Confidence on the Water
By: Chris Van Vliet

Sit back and think for a minute about the specific spots that you fish; the lures that you use; and the techniques that you fish them with. Take a moment to ask yourself why you do the things that you do while you're fishing. In the end, all of the answers come back to one thing: confidence. You're on that body of water to catch fish and these are the techniques that you trust to help you connect with those fish.

For some it's a certain colour jerkbait fished with just the right retrieve, for others it could be a specific brand of spinnerbait and yet for others when the sun just starts to peek up over the treetops, they have the perfect spot for top water action.

The author uses a 1/2 ounce chartreuse and white spinnerbait as one of his "go-to baits" for locating active fish.

In Lures We Trust
How would you feel if you pulled up to a spot that you were sure didn't have any fish in it and you were told to use a lure that looked so ridiculous that no fish would want to be within five feet of it? You probably wouldn't want to stay there very long and subsequently you wouldn't fish very confidently due to your lack of faith in both the lure and the spot. The bottom line is you probably wouldn't catch anything, and if you did you would just chalk it up as being a fluke.

So then, where does this confidence come from? It seems pretty obvious that confidence is built upon prior successes or in the past successes of someone else close to you. By this I mean that you choose your fishing spots and your favourite lures because they have caught you fish before and you know that they will probably catch you fish again. Confidence can also come from watching someone else catch fish in a specific manner or having someone tell you that they have. This could be a close fishing buddy, someone you run into at the tackle store or even by watching a host do it on a fishing show.

Every time you reach into your tackle box and tie on a new lure, there's always a reason behind doing so. You think in your head: remember that big Pike I caught on this lure? Or, this is the same lure that Bob Izumi was nailing those bass with on last Saturday's show. Or, my buddy said he was getting all kinds of action on a lure just like this. It's all about confidence.

When the fishing gets tough, you probably wouldn't dig to the very bottom of your tackle box, open up a package of that ridiculous looking bait that has remained unused for the better part of a decade, blow the dust off it and tie it on in hopes to catch the big one. There's a reason that you haven't fished with it and that's because you don't think that it will work. You lack confidence in it.

Building Confidence
By no means am I saying that when you head out fishing that you should only fish with the same lures that have caught you fish in the past. With that mentality, you would be using the same handful of lures in the same bland colours for the rest of your life. Although these baits have their place, it's also important to develop confidence in new baits and new presentations to ensure that you are constantly learning and evolving as an angler.
Many believe that the best way to build confidence in a new bait or a new technique is to go out on the water for a day with only that type of lure with you. It may sound somewhat extreme, but realistically you probably wouldn't be too inclined to tie on a new bait that you don't believe in when the fish are already biting on the stuff that you would normally throw.

This way you are forced to fish with that lure all day and from there the lure with either make or break your confidence level based on its performance rather than based on the mindset that you had before fishing with it. Every time the action gets slow and you go to reach for something else, your only option is the same lure but in a different size or colour.

The Fun is in the Catching
As much fun as "fishing" may be, the "catching" part is what you're out there to do and that's exactly why confidence is so key; it increases the odds that you will catch what you are on the water to catch. When heading out for a day of fishing, most anglers turn to these confidence spots and confidence baits first before any other. Confidence baits will obviously vary from angler to angler, but in the end it comes down to the same thing: these are your "Go-To Baits". When all else fails, you know you can always count on "Old Faithful" to get some fish to bite. Tournament fishermen refer to these as their "money baits" because they have the ability to consistently put fish into the boat and help them to cash a cheque at the end of the day.

Confidence may not be something that you can physically tie on to your line or you can stuff into your tackle box, but without a doubt it is one of the most important tools in any angler's arsenal. Sure, beginner's luck does exist and can result in a great catch here and there, but to consistently catch numbers of fish and bigger fish starts by having rock solid confidence in everything that you do when you have a rod in your hand.

EDITORS NOTE: Chris Van Vliet competes on the Canadian Fishing Tour and is a journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto. He calls Pickering, Ontario home. chrisfish@hotmail.com