time and be more efficient in eliminating things that are a waste of time than ever before.

 

Perhaps?

[Catt]

@Team9nine ?

 

Watched a video last week, they were using underwater cameras!

[Team9nine]

1 minute ago, Pat Brown said:

@Team9nine I agree with most of what you're saying but I still think if you can't cast or dangle in a way that makes the green slimy ladies wanna mingle, it's a lot of smoke.  Now sure, if you got some skill, all that technology and information sure as heck gonna put you in a position to win but where 'time on the water'  still matters (even for these young tournament hungry electronics experts) is actually getting fish to bite lures which takes the same amount of practice and nuance and understanding as it ever did, if not more because of how smart and pressured the fish have gotten.

 

It's kinda a dragon eating its tail and always has been and we keep getting older and bass keep getting smarter and new anglers hit the ground running with the whole tool box and it feels like they aren't working for their success, but they are.  They just have the ability to maximize their time and be more efficient in eliminating things that are a waste of time than ever before.

 

Perhaps?

Not saying they aren’t working for it, just that technology has made it so that they don’t need 20 years of experience on the water to catch fish good these days.  I personally wouldn’t agree that “getting fish to bite lures which takes the same amount of practice and nuance and understanding as it ever did.” Before the technology, how much more in tune and experience did you have to have before you figured out the bass weren’t on the bottom, but were instead suspended a foot or two over the tops of the stumps? You could fish under and through those fish all day and never figure it out unless you had one bite your bait on the drop and you put 2 + 2 together and completely altered your presentation based on that one subtle clue…or just take a few seconds now days and look at your FFS and see their position immediately and then throw an appropriate bait or presentation first cast at them. Yes, you still have to figure out the trigger, but that’s not experience as much as simple trial and error at that point, IMO. Maybe its partly a difference in defining ‘experience,’ but time on the water can be measured, and it just doesn’t seem “hours/days/years” matter as much with the technological “shortcuts” available. Call it ‘efficiency’ as you say, but less is more, or at least ‘as good’ it seems to me when talking ‘time’ on the water.

[Pat Brown]

The electronics don't do you any good if they're sitting in the driveway is another way of looking at my point of view?

 

Still gotta get those transducers and your boat and your line wet.

 

Also for every kid smacking old timers there's a bunch of hardened tournament veterans who don't use technology smacking tech junkie newbies in tournaments.

 

John Cox, Keith Poche, Seth Feider and many others don't rely much on their electronics and still do quite well and aren't super young bucks.

 

I mean all that I personally would have ever needed even back in the day/now to get where I need to go and do what I do is an accurate topographical map with good contour lines, which did exist in many cases back then along with fly overs and guides.

 

I like using my 150$ Garmin sonar unit but after you've used it a couple times and know what's where, you could probably leave it home and do okay.  Still nice for identifying if bait is in an area.

 

Still get skunked.  Plenty of guys with FFS and all the skill in the world get skunked.

 

It's definitely a different thing entirely than it used to be but it's always been evolving.

 

All this to say, life is short and It's nice that people can teach themselves things fast now.

 

The fish always seem to adapt and make it hard for us about as quick as we figure out how to easily catch them a new way.

[scaleface]

 There are two nearby lakes I have fished a lot. Similar in size, depth , clarity and cover. They fish differently . The only way to know is get out and fish.

 

[gim]

Tell you what @Team9nine.  You may have a fashion violation every once in a while, but that brain of yours never stops working, does it.

 

[Pogues2300]

True but as a person who didn’t fish for several years really, and picked it back up… I’m very grateful and have learned a lot from YouTube and this site.

[WRB]

Josh Jones is the poster child for technology catching big bass, without the aid of FFS live imaging JJ would still be catching crappie imo.

Yes, the angler still needs to apply what they learn.

Tom

[Team9nine]

50 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

The electronics don't do you any good if they're sitting in the driveway is another way of looking at my point of view?

 

Still gotta get those transducers and your boat and your line wet.

Agree with that  The effort and desire required is just as strong, but the “amount of time” actually spent on the water it now takes   (i.e., ‘time on the water’ ergo ‘experience’) to get to point ‘A’ in catches compared to the old days is considerably less than what it used to take IME thanks to technology; I think our thought paths are on the same circle, just rotating around slight definition/perspective differences 

 

Edit: per Tom’s JJ mention above, I can see both sides of this argument being completely valid. Good discussion ?

[Tlauz]

My secret to catching fish is that I spend a lot of time on the water not catching fish?.

[A-Jay]

22 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Totally serious. I’m looking at it from the changes I’ve seen over a lifetime of fishing, largely in the area of tournaments. Technology has erased nearly all the advantages experience and time on the water used to give an angler. The best anglers by and large were the ones who spent the most time on the water. It’s why so many professional anglers started their careers out by guiding, and guides were frequently banned from fishing tournaments on their home waters.
 

Maps were crap with 10 or 20 ft contour intervals, if you could even find one of your lake. As such, there were still “secret spots” to be had, found only by spending countless hours on the water graphing just using flashers and paper graphs, which required some mental abilities to interpret - no SI, DI, 360, FFS, Google Earth, etc. that gives you near perfect images of everything underwater. It was largely all fishing trial and error, day after day - time on the water to learn these areas. There were no hi-def 1’ contour maps to look at and study on your iPhone or laptop at home or on the water, or “live mapping” options.
 

When you found these spots, you had to mark ‘em on paper and try and find shoreline references to return to them (no GPS). You also had to learn boat control, be able to hold on a spot with the wind blowing one way, the current pushing you another, all while trying to cast, hook and land a fish without spooking the school or ending up 40 yds downlake off your spot - now days just drop your PowerPoles or hit Spotlock on your trolling motor and forget about boat control - just fish, you’re boat isn’t going anywhere. Need to move up the breakline a bit? Just hit “jog” on your trolling motor.

 

After finding all this stuff, then winning the big regional tournament, you hid your baits and tackle, maybe a little white lie or two about what and how, and basically told your partner to keep his mouth shut - lol. A hot new technique you developed could be kept from most of the rest of the country for 2 or 3 years before they ever even heard about it by reading it in Bassmaster magazine. Even then you’d only get part of the details. And even locals took a while to figure out what you were doing through word of mouth and following you around the lake. These days, your results are posted online the next day, the live cameras follow you around with drone and ‘in boat’ coverage. You can’t hide or lie about what you used. The writeup comes a day or two later on another site or a similar site. I can go to your YouTube and get all the specifics, and/or watch a replay of the tourney coverage and see how you did it all; your casts; how you worked your baits; your hooksetting technique; how much time you spent on each spot and rotated through your holes; how often you rotated through baits; how you played your fish; even get your GPS tracks, time of your fish catches and their sizes by being a paid channel subscriber.

 

Now I go online to Tackle Warehouse that night, order your exact rod, reel and line setups, two dozen of your baits in the same colors and sizes, and have it all delivered to my house before I hit the water next weekend, where I’ll be fully ready to apply your stuff on the water for the first time, just a week after learning about it.

 

Yeah, I’ll have to still figure out nuances with presentation, feel, decision making and such on my waters, but i’ll just watch how the bass react on my FFS to see how all those little changes I make change their mood. If I’m close enough to where you fished, I might even take a weekend trip and rerun your exact holes to see if I can repeat what you did, all within a week or two of your headlining success.

 

Experience and time on the water aren’t anywhere near as important these days as they used to be. They still play a role in fishing success, but a much smaller one. A technologically savvy twenty-something kid can now whip the pants off a 40, 50 or 60 year old guy who spent most of his life gaining experience  on the water, most days, largely because of these technology advances. We see it every week on tour. The tournament results don’t lie. 

 

I kind of had a feeling this was what was coming and THAT was fantastic !

Sort of sad (because it means we're getting older) but still right on the money, IMO.

Thank you

Interestingly enough, I'm still a grinder and I like the old ways.

Not necessarily a good or bad thing but newer bassheads will never get to know what that's like. #triangulation 

While I 'use' & enjoy some of the advances that are available,

there's still a good deal of self imposed 'days gone by' remaining in my own bass fishing game.  

Mostly by design and probably doesn't help me catch the most fish, but I still get a few.

However far more importantly, I can still get 'the feeling'.

And you know what it's like.

A-Jay

 

[Catt]

11 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

Interestingly enough, I'm still a grinder and I like the old ways.

Not necessarily a good or bad thing but newer bassheads will never get to know what that's like. #triangulation 

 

I like the hunt more that the kill!

 

I've always compared bass fishing to deer hunting & I ain't one to sit in a stand...I be stalking em!

 

Don't Fear the Night... Fear What Hunts at Night...

[BFS-Angler75]

Time on the water is the only way I can learn. I've done the whole thing of watching too many videos online. I hate to admit this, but I even bought into one of those "catch more bass" online seminars (worst mistake I ever made), before finding Bass Resource. Even on those tough days, I try to make the best of it and learn something. 

 

As stated by the OP, over the past 2 years, I've gained more confidence, and I'm able to make decisions now depending on the mood of the bass. This years goal, overcome the dog days of summer, and catch more during the colder months if possible. 

 

Either way, the valuable advice from Bass Resource and the community is awesome. 

[GRiver]

I’ve said this before,…… I used to have the tournament guys come by the house, pre fishing. They had a few rods out, different style baits rigged, working around the docks and shore line. 
Ever since forward sonar, they come by heads down, focused on the screens. They don’t even have a rod out on deck, some will have a notebook, most have a cellphone in hand. I assume it’s linked to their nav system to mark points, not sure.

I don’t know if ya want to call it “time on the water”