Mind your three P's of fishing

By Wayne Hooper
sports@seacoastonline.com
Complete Sports Index

The three P’s of fishing will help to make you a better fisherman. They are preference, presentation and practice.
Preference of the bait you use will depend on the weather and water conditions. In the early spring with its cold water, baits such as a crankbait, jerkbait or spinnerbait will have the bass and pickerel chasing them for a free lunch. Trout and salmon will chase a daredevil type spoon or a trolled streamer fly.

The preference comes from experience and what you prefer. Most anglers have a favorite bait that they rely on 90 percent of the time. To them it’s lucky and they won’t sway from it. This persistence or stubbornness can hurt them in the long run. Watch a bass tournament sometime and see how many fishing rods these guys have in their boats. I’ll guarantee you it’s close to 10 rods all rigged with different lures just in case the conditions change. I have 10 rods in my boat but seldom use more than four on most days.

Next on the list is presentation. I’ve talked about this many times in the past in this column and to me it is the most important part of fishing. A fly-fisherman will try to lightly grace the water with his fly so as not to scare the fish. Many fishermen will throw their lure up on the bank and drag it back into the water to keep the noise down. If you can place the lure where you want without making a lot of noise, you are going to catch more fish than the nimrod that is thrashing the water. Being able to precisely place your lure in the strike zone is as important as a baseball pitcher hitting the corners.

Practice, of course, is what allows us to become the better fisherman. As in all of life, the more you do something the better you should be. There are born salesmen, but there are no born fishermen. Fishing may be in your blood because of your parents and grandparents, but you have to practice to bring home supper. There are exceptions, but usually that is because a newcomer to the sport hits the water as the ice goes out and the fish are feeding heavily due to the long winter under the ice.

I’ve also seen amateurs go fishing just as the bass spawn occurs and the fish are protecting their beds and will attack anything thrown their way. In both instances, once a few days go by these fishermen will wonder what happened. Oh, they’re hooked all right, but now they had better listen and learn if they want to be consistent. Even the professionals don’t win every week. There are too many factors involved for everyone to be successful every time out on the water. That’s why it’s called fishing not catching.

Even the pros practice every day. As a fisherman, you owe it to yourself and the fish to practice until you can catch fish consistently. When you do, you also will be able to set the hook quickly so as not to harm the fish. This will allow you to get the fish in the boat sooner and get it back into the water to be caught by another angler in the future.

Practice makes perfect is an old saying that is still true today. We may never be perfect, but we can try to be by practicing our presentations and by being confident in our skills and our bait preference.