I remember when my good friend, Mark Davis, first moved to South Carolina from his native state of Indiana. He was one of the most intense anglers Id ever met. He never missed a chance to learn a new technique or tell someone else about one of the techniques he had learned, growing up fishing for smallmouth bass with his dad. Being raised on the saltwater sides of things, I found some of his techniques interesting, some foreign and still others downright strange. I introduced him to the world of saltwater fishing and he was hooked. Over the years, one thing was consistent in talking about, was the concept of fishing with confidence. We would give seminars to rooms full of anglers and every time he would talk to the group about fishing with confidence and the importance of having confidence in the lure you were fishing and in your technique.
I will tell you, growing up, we did not ever talk about the concept of confidence and when I first heard this I kind of just chalked it up to some freshwater bass fishing folklore. Over the years Mark kept up with his insistence that you had to have that confidence in order to succeed and I just kept telling myself, it was a freshwater thing.
Fast forward many years later and my outlook on this subject has changed quite a bit. I have become a believer in the concept of having confidence in your lure and in your technique. Weve all had those days, where you get a little time to fish so you set out to hit the water and maybe even catch a fish. You may not have been in a while or you may not have really had a chance to plan and get the right tide for your usual spots, but you head out anyway. For those of you that dont have young children, this may be a foreign concept for you, but those of you with young kids and busy families realize that when life gets busy the best time to fish, is when you can. At times like these, you really dont have the confidence that you will catch fish and you probably half-heartedly cast different areas and hope by chance you will catch a fis