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Monday, November 12th, 2007 What's the best pitch in baseball?
I know this may sound like a strange question to ask on a fishing blog but this question was posed to me many years ago, when I was playing minor league baseball for the Yankees, and I believe the principle behind it's answer is applicable to fishing as well. I was on a team filled with talented pitchers. Some of us had tremendous fastballs, some of us had nasty changeups, and I was gifted with wicked curveball. We were all having one problem though. We were walking a lot of people. So one day, our pitching coach pulled the pitching staff aside and asked us all, "What's the best pitch in baseball." One guy said, "a fastball", another guy said, "a curve ball", and another guy said that the best pitch in baseball was a changeup. The coach just laughed and said that we were all wrong. The best pitch in baseball was a strike. It didn't matter the style of the pitch you threw if it wasn't a strike, he said. You can't control if the batter will hit the "strike" you throw but you can be pretty sure he won't have to hit the "ball" you throw. He said that no matter what style of pitch you throw that you have a much greater chance of getting an out with a "strike" than a "ball".
I've been hearing a lot of talk at tackle shops and reading a lot of posts on internet forums lately about, "what's the best bait?" I always want to interject and ask, "Do you know where the fish are?" Because you can have the best lure, live bait, tackle, and boat but if you don't know where the fish are then what do the other things matter? Do you see where I'm going with this? I can have a great curveball but if I can't throw it for a strike then I'm not going to get any outs in baseball. I can have the coolest, bestest, most hyped lure on the market but if I don't know where the fish are I'm not going to get a bite.
After our coach taught us what the best pitch was, he suggested that we work on that instead of getting more break on our curveball or more juice on our fastball. With fishing, I would suggest you work on the ability to find fish.
Now you have to keep in mind, that the people you know that seem to always catch fish, don't just go and pull up to a spot and start hammering fish without doing their homework. I can promise you that those people have spent many hours searching, hunting, and just looking for fish. If you want to just be able to go catch fish and not study the environment you're going to be fishing, then I can almost guarantee that you will have several frustrating days of not catching fish for ever day you have where you do catch good numbers of fish.
Here's how I work on finding the "strike" zone. .
Just like with a baseball glove in baseball, I think a trolling motor is essential for helping you find redfish and snook. It allows you to cover more water while minimally affecting the awareness fish have of your presence. I use the trolling motor to break down a shoreline by what I call "sampling". The primary goal here is not to catch fish but to find fish, all the while doing it in a time efficient manor. This is not an instant result technique for catching a lot of fish, rather a way to build a repertoire of fishing spots so that your future trips will be more successful.
So, I'll pick a shoreline that I want to "sample". I decide on a starting point and an end point. I work the shoreline rather quickly throwing lures that I know have worked for me in the past. I know that I will not be covering the area in depth by doing this but that isn't my goal. I'm just trying to cover as much water as possible while gaining an understanding of where the largest quantities of fish are holding on this shoreline. Think of it like a presidential poll. Do they call every potential voter or do they take a sample from a select few people? That's what were doing. As I work the shoreline I make note of every fish I see and every strike I get. The more visual signs of fish and the more bites in a single area raises the level of importance of that spot in my mind. All the while being able to eliminate the areas with few signs of fish and few to no strikes.
So then I'll go home and open up Google maps online or I'll break out an aerial photo of the places I fished that day. I'll highlight the places that were most productive and make note of the weather and tides. To really drill down an area, I will follow the same routine in the same area but at different times of the year and at different tides.
After I've figure out how to throw a "strike" in a particular area, then I can worry more about pitching the best "style" of bait. The "strike" is number one, without it, you've got nothing.
Once you learn how to be in the "strike" zone on a regular basis, you need to come back and check out my blog entry about picking the right bait for the right situation (coming soon).
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