Struggling as a New Fisherman

When I realized I was going to be moving out west for work, from northern Virginia to rural Montana in the spring of 2023, I knew I had to start learning how to fish again. I’d been an accomplished bass fisherman years prior, and even went to the state tournament as a member of my high school’s fishing team (yes, really). But I had been out of the game for years, and really didn’t know where to begin. I went to Walmart and bought a cheap rod and reel, then bought my fishing license online and went to a local wildlife management area to practice. I had read on the Virginia DWR website that this local lake was stocked with trout, and my hopes were heightened when I arrived and saw a group of men heading back to their trucks with a big stringer with their limit of trout on it.

            I approached the lake and saw that those guys weren’t the only ones there; the lake was extremely crowded. Notably, I didn’t see anyone catching anything. Everyone seemed as though they’d more or less given up, sitting passively in their chairs and waiting for something to bite. I guessed maybe those men I saw a few minutes ago had been here a while, probably caught most of their fish before all these people got here. I tempered my expectations a bit, but was still hopeful that maybe I’d be successful still. If I caught just one fish, that would be a good day for me.

            I found a spot away from the others and went to cast out. I lunged forward to cast out and… my lure caught on a tree behind me. “Wow, amateur hour,” I thought to myself. I chuckled and untangled the hook from the tree branches. The chuckling didn’t last long.

I went to cast out again, and found that my lure didn’t go very far at all. That was weird, because when I was younger, I’d been a great caster, but I supposed I had lost that skill and needed to relearn it all. I continued to struggle to get the lure to go where I wanted it, but slowly got better at it over the course of the day. Even so, I was frustrated, and the lack of fish I was catching was equally frustrating. After 20-30 minutes of this, I went to cast fairly hard and my cheap rod snapped at the end. I was devastated. Why was I so bad at fishing? I left the lake frustrated, but determined to remaster fishing.

A few days later, I decided to try again, this time in a local pond that I knew was full of the easiest fish on Earth to catch: Bluegill Sunfish. The pond was pretty wide open, so I didn’t have a lot of stuff behind me for the hook to accidentally catch on. I also didn’t have to get the bait out very far, so that made things a lot easier too. I tossed out my bait and within seconds I had a fish on. I reeled it in and held it, it was about 4 inches long. I didn’t take a picture, but I wish I had. This was the first fish I had caught in years, and I felt extremely accomplished. I put it back in the water and kept fishing. I caught a couple more sunfish that day, all about the same size as the first one, and threw them all back. I left that second attempt feeling very proud of myself, but still not fully satisfied. I needed to catch something more substantial to really feel good about myself and my fishing renaissance. I was going to make an attempt at catching trout again.

Over the next couple of months, I went to several lakes, rivers, and streams around the area to try and fish for various species I had seen listed in the stocking reports – Walleye, Channel Catfish, Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, and a handful of others. I really wasn’t having a lot of luck most of the time, and I was starting to get frustrated again with the lack of success I was having. Public fishing areas in eastern states tend to be heavily fished, and that can severely affect success rates for new fishermen. I was at determined to catch something I could hang my hat on before I left for Montana.

When I found out I had gotten the job in Montana, my girlfriend started looking for positions locally that she could apply to in order to move with me. She managed to secure one after a few weeks of looking, but that job was starting about two weeks before mine, and the start date was non-negotiable. This meant that she was going to have to leave before me. She and I were spending as much time as possible together, and I even took her fishing for the first time at the bluegill pond I’d been to previously. She hooked a bluegill within a few minutes just like I had that first time, and she was excited to have caught something so quickly. She wanted to go fishing more after having a great experience, so a few days before she had to leave, we went out to a local lake to try one more time to catch a fish before she had to go. I put a Rapala Jointed Minnow on my line and walked up to what looked like a good spot near some debris. On my first cast, I watched a long, dark silhouette dart up after my lure, and felt the line tighten and the rod bend. I knew exactly what it was. I reeled in as quickly as I could, doing my best to contain my excitement as the small Largemouth Bass flopped on the bank. It wasn’t a big one at all, probably only 9 inches long, maybe less. It certainly wasn’t a trophy, but that didn’t matter. It was my trophy. I took the hook out and threw it back, and felt a lot different. I had gotten over the mental hurdle of self-doubt caused by a lack of success.

The author removing the hook from the first Largemouth Bass he’d caught after being nearly a decade removed from fishing.

After that experience, I felt a lot better with myself about my abilities as a fisherman. I started having more success and developed more patience. I kept fishing once I got to Montana, and ended up taking up fly fishing once I got here, too. Fly fishing presented lots of challenges; some new, some familiar – but that’s a story for another time…

All of this is to say that I still have a ton of growing to do as a fisherman, but I probably wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I’m at now, a year after relearning how to fish, if I had given up after that first attempt. It would have been easy to quit; I went home hot, sweaty, muddy, with a broken fishing rod, and a broken spirit. I didn’t give up though, I found somewhere easier, pursued an easier quarry, and had some confidence-building success. Sometimes, small successes to build confidence are needed when trying something new; or, in this case, getting back into something you haven’t done in a long time. I don’t regret all the time I spent not catching anything at that first lake, or in the rivers and streams in and around the Shenandoah Valley that I’d spent so much time at without being able to bring home a single fish. All of that disappointment just made that tiny and insignificant bass I caught that much more enjoyable. I may have a long way to go, but I’ve come a long way, too.

If you’re in a similar situation to me – and if you’ve read this far, my guess is that you are – just stick with it. Even on days that you aren’t catching anything but pneumonia, keep at it. Because eventually, you will hook into something, and odds are it won’t be a giant. By that point, however, it won’t matter; it’ll be a huge step forward for you, and that huge feeling of accomplishment is what will make you want to keep getting better. Let yourself enjoy the small victories.