I do a lot of things with a lot of variables when I go fishing. Experimentation is a key factor in figuring out how to catch fish on any given day, and at any given hour. Fish change their feeding behavior all over the place and if anyone has found rhyme or reason that makes their behavior predictable - well share the damn secret already. Please.
I can catch the hell out of fish on black woolybuggers one day and can't get a bite on them the next day, but on white woolybuggers they go crazy - and then the next day they won't bite on either color. That is standard typical fish behavior. If your experience is different, I want to fish where you do.
Not only are they fickle in their eating habits, but they move around a lot too. "Here today and gone tomorrow" must have been originally said about fish. The old saw "You should have been here yesterday" is a truism. I've been the one saying it, and I've been the one it was said to. On the same day.
But there are some things that are pretty basic, things I always at least try because they quite often work. For instance, I fish for fish in water. I've found I catch a lot more of them in water than I do in, oh, say a dry ditch. There are exceptions of course, but in general that's the place I most often find them.
Another one is that if I want to take home a stringer of fish, I have to "forget" to take my stringer with me. Can't catch any fish with a stringer in my pocket if I'm in a fish eating mood.
Catching a fish on my first cast is always the last fish I'll catch that day. That one rule is solid, it has never failed me yet. And it isn't because I go home after that first fish/catch either - although I'm often tempted to, and might as well have.
A great way to find fish is to fish where I least expect to catch fish. If I fish the fishiest looking spot in sight I generally don't catch anything. But if I'm moving to the next fishiest looking spot a hundred yards away, and I cast to the barren looking water in-between those two spots - just to be doing something other than walking - I'll catch fish.
However, if I go back and target that barren looking water I'll get no bites. Every time.
If I want to catch a huge fish, a really huge fish, and I'm doing C&R, then all I have to do is go alone so there are no witnesses, and forget my camera. That works every time. Every time.
If I don't want to catch a huge fish that day I just have to take my camera or fish with someone else. Easy as that, no huge fish that day.
And so it goes with fishing. At least in my neck of the woods.
