How debriefing after your fishing trip can lead to more success

I was watching a black ops military documentary when I heard the mention of “debriefing” after every mission. It struck me that in almost every serious endeavor (fishing!), it’s critical to have a way to capture every bit of important information you can to improve your result.

My Olympic track coaches were the first ones to emphasize evaluating every aspect of what I was doing each time I did it. Immediate feedback and subsequent adjustments resulted in huge strides in performance.

Are you just fishing, trying to catch something – or do you ever go into what I call a scouting mode? Catching fish becomes secondary to collecting as much important info as you can to be sifted through later, best with a trusted peer. This is the debriefing that can give you insights and connections you never considered before. Most anglers completely miss this.

An angler must have a strong desire to improve in order to put the work in, as well as the discipline to commit to using new information. Having a system makes it happen.

Writing down your observations takes work, but it’s important to preserving clarity of thought while adding a new element that may take time to master.

The worst result is to have a breakthrough event but later realize that you unlearned a previous lesson.

Debriefing is more than just telling your buddy what lure and color worked.

Several layers of insights are shared and evaluated: What were the areas, timing, conditions, wind, clouds, techniques, unusual bites, sonar readings, water clarity and more? What exactly did you do that made that big fish bite? You think it was an accident – but maybe it wasn’t?

A good debrief can pry the pearl you’re missing out of the oyster. Having a trusted peer to share your hard-won observations with is a huge advantage.

The hardest part of debriefing is being brutally honest. Self-deception is tough to confront – especially if you have some strong beliefs that always pop up. Great success is usually a conscious decision to do what others don’t want to do.

Never give up!

Roger George: rogergeorge8@protonmail.com, Rogergeorgeguideservice on Facebook and @StriperWars.