Experience....?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jake Anderson on March 5, 2010 at 7:20pm

Don,

I think that yes, Intangibles like memory and independent thought can magnify or compress the value of experience. That said, I think experience is always positive. Its the interpretation of the experience that can be of negative consequence.

I don't believe in an X-factor. The term X factor indicates a lack of understanding, immeasurability, or a phenomenon. I think what makes the best the best....is perfectly measureable and understandable.

When the list of 20 best comes out.....I'll be willing to bet there are an insane amount of commonalities that the folks not on the list, do not share.

Some of those commonalities will be god given, and some not, but I'm not buying that anyone was a bass in their former life.


Don Hogue said:

Jake,
You start out making it simple and then spend the rest of your thread qualifying it. At the end, I'm left thinking that you too believe that experience is meaningless unless a person has some sort of intagible set of abilities - again the "X" factor.

Jake "The Snake" Anderson said:

Permalink Reply by Ronald Hobbs, Jr. on March 5, 2010 at 8:16pm

I have a simple answer for such a complex question.
I believe that most fisherman are creatures of habit. Spot fishermen, instead of fishing the fish they fish "spots" Instead of fishing the fish they fish there favorite lures. One day tournaments are famous for this type of fisherman, thus alot of guys in Washington state are this way. The guy that has been fishing the longest has more "spots" to fish. Thus the guys that have been around longer seem to do better or the guys that have spent the most time on the water. Some guys that spend too much time on the water could be hurting themselves because they can not process that much info. in their brain, I am not calling them dumb, but rather too much info can hurt especially if you can't decipher what the fish are telling you. I think if we had more multi day tournaments it would teach guys to fish patterns more oftem then fishing spots.

I think the best fisherman are the ones most in tune with their surroundings, Some it comes naturally others have to learn it. Lets face it some guys have to work harder than others at having that 6th sense.

Permalink Reply by Ryan Christoph on March 5, 2010 at 10:01pm

Don,

Take a poke at this theory. I believe that experience and time on the water is an important variable to fishing success or rather tournament success. However, the “X” factor that I believe you are referring to relates to how we make decisions while on the water.

Malcom Gladwell in his book Blink, describes a decision making process that can be characterized as “gut feeling” that comes to a person when they need to make a decision. The “gut feeling” comes from all of our senses (sight, feel, hear etc.). However, information or rather experience can hinder that “Blink” decision by masking the senses.

Another approach to making decisions is outlined in the book Smart Choices (Hammond et.al), which describes a systematic decision making process. This process would entail an angler writing or mentally organizing the current variables (water temp, current weather conditions, time of year, fishing pressure, etc.) into a usable format to make a decision of where the fish are located and what they may strike. This process can also be corrupted with experience.

Therefore, the “X” factor is which decision making process is right for you as an angler at any given outing. Either decision making model will not work for every angler or fishing situation and we as anglers need to decipher which one to use. Those anglers who are consistently on top of the leader board are able to make the right decisions using the right process with the current fishing variables.

With all that said, I plan to keep my minimal tournament experience in the back of my head and fish the day before me.

Permalink Reply by Eric DeLay on March 6, 2010 at 12:09am

It is because they aren't VERSATILE...lol

Permalink Reply by Jeff Grimes on March 6, 2010 at 8:11am

I agree. It is difficult though, to NOT go back to "spots" that have been productive.....



Ronald Hobbs, Jr. said:

I have a simple answer for such a complex question.
I believe that most fisherman are creatures of habit. Spot fishermen, instead of fishing the fish they fish "spots" Instead of fishing the fish they fish there favorite lures. One day tournaments are famous for this type of fisherman, thus alot of guys in Washington state are this way. The guy that has been fishing the longest has more "spots" to fish. Thus the guys that have been around longer seem to do better or the guys that have spent the most time on the water. Some guys that spend too much time on the water could be hurting themselves because they can not process that much info. in their brain, I am not calling them dumb, but rather too much info can hurt especially if you can't decipher what the fish are telling you. I think if we had more multi day tournaments it would teach guys to fish patterns more oftem then fishing spots.

I think the best fisherman are the ones most in tune with their surroundings, Some it comes naturally others have to learn it. Lets face it some guys have to work harder than others at having that 6th sense.

Permalink Reply by Eric DeLay on March 6, 2010 at 11:00am

The fishing "spots" habit can be very detrimental to your improvement. Pulling up and fishing a specific dock or beaver hut then leaving is not high level fishing IMO. You are depending on luck, that the fish are set up the same way they were the time you caught them there. Using this plan on a lake you have fished a lot can cause you to waste a lot of time fishing "memories". I am as guilty of it as anyone and have been trying to break myself of the habit.
What people need to realize is that the "spot" is actually an "area". Even a specific area you fish may be only a fraction of the range of the fish that use in that part of the lake so you need to be able to figure out what the fish are doing on any given day if you want to be one of the greats like Hobbs or Bess.

I found it interesting at the last Sammamish tourney that in some of the areas I fish I would see a boat start at the edge of what I believe is the productive area and start fishing the other direction down the bank. Their productive area was just outside of what I considered productive. It made me look at the areas I fish differently.

At the end of the day in that tourney I set my boat up differently than I normally do in an area I have fished a bunch. Potter and I dropped our baits down and before I could move my boat onto what I considered the "right spot" we caught 4 fish and culled twice. This area had been fished all day by other fishermen too but they all fished it pretty much the same way, so they missed what the fish were doing that day.

Jeff Grimes said:

I agree. It is difficult though, to NOT go back to "spots" that have been productive.....



Ronald Hobbs, Jr. said:

I have a simple answer for such a complex question.
I believe that most fisherman are creatures of habit. Spot fishermen, instead of fishing the fish they fish "spots" Instead of fishing the fish they fish there favorite lures. One day tournaments are famous for this type of fisherman, thus alot of guys in Washington state are this way. The guy that has been fishing the longest has more "spots" to fish. Thus the guys that have been around longer seem to do better or the guys that have spent the most time on the water. Some guys that spend too much time on the water could be hurting themselves because they can not process that much info. in their brain, I am not calling them dumb, but rather too much info can hurt especially if you can't decipher what the fish are telling you. I think if we had more multi day tournaments it would teach guys to fish patterns more oftem then fishing spots.

I think the best fisherman are the ones most in tune with their surroundings, Some it comes naturally others have to learn it. Lets face it some guys have to work harder than others at having that 6th sense.

Permalink Reply by Eric DeLay on March 6, 2010 at 11:11am

In your case I like to call it a SICK SENSE.

Ronald Hobbs, Jr. said:

I have a simple answer for such a complex question.
I believe that most fisherman are creatures of habit. Spot fishermen, instead of fishing the fish they fish "spots" Instead of fishing the fish they fish there favorite lures. One day tournaments are famous for this type of fisherman, thus alot of guys in Washington state are this way. The guy that has been fishing the longest has more "spots" to fish. Thus the guys that have been around longer seem to do better or the guys that have spent the most time on the water. Some guys that spend too much time on the water could be hurting themselves because they can not process that much info. in their brain, I am not calling them dumb, but rather too much info can hurt especially if you can't decipher what the fish are telling you. I think if we had more multi day tournaments it would teach guys to fish patterns more oftem then fishing spots.

I think the best fisherman are the ones most in tune with their surroundings, Some it comes naturally others have to learn it. Lets face it some guys have to work harder than others at having that 6th sense.

Permalink Reply by Rick Innocenti on March 7, 2010 at 12:59am

Ron and Marc are dead on! I have fallen into that hole and lived it!

Ron and Marc I believe it is a combination of both your statements as I have hit that mid life age and have wayyyyyy too many spots. In the last 3-5 years I have thrown more spots out the window and opted not to load that chip with 242 waypoints of spots I have learned over the years. At the same time as I have gotten older I don't want to take the time the night before to load them, I'd rather go to sleep :)

Point being as Marc stated very well, for myself when I started you looked up to the top guys and learned over the years how to compete on their level, you put in the time and you studied the craft. Putting on time on the water was key, fun, and critical then, and time was not as much of an issue. Commitments were far less then, NOT so much now, Kids, college, wife, thinking about retirement, and ya you have to start thinking about that sometime, they all start taking priority over getting in two days of prefish... so you make do and try to get by with what you have learned over the years and adapt the best you can that day on the water. When it comes down to it, I may not have a clue what the fish are really doing that day of the tournament all as I can do is compare it to 15+ years worth of tournaments I have done prior on that body of water during that time period and hope the weather conditions are similar enough that I can figure it out by the time I have to weigh in (sometimes I may have to start running spots/ sometimes I may have to just go fishing) either way its a poke to figure it out.


There's my version of the difference between the young up and comers and some of us that fall into to the older crowd. We all still want to be the best its just hard to come up with the time, and excuse's to give the wife to get the days needed to keep learning as time goes on.

I think it's just life! I think the great bass fisherman that are older than us have went through the exact same things, and the guys just coming up will go through it as well.

-Rick at Quest

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