What Constitues A Catch

[ryanh]

Troutbert. Come on man! Some times you don't intend to count. Like if you get skunked you don't have to be paying attention to know that you got zero. I say anything under 7 or 8 can and will be remembered that day, though will be forgot the next. Who was that guy a year or two back who bragged about catching like 1000 fish a year? Now thats dumb. I have had few over 10 fish days. So its not hard to remember how many you caught when its only a couple.

On the days where I have had over 10 fish then who cares? I mean the conditions were right and you were on your game. I won't care to remember exactly how many fish I caught. I would just chalk it up as a sh&^ Load and say it was a great day on the water.

 

[JackM]

It's always nice to catch a "sh&^ Load" even if it isn't quite 100.

 

[RLeeP]

>>Not to be a pisspot but counting how many you caught doesn't necessarily mean it is a competition.>>

Well, of course. Dead on as usual, Maurice.

Actually, I'd be inclined to say that not being able to avoid counting could be taken a sign of good neurological health. Or at the least, I'd be worried if my fishing buddy, when asked how he did, told me he didn't know, the last thing he remembers is putting his waders on...

I don't know about anybody else, but regardless of how many eagles, waterfalls, blazing sunsets and unicorns I see, I still pretty much know how many fish I've caught in the course of a single session. This isn't a voluntary thing. The counter is always running up there somewhere as a portion of my overall awareness just like Windows is running as I post in this forum.

Now, of course, we may episodically experience selective amnesia when asked how well we did. There are a lot of possible reasons for this from modesty to willful and cunning deceit to some weird sort of Schweibertian righteousness that tells us that proper fly anglers do not discuss such things.

But I have a hard time believing we pay no attention to this and really don't know.

Like I say, I don't think it is a voluntary thing..

 

[Wulff-Man]

JackM posted [color=0000FF]4[/color] duplicate mistakes.

 

[troutbert]

Some people are numbers oriented, some are more word and concept oriented. You can see this difference in orientation in kids at a very young age.

For people who are more word and concept oriented, the ticker is NOT automatically counting. If your counter is always counting, it's easy to assume that it's also counting for other people. Or, that if it's not, that there's some kind of mental fault there. Not so. Different people just have different ways of thinking.

I'll bet Shakespeare had one heck of a time balancing his checkbook. And if he fished, I'll bet he lost count somewhere around 3 or 4.

It takes every kind of people...

 

[JF_]

I keep a journal for myself. In it I note conditions, fishing partners, things I observed, anything notable before or after the fishing, and roughly how many fish I caught. It's not that difficult to keep that in you memory until you get to a piece of paper. I definitely don't do it to compete.

I can read my journal about a trip, say 2 years ago, and from that I could write a page full of memories from that day.

I take a fish as caught when it could be netted or when you have it in your control close to you and could handle it if you wanted to.

John

 

[live2fish]

I don't use a net, but it is considered caught if it's close enough to net.

I also keep count of the fish I catch, no matter what they are. My wife likes to know how I did. So I give her the numbers and type of fish caught. When trout fishing I do have a note book that I keep a record of the day and number caught. That way I can tell how I did against prior years, or even the day before. But even with all that counting going on it is mainly for myself. Although I will admit that after about seven or eight fish I start losing count.

But I do take time out to notice whats going on around me. Like the time I saw two snapping turtles in the creek in front of me. Wasn't sure what they were until they moved apart a little. Or the raccoons on the far bank one morning at sun up.

But even with all that counting going on it is mainly for myself

 

[Chaz]

Actually Ryan, I think it would be fairly easy to catch over 1000 trout a year. If you hit things right you can catch trout all day on some streams.

 

[RLeeP]

>>Some people are numbers oriented, some are more word and concept oriented. You can see this difference in orientation in kids at a very young age.

For people who are more word and concept oriented, the ticker is NOT automatically counting. If your counter is always counting, it's easy to assume that it's also counting for other people. Or, that if it's not, that there's some kind of mental fault there. Not so. Different people just have different ways of thinking.

I'll bet Shakespeare had one heck of a time balancing his checkbook. And if he fished, I'll bet he lost count somewhere around 3 or 4.

It takes every kind of people...>>


Well, if you say so...

Neat Shakespeare image, BTW

Maybe I should amend as follows..

I wouldn't contend nor would I presume that everybody knows without paying attention whether they caught 19 as opposed to 18 or 43 as opposed to 39 and so on. I think you're absolutely right when you say we vary in the way we think, although I'm not sure I'd use verbal/abstraction vs. quantitative as a demarcation. No matter, though. I certainly agree with you in general. But surely, if we are there to fish, we are cognizant of the difference between say, 8 and 11 or 6 and 9 trout brought to hand. I don't think so insisting is indicative of a presumptive prejudice on my part that everybody thinks like me.
On a verbal/quantitative scale, I'm much more verbal, yet the ability to give a fairly close estimate of how many fish I caught in a given session or time period is a non-volitional thing that simply happens.

I mean, with a blindfold on, I can pick up a piece of 3X and a piece of 4X and tell you which one is thicker, a difference of .001 inch. And I would imagine most everybody here can do the same. If you've never tried this, I recommend it. It is a very powerful illustration of just how finely engineered of a product we are. And while I realize that this is a different sort of measurement then that being discussed, it all comes from the same system, the same control center, the human mind. So, even when we don't think we know, I have to believe we do. And maybe that's the real answer. We know a lot of stuff we aren't aware we know...

 

[Wulff-Man]

This is actually an interesting discussion. I've been trying to figure out why I count to some extent (or am at least somewhat aware of) the number of fish caught during a particular outing. I know it isn't competition with other fishermen. I think it might have some element of keeping score, but only as a measure of how well I'm doing against my own expectations. But I think the biggest reason is that I want to be able to replay and relive every catch in my mind, because it's so enjoyable. It's like keeping a mental journal. For me, actually keeping a written journal is too much trouble. Of course, it's a lot more temporary and fleeting when it's only in my mind!

Then again, maybe I have a touch of OCD, and I just can't help myself!

 

[troutbert]

Wulff-Man wrote:
JackM posted [color=0000FF]4[/color] duplicate mistakes.

I'll take your word for it, since I lost track.

Being more word oriented than numbers oriented, I do know how to spell the word "Constitutes" though.

Do I get points for that? How MANY points?

 

[Wulff-Man]

troutbert wrote:

Wulff-Man wrote:
JackM posted [color=0000FF]4[/color] duplicate mistakes.

I'll take your word for it, since I lost track.

Being more word oriented than numbers oriented, I do know how to spell the word "Constitutes" though.

Do I get points for that? How MANY points?

[color=0000FF]ELEVEN[/color]
You get [color=0000FF]11[/color] Points! Because that's how many letters are in the correct spelling. How did I miscount the correct number of letters!


(P.S. I feel the need to explain the JackM post. I wasn't picking on Jack. It was just an attempt at being clever. For those who didn't catch it, there was apparently a web site error that duplicated 4 of his posts in a row. But it has been cleaned up now.)

 

[JackM]

I'm not sure what happened. I may have dribbled coffee on the keyboard and while wiping it off, accidentally struck the "Enter" key 3 times more while the first "submit" was still in transit. Anyhow, one of the moderators must have helped me out by deleting the others.

 

[lestrout]

The Native Americans had a hunting method of 'counting coup', as opposed to actually doing in the animal. I count a fish as 'caught' once I touch it or the hook (not just the leader).

Now for the counting controversy - I do it not as a competition, but because you can't manage what is not measured. Having been trained as an engineer, and working as a manager of scientists (who think differently than engineers), I'm quite aware of how one's memory differ from the facts.

For decades now, I have been tape recording my observations right on the stream, including sometimes the spish splash of the trouts and the buzz of a running reel. This not only records the data (time of when I see a given bug and where and when the trouts are active), but greatly helps my recall a few years later when I'm planning a trip in the same area.

When I first started taping, I was startled how my recollection afterwards was so different than the recorded reality. I would think that a given fly was the ticket for the session, and later replays would show that another fly and situation was actually more productive. My memory is almost photographic, and that and a MIT degree weren't sufficient for me to separate fact from fiction.

There are other benefits that I've derived from the tapes, besides the pleasure of reliving the moments of success (and failure too). One example is how I learned, after picking up the pattern on a number of tapes, that dragonflies can be a great help in finding exactly which part of a pool is concentrating midges, Tricos and olives. Another example was learning the lesson of Yellow Sallies.

I can ffish anytime I want now, but I no longer do the dawn-to-dusk killer marathons. Just don't want to peak too soon ;-)

So I like to decide ahead of time, according to expected hatches, water temps and levels, which direction I head off in a given day, with some expectations about likely success. And I want to spend the several hours reasonably productively, rather than just pounding water.

tl
les :-D

 

[Spyder20oz]

Once you land the first fish of the day... the rest of the day you enjoy and be thankful you are not at work.

Our rule has always been touching the leader with your hand while the fish is on.

 

[NJAngler]

Who was that guy a year or two back who bragged about catching like 1000 fish a year? Now that's dumb.

Some points: many streams in Pa contain trout populations in excess of 1000 trout per mile. Of those 1000, about 60% are of a catchable size or >3". If a good angler can catch say 5% of whats in there, thats 30 trout per trip. Thats just one stream over one mile. If you fish multiple streams or multiple miles, your numbers grow in a hurry. If you make just 34 trips in a year, thats over a thousand. Many anglers - like myself - make 50,75 even a hundred a trips a year so that numbers can really pile up.

BTW, wild trout are dumb, not the anglers.

Mark

 

[Stone_Fly]

Ryan, that would have been me, though I wasn't bragging, just keep track of the number for curiosity sake. But it is easy to catch 1000 trout in a year, especially if you have a couple of 100 fish days thrown in there. More recently I've taken on trying to find the biggest brookies in the streams I fish rather than raw numbers, so there are many places on streams that I just skip over because I know they don't hold large trout.
Bragging no, but wanting to know how many I caught because I knew I always caught a lot of trout was my goal.
I don't think I've since caught 1000 trout in a year in part because I haven't been fishing as much more recently, but now that you mention it, my goal for this year is to count the number of legal or larger brookies I catch and where I catch them. Sorry I won't tell.

 

[sandfly]

Counting Coup, was not a hunting act. It was what a warrior did and still does at times to touch an enemy and not kill him during battle. I am native american, and you learn this at an early age. :-D

 

[ryanh]

Stone_fly,
I don't think it was you, and maybe 1000 was not the number. He sparked some discussions because his number was so large that it was obscene. When I do the math 1000 over the course of a season is not that un-doable if you go a few times a week.

NJ angler.
30 trout per trip? Is there anyone else out there that has fish envy or do I just suck that bad.
I have covered some miles and have few or no fish to show for it. The math is not always as neat as you would like.

 

[Wulff-Man]

Sandfly, what's the purpose? Is it like reconnaissance? (Would you have to kill me if you told me?)