Fishing advice gets repeated so often it starts to feel like established fact, even when it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Here are five I believed for years before experience (and occasionally, actually reading the science) changed my mind.
“Fish can’t see colour, so lure colour doesn’t matter.” Most fish species anglers target in the UK do have colour vision, and there’s decent evidence that colour and contrast matter, particularly in clear water. Where this myth partly comes from is that in low light or coloured water, silhouette and vibration matter more than colour – but that’s a specific situation, not a universal rule.
“Barometric pressure doesn’t really affect fishing, it’s an old wives’ tale.” I used to dismiss this, until enough personal pattern-matching (and enough other anglers independently reporting the same thing) convinced me a genuinely falling barometer does seem to correlate with better feeding activity. The mechanism isn’t fully agreed on, but the pattern is real enough that I plan around it now.
“You need expensive tackle to catch big fish.” Some of the biggest fish I’ve caught came on genuinely budget tackle. Rod and reel quality affects your experience and occasionally your ability to land a fish in difficult snags, but it doesn’t catch fish for you – watercraft and presentation do that.
“Pike always go for the biggest, easiest meal.” Pike are opportunistic, but I’ve had far more success matching bait size to what’s actually present in a water than assuming bigger is always better – oversized baits get refused more often than beginners expect.
“You should always strike hard and fast on a bite.” On several species, particularly bigger, harder-mouthed fish taking a bait properly, a slightly delayed, positive strike hooks fish more reliably than an instant, hair-trigger response – striking too early is a bigger cause of missed fish than most anglers realise.
Rob Hadley grew up fishing the rivers and drains of the Norfolk Broads, and it was inevitable that pike would become his species of choice. He’s been targeting predators seriously for over 20 years – starting on dead baits, moving through live bait rigs, and eventually landing on lure fishing as his preferred method about eight years ago.
These days he fishes the Broads through winter, travels to Chew Valley Lake each spring for its outsized fish, and spends the warmer months working soft plastics on rivers across the East Midlands for perch and zander. He’s had pike to 31lb and perch to 3lb 9oz, and reckons both records are beatable on the right day with the right set-up.
At The River Bend, Rob writes the predator species guides, lure fishing technique articles, and most of the winter fishing content.
Covers: Pike, perch, zander, lure fishing, winter fishing, predator rigs