Being a humble “student of the game” may be the greatest catalyst to your progress as a surfcaster.
Underneath my alpha exterior there is an academic sensibility at my core. I am kind of a secret nerd and I love to learn and improve. Any success that I have enjoyed has come, at least indirectly, from my deliberate pursuit of improvement and willingness to learn from others. These lessons have come from some of the best surfcasters in the world but also from unlikely sources as well.
It is not surprising that the best surfcasters out there often embody this same willingness to adapt and grow as patterns change.
The first method of learning would be spending hard time on the water. This old fashioned, “grind it out” mentality has long-been the preferred method of diehard surfcasters. I’ve often said, “There is no substitute for time on the water.” There is a great deal of satisfaction when you are dredging your own path in the surf, trying different lures, learning your local waters, studying the conditions, keeping a detailed log of what works and what doesn’t. By nature, surfcasting is an independent endeavor. I’ve written elsewhere that “surfcasting in a nutshell is simply you, a tide, and a set of right and wrong guesses.” When you guess correctly and land a great fish, the feeling is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t spent countless hours failing in this pursuit.
Spending years out in the surf will almost certainly lead to nominal improvement. You will fail, a lot, and you will have occasional tides filled with large fish, but I find there is a glass ceiling looming in this solitary process. After the initial lessons that we learn on our own, we are still limited by our own unique experiences, gear, spots and intuition. We only know the lures that we have tried and once we have success with certain methods, we tend to overuse them in an attempt to recreate that one successful night. If you aren’t careful, you might not realize that epic night was six months ago, or for some, two years ago. Is that lure really that good, or have you become complacent?
True accelerated growth will come when time on the water has brought you as far as it can and you decide to exchange all those lessons with others, in exchange for the lessons they have learned. These lessons can come from friends, books, podcasts and magazines. Sometimes lessons come from people you don’t even like. My preferred method is fishing with other surfcasters who are as passionate as I am about the nuances of this game.
Recently, a buddy of mine was on good fish and invited me to fish with him (never a bad thing). The afternoon before the tide he texted me saying “all the fish want is Slug-Go’s.” I kind of secretly rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “If they will eat Slug-Go’s, they will eat Super Snax, or any similar soft plastic.” Then I decided that my friend (who is less experienced) probably doesn’t know the magic of a good needle bite. A needlefish is similar in profile to a Slug-Go, and maybe I would be able to reach fish that he couldn’t. And so, my secret plan was to teach HIM something that night.
Fast forward an hour into the tide and I hadn’t gotten so much as a bump. He had landed a few good fish and another surfcaster in the area had landed a 37-pounder (on a Slug-Go). “Okay, give me one of those stupid things.” Much to my elation (and dismay) my buddy was right. For reasons that I will never know, these fish wanted Slug-Go’s and seemingly nothing else. In fact, it crossed my mind that if I had been alone that night, I very well may have gotten skunked, despite a mass of hungry 22- to 37-pound fish surrounding me. This scenario is not unique and no matter how “good” I get at this sport I am shown time and again that there are lessons to be learned from others.
Some lessons are bite or spot- specific and some are more universal. Finding a trusted circle of like-minded surfcasters that are willing to exchange their lessons will accelerate your growth more than any amount of time on the water. Both are important, but we will never know what we don’t know if we go at this alone.
