Changing Habits

One of the things I think we all fall into at one point or another is getting complacent and falling into habits. Habits are a good and important thing evolutionarily speaking because it allows our brain to use less resources if we get into a habit of something, the subconscious takes over and it uses neurons and things that are already set up and configured for the specific task instead of learning a new one. I've come to learn that in my own way a few different ways recently.

One of those ways is the places that we choose to go fishing! It's funny because we've had really good luck at the particular fishing spot that we usually visit and that translates to us ending up visiting there quite often when we want to get out there for a quick few hours. What that has led us to though is complacency!

When I decided to change our habits a bit and still visit the same lake itself except change it up so that we use our waders instead of fishing strictly from a spot that we can get to by walking, it led to some really great fishing because the pressure is less I think!

This spot is one that we've been near but we didn't go to before for whatever reason. I think one of the reasons was that I accidentally lost the little man's waders this past summer. I think I took them out of the car to clean something and forgot to put them back in, oops! Thankfully they weren't super expensive, I think they are 40$ but still, that's 40$ I didn't need to spend sadly.

When we pulled out the waders though, we got some great stuff in this particular spot! We caught a few great fish like this largemouth bass here!

I find it funny to think of how easy it is to get into a routine of something and stay in that routine. There are definitely advantages to having a routine but I see it with my parents in that they are very routine-driven. They go to eat at the same places, vacation in the same places and do the same old stuff. I can see why that isn't a bad thing but it just isn't for me, personally!

By doing some small changes here and there, we can expose ourselves to some of the new and good things around us in life! This includes all kinds of good stuff like simply changing up the spot that we go fishing. The spot we normally fish is heavily fished and in a lake, that translates to all kinds of things that keep the fish away. When the fishing pressure in a particular area is really high then it pushes away the more mature fish from the spot, knowing that they will likely get hooked instead of getting a meal.

Granted there are ways to get around that by using live bait like shiners which the bigger fish love, however eventually those stop working and the bigger fish move onto a different area that is less threatening to them.

In this spot we caught all kinds of goodies! Largemouth bass were the most fun but we also caught some black bass like this one spotted here, and even got a good size white perch, which is a fully grown shiner aka bait. We also got some really funny surprises! One of the things that I didn't think would go for the lures I was throwing out there was sunfish! The sunfish usually go for small things like worms since that's easier to fit in their mouth. The bigger sunfish though are aggressive as shit and actually attacked the lures that we were throwing out there the way a bass would LOL. I caught 3 full-size sunfish and was shocked when I finished reeling it in that it was a sunfish! I've only caught a bigger sunfish once before so this spot here was definitely worth visiting and we will be back again to enjoy the fishing!