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swimbaitTue Nov-09-10 09:29 PM
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#11796, "Reading Conditions"


  

          

When you drive across a bridge with a 3 foot wide creek running under it, do you crane your neck to check out the water - wondering if there might be any fish there... and if so where?

Some people would say fishing is an idle pastime. Some would call it a a disease. Others, watching a fisherman at work, would infer that they have some kind of hyper sensitivity to nature. Maybe it's the essence of human survival through history - the innate urge to hunt and kill and eat.

We're modern animals but inside of most humans is instinct. Insatiable and brooding. A small devil on the left shoulder, whispering to the brain. Or maybe it's the angel?

Which ever one is talking, the message is to watch nature, study it, predict it, and ultimately survive from it. I feel this running through me like a bright red scar. Some old reminder of what it meant to be a successful human being until just a few generations ago.

I've stood in the boat with other men who hunt and marveled when they spotted a brown spec moving down a hill at 400 yards (deer). These guys are programmed for mammals. I'm programmed for our long lost cold blooded relatives. Some of you are too.

Success in fishing begins with reading conditions. Conditions can take many forms:

Wind
Rain
Hail
Sun
Clouds (many types)
Water surface state (chop, ripple, wave)
Water color
Water differences at depth (mudline, algae)
Water temperature
Water color
Water sediment - and by extension light penetration
Current
Type of current (wind, artificial, gravity induced)
Tide (damn that Delta)
Shadow/Shade
Bottom composition
Rock color
and by extension rock temperature
Grass (presence/lack)
Grass (condition, quality, type)
Weather leading up to now
Weather right now
Weather that might happen in the future
Forage type
Forage presence/lack
Forage location/movement in recent past, present and anticipated
Forage presence historically
Barometric pressure (past, present, future/anticipated)
Moon phase
Time of year
Photoperiod

This is a decent start but by no means an all-inclusive list of the things that one might encounter in real life.

Where fishing gets so interesting is in becoming aware of the conditions, evaluating them, understanding their combinations and trying (often failing) to guess what to do as a result.

Mathematically the combinations are staggering. But in practice fishing is easy enough to be successful on a regular basis. But we all define success at different levels.

I'm 31 years old. Been at this a good while but still hope to have a "good while" to go. I become aware of new factors with a frequency that still surprises me. I wonder about the factors I'm overlooking. Scratch that, I obsess about them.

My brain never works harder than the hours I spend on the water. It's like a natural hyperdrive. It's what happens when your brain doesn't just care about something, it cares and wants to care.

The fishing brain is like some processor from the past. Before computers and modern logic. It's an old computer that works out reality based on reality. The process is dumb and basic, but attempts to solve the most difficult problems. Problems of nature. Problems with permutations in the millions.

Sometimes as I write these kind of posts I wonder if anyone relates. 99% of the world doesn't. But I know a lot of you 1 percenters are here. So I write it. Fishing is a mystery I will pursue until the day I die.



  

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Reading Conditions [View all] , swimbait, Tue Nov-09-10 09:29 PM
  RE: Reading Conditions, Sacto John, Nov 10th 2010, #1
RE: Reading Conditions, Phil, Nov 10th 2010, #2
      RE: Reading Conditions, aLeXm, Nov 26th 2010, #3
           RE: Reading Conditions, BassMan, Nov 27th 2010, #4

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