Many elements going into successful fishing especially if you're targeting a specific fish species. I mostly fish for largemouth bass but have been surprised to pull a handful of bluegill and crappie out of the water. As I told a buddy of mine "My patience needs some maturing". You can't just think you're going to pull up to any old pond and pull out monsters on every single cast. My naivety had me thinking this would be the outcome when I first started bass fishing. Not the case.
Every body of water you fish is different and it adds difficulty if you're unfamiliar with where you're fishing. Even if you familiarize yourself with a specific location, the fish may have other plans. For example; I got a lead on a private pond in my area and was super excited to go fish it. That day we rolled up early and from the jump, the fish were hitting our bait. My buddy even landed the second biggest fish of his life. We probably caught 20-30 bass that day between the two of us!
Weeks later we revisited the small farm pond and well ... nothing. Talk about frustrating beyond belief. Except for a few small bass over a 4 hour span, I had a very tough day at that same spot.
Being a novice, I was dumbfounded until my fishing buddy clued me in to something very important: If the fish ain't hungry, they ain't gonna bite. I'll admit I had a hard time excepting this being that they were biting on everything just weeks before! I'm thinking what happened? Other spots are different and produce different results. I quickly learned that catching even small fish is a victory because some days you don't even feel a tug on the other end of that line.
So I did what every beginner would do and started cramming on YouTube videos covering everything from water temperatures to pond structure to bait action. It's definitely a challenge and almost an ongoing mystery as to what a specific fishing location is capable of producing. I'm not savvy enough to own a bass boat or even a kayak (yet) so I resorting to bank fishing at the moment. Tools like depth finders and sonar aren't in my arsenal yet so it's an uphill battle to really find where the fish are schooling.
Private fishing holes are much better at producing fish because they aren't nearly as pressured as public retention ponds or lakes. Even then, some public bodies of water are home to absolute monsters!
So here's to finding that honey hole I tell no one about until I've fished it 40 or 50 times!
