I never was a big fish chaser. Sure, when I land a pig from a limestoner or something, it makes my day. Big is relative to the stream, but I rather catch a big fish than a small fish, all things being equal.
Fish size just isn't real high on the priority list, that's all. It never was. I chase a lot of 6" fish, lol.
I'll fish big water, tiny water, and everything in between. Freestoner, limestoner, tailwater, whatever. Variety is a good thing. Like dryflyguy, there's a season for each type of experience.
But 1 thing is common. If possible. I wanna cover water. And I want to be away from roads a bit. Even bigger water you can do that in places. There's a TON of small streams that let you do that, but you ca find it on big ones too. Like, say, Penns, I will strongly prefer up or down from Poe to the Coburn stretch. Why? Because below Coburn there's a road that parallels the stream. No thanks. Penns is nice because you can fish a couple of miles of water without crossing roads. There's other big water you can do that. I recently kayaked the Schuylkill for smallies through a fairly long roadless stretch. But other than maybe the evening rise, I prefer not to grow roots, and cover a couple of miles pretty quick. The scenery must change fairly quickly and I don't want it to include cars and buildings if possible.
I also do not like hitting the same water too often. As a rule of thumb I try not to hit the same stream more than once in a year, and I make a point to get some "never fished" streams in the mix each year. Even say, at the jam, if I have a long weekend and end up back on the same stream 2 nights in a row, I'll try to hit a different section of that stream. I'm an explorer I guess.
Without big fish, we never get to bend a rod into the butt section unless we snag the bottom, an unreachable tree branch, the odd errant bird...
