New Year’s resolutions are tough. We all want to better ourselves, and the new year seems like a great time to start. So much so in fact that I’ve often put off trying to clean up a certain area of my life for months in the fall and winter, waiting for the new year to roll around— only to find that those New Year’s resolutions lasted a couple weeks at best.  

So, we’re not going to talk today about New Year’s resolutions per se, but instead look at more overarching themes and principles that will make us all better anglers if we’ll apply them to our lives in 2023 and beyond. Let’s get started.

Get out of your comfort zone

Whether you’re a finesse fishing guy who lives and dies with a Ned rig or a power fishing fanatic who loves to heave a big spinnerbait around, we can all benefit from getting out of our comfort zone. I personally have always loved to power fish and looked down my nose for years at every shakyhead, dropshot and Ned rig that came along. That was sissy fishing to me.  

But all that judgment and closed mindedness did was trip me up, and I fail behind my competition. While other anglers were out there learning and growing, and most importantly catching fish, I was sitting there like a snob getting even further stuck in my ways.  

Once I finally started trying to diversify my arsenal with a few of the finesse techniques, not only did I learn new techniques, but I also learned critical information about how fish behave, which I was then able to apply to my power fishing techniques to even further hone those baits in.

Study

We’ve all rolled our eyes at someone a decade older than us as they said, “Back in my day…”. But now, as I stand here at 36 years of age and start to attempt to expound some wisdom on anglers younger than me, I find the eye rolling to be quite annoying.  

Still, back in my day… there was very little information out there if you wanted to become a better angler. There were a few magazines, a couple websites just getting off the ground and no YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok.  

Now on the other hand, there are thousands of anglers on hundreds of platforms dishing out solid information about techniques and products every day. And the library just continues to grow. We are privileged to have more information available today than ever before. And though it can be a little overwhelming at times, anglers today can shorten the learning curve by decades if they’ll just dive in and study up.

Be humble 

A big part of becoming a better angler, is acknowledging that you don’t know it all. Humility is a hard trait to master. But the best anglers I know are constantly looking to learn from others. Guys like Brandon Palaniuk for instance, which, there aren’t many guys like him. But his desire to be better paired with his humility and work ethic keep him on a path of constant growth.  

Find someone who is good at something that you haven’t yet mastered, or even tried, and then ask them questions. Most people want to share. But in this industry, which is quite often full of overinflated egos, it’s hard for us to humble ourselves enough to ask the questions. Trust me, I’ve been there myself. But ask and you shall receive.

Fish various styles of fishing

Another great way to become a better angler is to diversify how you fish. I’m not talking about what you fish with, like we discussed in the first section. But instead, how you fish. If you’re a big boat guy, try a kayak. If you’re a kayak guy, try wading a creek. If you change the way you fish, even for just a trip or two, you’ll be amazed at the growth you’ll experience as an angler.  

Nowhere has this been more evident in my personal fishing experience than when I tried out kayak fishing for the first time. I’ve spent my whole life fishing from a bass boat, even as a young boy starting out in my dad’s boat. I was unbelievably fortunate and could run up and down the lake and pull out just about any bait that Bass Pro Shops had.  

But when I first hopped into a kayak with nothing more than a paddle and a couple rods, I had to really make the most of the water that was right in front of me. This fresh new look at bass fishing made me a much more thorough angler when I got back into a big boat. I was better able to maximize the potential of an area and didn’t waste a lot of time running around.  

If you take these four basic principles and apply them to your fishing, you will undoubtedly become a better angler this year. And after all, isn’t that what we’re all here trying to do.