TIPS ON HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER E OF THE 10 PER CENT ANGLING ELIT

Your success as an angler is tied directly into your mind-set and mental habits. How you think and feel about your approach to fishing critically impacts your ability to catch fish.

It helps to care a lot about what you’re doing. Passion can be energising and it can help drive you through the disheartening, blank days. But passion can’t be faked. You have to truly feel that what you are doing is worthwhile – you must yearn to land the fish of a lifetime every time you go fishing.

You must believe that success will follow, but don’t become desperate as the hours tick by. The brittleness of your desire will push those big fish ever further away – a phenomenon well recognised by members of the 10 per cent club.

The one thing we should all cultivate is a positive mental attitude. Although we can’t just turn it on or off – after all we are what we are, but there are ways we can transform ourselves. Crucially it’s all about not accepting inferiority. Following a blank day you will never hear members of the 10 per cent club saying “It’s what I’m like and there’s nothing I can do about it”. We anglers have easy opportunities to lose self- esteem, but we must overcome these drawbacks by adopting optimism and a belief in ourselves. Without this, the outstanding anglers who have achieved the most might have achieved nothing.

Careful planning is fundamental to successful angling. Don’t just target “whatever is biting”. When many anglers are asked what they are fishing for, one of the most popular answers is, “Whatever is biting.” This response comes from anglers who have too casual an attitude and invariably accompanies empty catches. If you don’t have a clear plan of your target species, where that species is found seasonally and what the optimal presentation is to catch them, you are blindly shooting an arrow at a target. Not only are you likely to badly miss the bull’s- eye but the entire target as well.

Creative solutions are often required to solve problems (generally, that of not getting a bite). Be adaptive in experimenting with new approaches until you can catch fish rather than giving up and quitting. Hoping that something will take your bait is not good enough – you must really want it and have no doubt that it will surely happen.

Perseverance is absolutely essential. It’s not enough for you to tolerate and endure adverse circumstances, for example you need to transcend conditions such as uncomfortably cold weather and discipline yourself not to feel the cold.

The motivations that attract millions to the sport of fishing are indeed mysterious but the need to satisfy a primitive instinct coupled with the excitement of the pursuit must surely be significant constituents. We have all felt the thrill of a fish expending every bit of its energy in trying to break free – this is the very core of angling. We must keep this driving fervour at the forefront of our thoughts when we go fishing because it can provide a strong impetus in our ambitions to succeed.

Take the opportunity of sharing a fishing session with someone you believe belongs to the 10 per cent club. Take note of all the tactics, methodology and techniques they use, follow their example and employ what you learn in your future sessions. Every small detail could be crucial to your catch rate.