Confidence.

Why is confidence so important in our fishing - well it is to me anyway.

I can set up and start fishing on a given day and just know that to continue in the same vein is likely to generate a fruitless day. And if I do not take heed and change something it generally does produce a poor day.

Yet other days you sit (or stand) there, and although you have not had a bite you just know that everything is just right and it is just a matter of time, and generally that proves to be the case.

Is it confidence, is it gut feeling, is it knowing that things are spot on or is it a more basic thing?

Does anyone else experience this?

The way I see it is; If someone is feeling confident it tends to make them fish a lot better. They will be expecting to catch and therefore be more alert and be much more willing to make small adjustments until they do start to catch, and all this usually means that they are more likely to be successful.

Whereas if they don't feel confident they tend to lull around and fish with much less enthusiasm and therefore fish a lot less efficiently and their minds will often be on other things like is it home time yet?

If my confidence starts to fade, even after trying the usual things like changing bait, dropping down to smaller hook sizes, lighter hooklenghs and other things; I tend to wander along the banks trying other swims, looking for other features to try. It's surprising how often this works for me.

I have had days in the winter where the fish were all tightly shoaled in one particular swim and all the other swims around it were virtually fishless.
I have also had cold winter days where the whole place appeared to be fishless and no matter what I tried my confidence plummeted through the floor. LOL

Keith

Success or results give you confidence... its a self fulfilling prophesy of doom if you start to feel despondent.

There is also different types of confidence; there's the type of confidence when you just look at the river and conditions and you just know its worth giving your all!

The other type of confidence is what gets you through a dark time.... I know my rigs work, bait is good, placement etc.... It might not be working today... but you ain't doing anything wrong (maybe.... or unless....)

Finally, there is misplaced confidence. An idea you put misplaced faith into... (normally trying to replicate someone else's ideas you have read........ Just cos it works for angler X on some top river... don't mean Jack in reality IMO... Not till you've worked through the method and found it suitable for your set of circumstances).

The best type of confidence comes from all of the above and remaining critical of your methodology.

I think it is a mixture of quite a few elements.

The knowledge that where you are fishing is somewhere that has brought you success in the past.

In addition, the knowledge that your chosen method has proven to be good in the past, the same goes for baits.

Then add in that sixth sense, you know, that general feeling that you know where the fish are likely to be on a given day in given conditions.

Al of the above contibute to giving na angler confidence, however, even the most confident anglers may still fail, so have the confidence to know when to either move on and find another swim or indeed the confidence to retire to the nearest hostelry as the best option . . . . . . . .

All of those. There are places I go where I just know that if I fish a certain way I will catch and that gives me huge confidence to persevere or to move. I'm not a particularly innovative angler but,by God, I'm persistent. Somedays I just wear the buqqers down I think.

Confidence I can rationalise but not that strange feeling you get...often on really difficult days when you sense that something is about to happen. We can all anticipate bites/runs etc...I'm talking here of those moments when the hairs stand up on the back of your neck,your pulse quickens and you suddenly become very,very focussed for no immediately obvious reason. You just KNOW that any second now............

Bit creepy really. Doesn't happen that intensely to me very often...I think it might be some sort of Vulcan Mindmeld thing.

Terry
You are not at all alone!

For me confidence is everything, when I loose confidence in what I am doing then it is time to go home, so I chop and change until I have got it right, which usually means I have changed things enough to make me confident of getting a bit of interest!