By Bob Jensen
Fishing the Midwest Fishing Team

(photo by Bob Jensen) The most successful anglers try different areas and different lures until they find the fish.

You’ve seen it before. Maybe even participated. A group has gathered and they’re talking about who-knows-what.

Eventually the conversation turns to fishing, and, often, a non-fisherman in the group says that he doesn’t go fishing because he doesn’t have the patience to sit there and wait for a fish to come along. I think to myself of the successful anglers that I’ve fished with over the years.  Usually patience was not an attribute they possessed.

For the most part, successful anglers are not patient. They’re usually a bit impatient. Here’s why patience is not necessarily a quality that lends to fishing success.

For most people, our time spent fishing is limited. We just can’t be out there as much as we would like.Whether it be open water or ice fishing, our time on the water or ice is limited.  And, since we’re fishing, we want to catch some fish.

It usually doesn’t work well to be patient. We need to spend our time fishing the areas where the fish are, and we need to show them a bait that they are willing to eat.

In the ice season, it’s pretty easy to figure out if there are fish below your hole in the ice if you’re using a sonar. There is no question that a depth-finder will help you catch more fish.  A friend of mine wasn’t a believer until I loaned him my Vexilar.

After just one weekend on the ice, he vowed to never go ice-fishing again without a depth-finder. This is a guy who would drill a hole and sit on it for hours. He was patient. He didn’t catch a lot of fish.

When using the depth-finder for the first time, he learned that if no fish come in and at least look at your bait in a few minutes, it’s time to move. He is now less patient, and he now catches a lot more fish.

Same is true in open water. Whether you’re fishing from a dock or a boat, you’ve got to keep moving until you find the fish. If you’ve got confidence in an area it’s okay to give it a little more time, but don’t fish memories. Just because you caught fish on a particular spot last week or last year doesn’t mean that they’ll be there now.

The same thing is true with lure selection. Many anglers have their favorite lure, and if you want to start with that favorite, and it’s appropriate for the area being fished, tie it on. But if you believe that there are fish in the area and your favorite lure is not producing, give them another offering. I have so many memories of fish liking a particular bait one day and refusing it the next day. They’ll even change preferences on an hourly basis sometimes.

People go fishing for a variety of reasons, and that’s the appeal of fishing. If you enjoy sitting on a lawn chair at the end of a dock watching a bobber and all the other things associated with water and the outdoors, go for it. I might join you. But if you want to catch more fish, patience, for the most part, is not the answer.

Keep moving. Keep trying different presentations. Do whatever it takes to get a fish to eat your bait and you’ll catch more fish more often.