For a professional bass tournament angler, a tough day on the water is basically the same as calling out of work and not getting paid!

The weekend angler on the other hand after a bad day at least didn't lose much except time, sweat, elbow grease, gas, and most likely some confidence.

Dealing with adverse conditions on any given day of bass fishing is a common occurance even for the most well suited bass anglers. Learning how to deal with these negative situations and making the proper adjustments is another ball game. It can mean the difference between going home skunked and angry, and just going home fished out but happy.

Sure nobody likes to go out and get skunked.

While it's fairly safe to say that nearly every bass fisherman has suffered at least a day or so of miserable fishing, it's also a safe bet to say each angler deals with it in many different ways.

Getting down on yourself or questioning your abilities is the fastest way to make a hard day even worse. Many anglers will immediately feel that it's their inabilities or lack of skills/knowledge that has caused them to have such a hard day on the water.

While this may be the case, most of the time it's not. Think about it for minute; for the most part fishing in general is a crap shoot. There is some amount of luck involved. The pros and more experienced anglers know this, and so to better their odds they learn how to eliminate variables to decrease the luck involved.

Take into consideration the weather, the water conditions, the barrometeric pressure, the weather pattern the last 3-5 days, and even the cycle of the moon. These are all variables that can and do affect your day on the water. Ignore any or all of them and your chances of scoring a big catch are probably the same as hitting a daily lottery.

Learn how each one will affect your day before you get out on the water, and you have just substantially increased your odds. Did you increase the odds that you will catch fish? Not really, but you would have at least eliminated the things you should not be doing on this day, which will give you more productive time going after the fish where they should be.

Every bass fishing trip should become a learning session for even the most well tuned bass anglers. Even if your catch rate for the outting was less then brilliant, something from the trip has to be logged into your mind and used sometime in the near future or when the same condition or situation arises.

Each and every bass fishing trip is different. They are different in more ways then you can ever imagine. Try to identify these things on every trip and make notes. What is different from yesterday? Or last week?

Some trips may be mind boggling bass after bass catching fun, others may be hit or miss and still others may be having to deal with catching no bass at all or having your motor die in the middle of the lake in the pouring rain.

All of these outtings are different and each one has something you should be able to learn about. 

A bad day of fishing beats a good day of work?

This may not fit the bass tournament professional, but even he/she knows that somewhere in that day of fishing there is yet another piece to the ever challenging puzzle of bass fishing.

Bass fishing is'nt always just about catching bass. There's a lot more to it then that. Be open and positive while you are out on the water. Keep in mind that even though you are not catching fish, you are out enjoying the environment and hopefully some friends and many other things.

Think of this too, somewhere there is a poor guy or gal out there who would much rather be fishing than doing whatever it is they're doing. 

So instead of beating yourself up during the ride home from the lake after a bad day, start asking questions to yourself, why were'nt they there? why did'nt they hit those lures? Review as much of the days outting as possible and put it all into perspective in your head and then try to answer your own questions.

When you can't, ask some friends or pros, or other knowledgable folks like those found lurking here at RealBass. People love to help. Take what you have learned and remember it well. Chances are that next time conditions are not so favorable, you can look back on past experiences and turn that bad day into a winner.

Tight Lines!

Mike Panek