Want to be a better flats fisherman?

I get this question quite frequently from my charter clients who charter me on their home waters. “How can I be more successful finding and catching fish on a consistent basis?” They don’t often like my answer. “You have to sacrifice some of your fishing trips.” They usually look at me funny and then ask me exactly what you’re thinking right now.  “What the heck does that mean?” Well, I’ll tell you.

If you want to catch more fish on a more consistent basis, here is what I think you could do that would help tremendously. Forget about catching fish for a year. That’s right. Give up on actually catching fish for a year. Instead, you need to build a portfolio of places that your target fish frequent and you need to know what time of year and what part of the tide that they hang out there.  How do we build the “portfolio”?

You need a nautical chart, a notebook, a trolling motor and a desire to learn. You also have to be able to give up your desire for instant gratification. If today is the first day of building your portfolio, you have to let go of the desire to catch fish today so that you’ll be more successful for the rest of your life.

“But I don’t have time for that! I only get to fish a few days a month!” Ok, quit reading this and go about the rest of your fishing life with the same results you’ve had in the past. If that’s working for you, great! If you want to be consistently more successful, read on.

If you’re still reading this, understand that we’re working off of the premise that finding fish is a prerequisite to catching them. This article covers the “finding part”. We’ll cover the “catching part” in a later article.

The Game Plan:

1.) Get out your shiny new waterproof nautical chart the night before your first portfolio building trip. Pick a stretch of shoreline that you will cover the next day day. With my setup, I figure I can cover 3-5 miles of shoreline on the trolling motor.Your setup may be different, just try to cover as much shoreline as possible.

2.) Get your notebook out and name the stretch of shoreline that you’ll be covering the next day on a page that you will dedicate to that stretch of shoreline.

3.) Go to bed.

4.) Wake up and go “fishing” not “catching”. The object here is to locate fish. Head to your predetermined stretch of shoreline and drop the trolling motor. You’re going to be using it the rest of the day. For finding redfish and snook, get as close to the shoreline as you can and troll your stretch of shoreline until your batteries are dead. Be conscious of the fact that you are looking for fish. You are not looking to catch fish. If you happen on some fish and you can get a few casts on them before spooking them, great. But don’t spend this time concerned with results. Spend this time learning.

5.) Every time you find a few fish, make a note in your notebook about where you found them, roughly how many of them were there (terms like a “few” or a “lot” will suffice), what the tide stage was, what the weather was like and don’t forget to write down the date.

6.) Move on. Yeah you found some fish but don’t forget we’re trying to learn as much as we can with each portfolio building trip. Keep moving. Don’t worry if you troll right over top of the fish or spook them. Keep in mind that the real value in what you are doing is finding the fish and you aren’t going to do that by being stealthy and staying off of the shoreline.

7.) At the end of the day, open your notebook and look over what you’ve found. The more you study your book, the more info you’ll retain years down the road. As time goes on and your portfolio contains more and more info, you’ll also start to see patterns. For example, one day, on any given day, you’ll be able to get on the water and think… “I remember that this time last year on this tide, there were fish at ‘XYZ’ spot.” Does that guarantee that there will be fish there that day. No, but now you don’t just have one spot to hit on those conditions. You have a whole portfolio of spots to hit on those conditions and I guarantee you your odds of success will go way up.

You should be able to cover just about every inch of your home waters in 10-20 trips. Time to go “catching” right? Nope, go back and do it again. Only this time, you’ll be covering these spots at a different time of year, hopefully at different tides and with different weather conditions. Keep doing this until you feel like you have a solid grasp of your area during all times of year, during each tide stage and make note of the weather.

You can keep going back to your same old spots if you want to and you can keep wondering why some days are good there and some days aren’t. Or, you can build a “portfolio” fishing knowledge and be consistently more successful for a lifetime. It’s just going to take some sacrifice.