Tip of the Week--Confidence is Key

I was talking to a buddy last week about these little guys. Apparently they are growing somewhere on the islands along the Missouri and those in the know, were able to find a good number of them. With a little bit of a hint, I went looking for these morels with a couple clients while taking a coffee break from fishing. We didn't find jack.

A few days later, Jill and I floated the same stretch and as one of the guys who had been picking them floated by he explained exactly where a patch were growing so we jumped up on the bank and vwa la; I found one and then another and after getting a little bit of reinforcement for my efforts, it seemed like morels started popping all over. Once you knew what to look for, and had the confidence you were going to find them, it was like magic and what seemed like an impossible venture, now was cake. And the spot we were finding them was the same spot I looked a few days prior.

Confidence is a powerful thing in most endeavors--especially in fly fishing. You the know the old adage, "Attitude is everything?" Well, confidence is an important attribution that feeds a positive attitude and can definitely help create success when targeting pesky fish. There is a balance, however and too much confidence becomes arrogance, which might keep you fishing a particular fly or a method that just doesn't work for too long because you "know" it's going to produce or you're just too stubborn and don't want to be wrong.

Eric Mangini, an ESPN personality/NFL head coach once said the difference between arrogance and confidence is that confidence is having the ability to recognize a weakness and then fix it. With arrogance you don't see you have a weakness at all.

Anyway, as it pertains to fly fishing, having confidence in a fly can go a long ways. It get's a person to look at other elements of fly fishing like presentation or maybe fishing different water that might make the difference. Fishing the other day with a buddy; he couldn't get a single fish to come up to his fly. He kept changing patterns and changing patterns and then finally just gave up thinking he didn't have what they wanted. Most of us know that feeling where we see fish rising and we go through our entire boxes without getting a single eat. It can be incredibly frustrating. We threw a plain old elk hair caddis and as soon as we got it on their noses with the right drift, they ate it.

Here's the great paradox though; sometimes you know you're getting the right presentation and you know where the fish are but they just won't eat so you have to change up flies. In this sense, you have the confidence that you know if you give them what they want, they will eat so you adjust. When going to different rivers, this becomes particularly important because you might not know what bugs are in the water but you know how to read water so you're pretty sure you know you're putting your flies over fish. They just won't eat it.

The bottom line is when you have confidence, not arrogance, good things happen--fish start eating your bugs and mushrooms start popping up out of nowhere. Confidence allows you to make the necessary adjustments and recognize where you might be coming up short. Gaining that confidence just takes practice so get out there and have fun.

Keep 'em where they live...