The Biggest Lies in Fishing

After all, without adding a bit of embellishment to our fishing adventures, non-anglers may not understand the thrill we find in standing beside the water for hours on end in hopes of fooling creatures with brains the size of peas. However, there are a lot of falsehoods that have managed to weave their way into the fabric of angling culture, being told so often that many anglers look at them as cold, hard facts.

While a few of these forged truths are harmless, some go beyond the realm of innocuous tall tales and are actually affecting how, when, and why people go fishing. This simply cannot stand. So, whether you first read these so-called facts on the internet, heard them from an angling mentor, or even from the mouths of pro-anglers themselves, here’s a list of fishing beliefs that are actually a load of BS.

Getting Up Early

A stalwart belief that has seen fishing buddies come to blows over one of them smashing the snooze button too many times, getting up early to go fishing does have some aspects of truth to it. During the heat of the summer, when most fish are less active in the middle of the day, when you’re fishing on heavily pressured waterways, or when targeting corpuscular or nocturnal species like muskie, brown trout, or burbot, getting on the water at the crack of dawn can give you some advantage. However, the idea that you have to wake up early every single time you go fishing is simply not true.

“I can’t count the number of fishing clients I’ve had that expect us to get up and out before sunrise,” said fly fishing guide James Mugele, owner and operator of Hatchfinders Fly Shop in Livingston, Montana. “Some of them even get mad at me when I say that we won’t be taking them out until 8 or 9 a.m. It’s just such an inherent belief that you have to get up early to catch fish. The truth is though, that fish like trout keep bankers hours and don’t even start really feeding until 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning, and often we won’t even have our best hatches until 5 p.m. or later! Yet everyone still believes it’s the early bird that catches the worm—or fish in this case.”

Though it’s hard to pin down, the idea that getting up early to go fishing may possibly date back to 17^th- and 18th-century commercial fisheries, when captains would wake up their crews at earlier and earlier hours in their race to get to the best fishing grounds. Yet the truth is that, aside from the situations mentioned above, the idea of an early morning bite is complete nonsense. In fact, most gamefish species, from trout to pike to bass, are all sluggish morning feeders that need overnight water temperatures to come up a few degrees before they start really eating. So the next time one of your fishing partners calls at the crack of dawn, just hang up the phone—you have plenty of time to sleep in.

Being Very…Very…Quiet

I am absolutely convinced that the idea of being quiet because you’ll scare the fish stemmed from grumpy old anglers trying to find a way to keep their grandkids from bugging them on the water. The fact of the matter is though, that when you’re out on the water fishing, you can be as loud as you want to be.

Have you ever stuck your head under the water and tried to hear someone talking on the surface? If you ever have, the only thing you hear aside from the muffled and garbled jeers of the bullies dunking your head in the toilet (or maybe that was just me) is complete silence. That’s because, beneath the surface, the density of water makes sound traveling between the air and water almost impossible to hear unless it’s loud enough to disturb the water molecules themselves. So, unless you’re setting off a sizeable explosion, there’s no way the fish can actually hear you when you’re fishing from shore.

However, on the other side of the coin, any sounds made beneath the surface of the water can be extremely loud underwater and will spook fish easily. Doing things like throwing rocks in the water, jumping up and down in the boat, or even dropping a pair of pliers or a tacklebox into the bottom of a boat can, and will, scare fish (grandpa may have been right about that one). But so long as you’re careful in the boat and do not disturb the water, you can talk, yell, and even play music as loud as you want to because you’re not scaring anything.

Matching the Hatch

Matching the hatch has always been a tried and true method for catching fish, especially for fly anglers. Many will spend hours or even days at a time watching the water, looking for insects like stoneflies or caddisflies, and then rifling through their fly boxes to find the exact right fly pattern. While there’s no doubt this is an efficient method of fishing, the truth of the matter is that you don’t really have to match the hatch to catch fish.

“So many of us get hung up on ‘matching the hatch,’” Oregon, Idaho, and Montana fly fishing guide Chris Gerono, owner of Boise River Guides, told MeatEater. “I’ve even seen fly anglers do things like catching grasshoppers and turning them over to match the exact color of their bellies or running a seine net to catch nymphs and then tying flies that are exactly the same size, shape, and color of whatever they caught. While this can be helpful for sure, it’s honestly a lot of extra unnecessary effort.”

If you find yourself fishing with a try-hard, remind them of the efficacy of simplicity.

“I mean trout are smart, but they're not that smart. So unless you’re fishing a gin-clear spring creek or something else along those lines, it’s best to keep it simple,” Gerono said. “If you think the fish are eating mayflies, tie on a mayfly pattern or even an attractor like a Royal Wulff. If you think they're eating a certain type of nymph, tie on something similar. I mean, there’s a reason that fly patterns aren’t exact replicas of an insect or baitfish…because close enough will work. As long as you’re in the realm of what the fish are eating, you shouldn’t have any trouble catching them.”

Additionally, it’s often effective to use a lure or fly that stands out, especially when fishing in heavily pressured areas. Many times, anglers trying to match the hatch will all be using the exact same type of fly, bait, or lure to the point where the fish have seen them all before and will be turned off by them. However, throwing on a different type of bait, especially one that’s a complete contrast from what everyone else is using, will trigger more strikes.

When you see fish like trout, bass, or even panfish feeding heavily on a very specific type of forage, such as midges or minnows, and being extremely picky about what they’re eating, try fishing with a big streamer, jerkbait, or even a spinner. Often the sudden intrusion of a bait so dissimilar to their current food source will cause predatory fish to aggressively attack, even when you haven’t matched a damn thing.

Lures That Make You a Better Angler

We’ve all seen the late-night infomercials. They usually come on around midnight when you’re just about to go to bed or have just woken up from an accidental nap on the couch. Featuring some enthusiastic host ranting about a miracle lure that fish just can’t resist, I admit that a few of these repetitive versions of fishing spam had me convinced enough to take out my wallet and even to start dialing the flashing 1-800 number on the screen. Then I’d wipe the sleep from my eyes (or shake off my hangover) and realize what hundreds of other competent anglers have figured out before me—there’s no such thing as a miracle lure.

Despite what those commercials and even other anglers may say, no lure, bait, or fly out there is completely irresistible to fish. In fact, many of the baits featured in those infomercials rank right up there with the worst lures of all time! Anglers will buy them time and time again because they hope and believe that some lure out there will work as a shortcut for catching fish—but the reality is that there are no shortcuts.

Becoming a better angler has nothing to do with buying the right lure or using bait but rather with figuring out how and when to use them. It takes time and practice to be a good angler, and while this may take a lot of patience and dedication, eventually, you can even learn to catch fish with minimal equipment. This may seem daunting, especially if you only have time to fish on the weekends. But the reality is that part of the fun of any outdoor adventure is the learning curve making every small success into a complete victory. So the next time you see an advertisement for one of those nonsense miracle lures on TV, turn the TV off, pick up your tacklebox full of ordinary lures, and head out to the water for a win.

Fact and Fiction

The mystery of what lies beneath the water’s surface has been haunting anglers since time began, and it’s little wonder that it inspires some fabrication. Fishing is just the perfect sport for spinning yarns and telling tales, if only to add a little extra zest to an otherwise uneventful day. Yet, it’s important to separate reality from fantasy and not to believe everything you hear. For when we rely on rumor, legend, or blind faith in fishing without actually testing the water for ourselves, we stand the chance of losing the sport of angling into the tangled web of a fish tale.