The paradigm for outdoor recreation has changed more in 2020 than at any time since America fell in love with organized sports.
Faces in the crowd have less impact with social distancing requirements in our brave new virtual world.
Americans have become much more sophisticated since the days when Ronald Reagan kicked off his career as a radio broadcaster. Watching young millionaires beat up other young millionaires in an almost vacant football stadium on high-definition TV falls short of the excitement Reagan and others could generate through the unlimited tapestry of the human imagination.
Fishing and boating have filled Americans’ need to recreate within acceptable social and government mandated guidelines beyond anything folks who try to eke a living out on the water have ever seen.
Guiding light
In my 40th season as a licensed Wisconsin fishing guide working primarily in the southern part of the state, 2020 has forced changes in everything from business practices to lure presentation unlike anything seen since disco was experiencing a long overdue demise.
At least part of this fishing guide’s business model is driven by aging. A lifetime on the water has provided the epiphany that there really is no need to prove anything to anybody. All a guide can do is fish hard every day. This work ethic will bring peace in the knowledge that the fish get to vote, too.
Beginning this year, I offer a special rate for Saturday trips: $1,000 for four hours. There are plenty of Saturday openings in the guide book if you want to go. A marketing ploy that booking a trip during the week provides a $750 savings over the Saturday rate has proven too effective.
Working three days a week is a good pace when you can see 70 without adjusting bifocals. But three days usually morphs into at least five. Too much sled for an old dog to pull. A “full day” is now six hours.
Why would anybody want to pay a guide $50/hour when they can launch their own boat and cast lures in the same water where a guide would take them fishing?
Demand for spots
The difference is catching fish instead of simply washing lures.
This is one reason for the new Saturday rate. It is unreasonable to expect you will be the first to arrive at a personal “honey hole” on any lake or river in southern Wisconsin—even at dawn on a Tuesday.
A successful guide needs a fishin’ hat full of options to stay in business. A guide’s repertoire needs to go beyond “Plan B” even under the most obnoxious weather conditions. On a Saturday, this requires the ability to fish alphabetically about 10 letters beyond “Plan W.”
A ‘grand’ offer
It is unprofessional to fish within the distance of two long casts, even when chasing panfish—generally considered a community activity. Even on a 10,000-acre lake like Mendota or Koshkonong, living up to this personal ethic is almost impossible. But everybody has a price.
It looks like my price is a grand.
With any fish species there are certain techniques and presentations which will goad a fish into dancing. In 2020, you can bet all of the “easy” fish are already in somebody’s livewell or thoroughly educated before your arrival—even on a Tuesday morning at dawn.
Subtle nuances in lure presentation with something like the basic “cast it out/reel it in” crankbait are a case in point. Pulsing a crankbait with little jerks and pauses might be what it takes to generate a strike.
This retrieve more closely approximates the behavior of a vulnerable, wounded baitfish. At his point in the summer, an abundance of young-of-year baitfish makes the possibility that a bass or walleye will choose your fake bait with hooks even more daunting.
Any fish worth catching that is still in the system has pretty much seen it all with memories of what to avoid by the time they arrive at a size worth catching.
Finishing touch
But that little quirk in a fish’s prey drive, which says food might be escaping, can still be their downfall until the instant the lure is pulled from the water to make another cast.
Get in the habit of changing the presentation when the lure is about five feet from the rod tip. Changing the retrieve cadence with a twitch, pause or radical vector of direction can change an outburst of “did you see THAT?” to “get the NET.”
July 25, 2020 at 12:15AM
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Peck: At this point, fish have seen it all - Gazettextra
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