Simple.

I think the greatest fishing and hunting tips can come from from an overused saying,

“Keep it Simple.”

You want to catch more fish? Get your ‘back-end’ outside and get a line in the water.

Simple.

Do you want to shoot a trophy buck? Find a spot where where a ‘bruiser‘ frequents and wait.

Simple.

Keeping it simple won’t sell huge amounts of hunting and fishing products, but it may just give you the edge in a world of complex fishing and hunting equipment options. I found that lesson out 2 years ago on spring walleye fishing trip up North…

As per tradition, we were about to wrap-up a ‘braggers rights’ tournament up at Inga’s Fishing Lodge. This tourney is basic. We keep track of all the fish caught by each Triple L Fish Club angler and give out awards based on the results.

This particular year, the battle for second place was between Dave and myself. It was the last day of our fishing week and after a solid morning fish, I managed to put a few fish between myself and Dave. I was feeling confident of a possible second place finish.

Then, the evening fish came.

I caught several fish soon after we reached our evening fishing hole. We liked to troll in front of a creek mouth that held some good weed cover. The fish finder showed a trough in the lake bed where the creek would empty. The walleye seemed to always strike there.

Anyway, I bragged about my catch to Dave via radio and I was delighted to find out that he had not been successful.

Second place was virtually mine!

Then, as the sun began to set, the radio cackled to life and Dave shared about the fish he started to catch. Every couple of minutes, he would update me of his status and my lead began to fall apart. The fish stopped biting in my section of the bay.

Helplessness began to set-in and I opened up my tackle box and began to tie-on everything I had. I put white jigglers with green wigglers and black wigglers with brown jigglers. I used spoons, crankbaits, and no bait.

Finally, I could not stand it anymore and we raised the anchor and zipped over to where Dave was putting on the fishing clinic. As followed his boat’s path, he would catch fish and I would not.

I continued to change my lures and presentations in desperation. Then, Dave announced we were now tied. With literally a minute left on the official camp clock, I watched Dave catch the winner 50 yards in front of me.

In disbelief I watched Dave approach us in his boat and that’s when dad said something like,

You changed your lures so much, your hardly had a hook in the water.”

Dave confirmed it when we docked. He said that he caught the winner with simply a bare hook and a few feet of line over the side of the boat.

I should have kept it simple. Either that, or the fish gods must be crazy…

To remind ME to keep things simple, I created a desktop background for my computer. It’s the photo at the top of this post. If you would like it for your computer’s desktop you download it in the following sizes:

800 x 458 simple_800_458.jpg

1024 x 586 simple_1024_586.jpg