Repeatable Results and the Importance of Mentors

Ever since I was but five years old, when I found something that was interesting to me, I decided I had to learn everything that was possible to learn about that subject. If it got to a point where I felt I wasn't challenged, I dropped it and picked up the next thing. A short time after I really started fishing hard, I knew this was the thing that was never going to stop challenging me. Fly fishing even more so.

I have been fly fishing for a fair while now. Just about 8 years. In that time, I have learned an awful lot. When I started, my dad basically gave me what I needed to get started, including some books, than said go to it. I had already been fishing like a mad man for a while, so I wasn't starting from scratch. I had a knowledge base to work up from. From the time I started, a complete novice, to now, where I consider myself and effective fly fisherman, I worked for knowledge. I started out with the intent of being the best possible fly fisherman I could be. Not to be the best fly fisherman in the world, not the pest in the country, not the best in the state. I wanted to get to the point where I felt I had nothing left to figure out. I know now just as clearly as I knew then that it would never happen, and that is part of why I love this. I will never, ever be bored.

In my early days of wandering with a fly rod, I had a large body of resources to learn from, and I very quickly found the three that have become my mainstays for fishing knowledge: books and articles, people I met through fishing, and time on the water. Looking back, I can attribute every ounce of real success I've had on those three things. I read. I developed friendships with anglers that I could learn from. And I took what I read and was taught and applied it on the water, over and over and over, until I deciphered patterns.

A few days after the great walleye bite I wrote about in "New Hat Walleye Bonanza", I saw the same weather conditions materializing. I new the water would be a couple degrees warmer, and that would likely change the result to a degree, but I saw it very likely that I would find walleye in the same places even if there weren't as many. And that's exactly what I found. This is what I can a result. A result is a repeatable, patternable bite that is found not through luck, report reading, or spot burning. A true result only comes through learning both on and off the water.

While trying to make a point about the importance of working for a result on another social media platform I was misunderstood. Some people thought I was saying that learning from others wasn't worthwhile. That was kind of a silly thing for me to see thrown at me. Anybody that has fished with me for any amount of time would probably know that I value the exchange of ideas between co-anglers and mentors and students. I've been blessed to meet a great bunch of fisherman in my journeys, anglers kind enough to teach me what they had learned and generous enough to give me opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have had. I feel indebted to all of these people, and the only way I know how to pay that debt is to pay it forward. I've been fortunate enough to guide and instruct a fair number of people in recent years, and my proudest memories have been the moments when I watch someone I'm teaching start to 'get it'. I'm very far from where I want to be as an angler, and I'll be learning every day, but I feel that if I don't pass on bits and pieces of what I have learned I won't be doing my part.

This is something immensely important at the moment, because I've seen a culture shift. More and more anglers want something for nothing. We need this to change if this sport is going to be sustainable. No more zero to hero mentality. If you want to be looked at as a good angler, understand that you are going to have to work and learn. If you already have a lot of experience, pass the right parts on. Ultimately, if the only way to get more people fishing is to post constant fishing reports with exact details, trout stocking updates, and information about every fishing spot and what to do there, I'm not sure it's worth getting that many more people into the sport.

If you have the means, find a novice, someone eager and young but not sure where to look, and teach them the right way. Teach them why. That's something you'll never learn by being a spot burner and report follower. That's what keeps traditions alive. Etiquette. Responsibility. Respect. These things are dying because it no longer takes learning from a mentor to catch a lot of fish.