Embrace the landlubber in you

It seems like every fishing show on TV, Vlog on YouTube or article in a magazine focuses on fishing from a boat.  If you didn’t know better, you would think that the only way to catch fish is floating in a hole in the water…surrounded by wood or fiberglass!  However, one of the fastest-growing segments in the fishing industry is “shore-fishing.”

On-shore fishing has many elements to it.  We could be talking about fishing on the beach in the surf, fishing off of piers or jetties, standing on the bank of a river or pond or fly-fishing in a stream or brook.  To be honest, I think fishing from shore…makes you an inherently better fisherman.  For the sake of full disclosure, I have owned five boats in my lifetime. I have also caught a lot more fish from boats than from shore…and to some extent, that fact proves my point.

If you take someone who fishes from shore the vast majority of time, and put them on a boat to fish, they are usually quite successful.  However, if you take someone who has mostly fished from a boat... they can struggle with shore fishing.  Of course, the same argument can be made about the differences between salt and freshwater fishing.  However, that is a subject for another article downstream.

Cattails or Catfish?

No doubt hiking through the woods to your favorite fishing spot can result in a relaxing and peaceful day while jockeying for position at the boat ramp can have the opposite effect.  The goals are still the same for most of us.  To catch fish, relax and enjoy time with our friends or family.  Whether you are working a top-water frog by the cattails of the bank or anchored over a “hole,” that is only producing Channel Cats…fishing is regenerative.  It helps us recharge the batteries in our souls.

If you are a shore focused fisherman, you have no doubt developed a keen eye for the eddies and currents that flow around and through the outcroppings and channels visible from land.  You learn to read the surface of the water with your eyes, take its temperature with your touch and listen to its splashes and swirls with your ears. You fish without fish-finders, sonar or navigation charts.  You fish by feel.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to fish from a boat. However, in some strange way, I feel more connected to the world when fishing from land.  So, the next time you are standing on shore, rod in hand and you find yourself glancing with envy towards those casting towards you from their sea-chariots…just remember one thing.  Your cost for a pound of fish caught…actually makes sense! 

Tight lines…

This article was written by Thom Buck

Thom Buck is an outdoor enthusiast who has had been widely published in some of the most well know outdoor magazines and periodicals of the day.  He has hosted two long-running syndicated radio-talk shows that targeted subject matter such as hunting, fishing, the outdoors and the environment.  He has been considered a subject-matter expert within the hunting and fishing industry for almost 35 years.

He lives in the Tampa Bay Area where he has fished the Gulf Coast since the 1970’s.  Having been the proprietor of a successful outfitter store for many years he is still recognized as an accomplished outdoorsman who can blend fact-based subjects with self-deprecating humor… gleaned from decades of field-experience in his articles.