catching fish by staying out of the way

This morning Roman, Leo, and I met my cousin at his boat at 5:30 AM for some fishing on Lake Erie, which is why today’s Daily Note is so late.

We watched the sun come up from the water, spent the morning battling fish, and each ended up catching our limit of 6–mostly walleye, a handful of steelhead trout, and one sheepshead. It was a great time and a lot of fun to watch the boys (especially Leo) get excited about their catches.

The setup on the boat was amazing. Ten poles were cast at a time, and we just waited for the fish to bite. The boat slowly moved forward, and we had to do very little–as I’ve written about recently, we just had to stay out of the way.

Like most things in life, the fish would come in ebbs and flows. We’d go a little bit of time with nothing, but then all of a sudden, two or sometimes all three of us would be grabbing a pole to reel them in. It could have been tempting to start repositioning the poles or leaving the area we were trolling during the ebbs, but we stayed disciplined, enjoyed the break and recovered, and eventually, we’d be rewarded with a flurry of fish.

The boat was the last place I expected to be reminded to stay out of the way once the plan had been implemented—my cousin knew where we needed to be, dropped the lines, and then we needed to do nothing other than wait and reel the fish in when they came.

​
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC