The wind drove me off the lake a little bit early today. Pretty tough to fly fish while your are hitting yourself if the back of the head with a woolly bugger every third cast… At least I managed a few bluegills so I didn’t be skunked…
While I was out, I did start to think about setting some fishing goals for 2013. I have meant to do this for a while; something to focus my fishing a little bit.
So without further ado, her is what I hope to accomplish this year in angling…
1) Catch a master angler fish of any species
-1A) Catch a MA Bluegill
-2A) Catch a MA Crappie
-3A) Catch a MA Largemouth Bass
2) Fish five new waters I have never fished before
3) Catch a bass on my 3 weight rod
4) Catch a bass on my TenkaraUSA rod
5) Catch a Walleye on a fly
6) Catch a Carp on a fly
7) Catch one other species from my “hitlist”
8) Float tube 25 times
9) Fish two different trout streams
10) Teach someone new how to fly fish
11) Catch any fish on a fly from Harlen County Reservoir
12) Catch a fish on 10 different types of dry flies/popper flies
13) Catch a fish outside of Nebraska on a fly
14) Just for fun, “one fly” a lake and catch 15 fish. (Take one fly and one fly only to the lake…)
If you have followed along with this blog for a while, some of these should make perfect sense. This should keep me busy for a while. I will post a link to the top of my page so people and keep track of my progress.
Now, since the wind is bad, to the fly tying bench!
Interesting approach to fly fishing. I have never even kept a journal of my fishing trips or flies tied, though I think I would be a better angler if I did.
To set goals for a years worth of angling would lead one to keep notes, try new things and step out of one’s established, somewhat unalterable paradigm….or better yet, prevent or discourage the formation of one.
I am a big fan of fly fishing author John Gierach. He mentions goals in his books and tries to plan a fair bit of diversity in his fishing trips.
That’s exactly why I wrote these down. I find that I fall into a rut with my fishing… that unalterable paradigm, where I go to the same lakes, to the same spots, and fish for the same fish. I like fly fishing because it is never the same twice, and in attempting to make the experience as diverse as possible will hopefully lead to new experiences, knowledge, methods, or insights that I otherwise would not find.
I have tried to keep a fishing journal before, but I never seemed to keep in the information I wanted…
Then I started this blog. By being cleaver about the tagging of posts, I have started to keep track of good deal of angling information about myself and my lakes…
It is by far the best fishing “journal” I have ever attempted… on many different levels…
Maybe I should start a blog…..even if it is just for my own sake. A friend and I are fishing a small high country lake tomorrow, one I have only been to once before….it was a great lake and the ice was just out a couple of weeks. Fishing was fantastic from our float tubes, catching pan size wild cutthroats on 3 or 4 wt fly rods……but for the life of me, I can’t remember what I caught them on before. I wish I had kept better records.