Nick Simonson
By Nick Simonson
The turn of the calendar and the holidays that come this time of year often provide pauses to reflect on the 12 months that were and the next dozen to come and what we did and will do with that time. This stretch also gives anglers a chance to look back on the fish caught, not only this year, but throughout their lives and perhaps look forward to the ones to come, and plan for the places to go and how exactly they'll catch bigger ones and different ones in the new year. Making a life list of those species, and the most notable ones in memory, is always a fun experience and serves a purpose.
Life listing – a process originating in the pastime of bird watching – is a helpful tool for tracking not only the great memories of huge fish caught along the way, but also in setting goals for the coming season; a task I took much more seriously in the past but vowed to do better in the coming years as I help my boys establish their own. It seems a fitting restart as the process also runs in my family, coming from my grandmother, an avid birder, who at the front of her Audubon Field Guide which I now possess, cataloged 111 species of birds she observed in her lifetime, a majority of which were witnessed from the picture window on her farm outside of Watford City, N.D.
Akin to the faded vertical avian catalog printed in her fine handwriting, my fishing life list (not nearly as neat or as legible) details species, date, size and location, and with most entries having a single line through the previous record, makes it easy to see when and where some of my best fishing happened. From pike and walleye on spring runs to the northern channels of Devils Lake, to fat panfish deep into the heart of summer at the family cabin in Minnesota, the list details key calendar components as to when some of my biggest fish have come boatside. Broken down into four categories: freshwater, saltwater, ice fishing and fly fishing, the list keeps the pertinent info for each seasonal experience handy and is a great way to look ahead to the coming months to see what personal bests are easily broken by a trip to a well-targeted water, and what may have just been fluky big fish, like the 32-inch carp from 2006 on the Sheyenne River that sucked up a small streamer on my five-weight fly rod early one morning before work.
Finally, the list provides a chance to relive old experiences and recall some of the odd fish – like a number of nameless saltwater species that required being looked up in order to officially add them – such as the toothy, annoying sand perch and the puffer caught while dragging sandy bottoms on the Gulf shores near Tampa, Fla. While the near-term excitement of life listing comes from recording an amazing catch and scratching out the old one, the long-term benefits (beyond serving as a memory aid) are reliving the ever-increasing length and weight of the fish and conditions occurring around them. In turn should my goals ever return to a more serious pursuit – as I hope they will in the new year – I have a benchmark by which to judge them. For those reasons, life listing is a fun way to add to the angling experience.
Take some time as the season allows to prepare for a new year with new fishing goals in mind. Whether you're looking to catch something different, or best your biggest of a certain species already on your list, even if you just take the 15 minutes to sit down and record those fish stored in your memories, you can say you've already accomplished one of your new year's resolutions simply by putting together a life list that can be relied on in seasons to come.
Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.
Featured Photo: Year End Best List. Making a life list of fish species caught helps define the experience and set plans and goals for the coming year. Even putting the list together for the first time can be considered a successful new year's resolution that serves many purposes. Simonson Image.
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