KISS

KISS is a widely known acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid and it seems to have special (although often overlooked) meaning in many aspects of the lives of those like myself who tend to overthink and over-do far too many things. Occasionally it does hit home, but usually after the fact and becomes another lesson not learned soon enough, often forgotten, and with a need to be re-learned more than I care to admit.

The KISS concept has even more meaning in the truly important portions of our lives…the pursuit of all things living outdoors and in this context, those confounding glassy eyed creatures residing in most of our lakes. The Simple part of the equation is most significant here and it correlates nicely with Shallow. So, we can make the logical assumption that Shallow walleye’s are generally Simple to catch and be correct most of the time. Therefore I will go one step further in this analysis in an attempt to cement this into some of your and definitely my
concrete-as in hard headed-brains.

We can do this by changing the acronym to fit our needs (yes, we as anglers can twist things around to fit our requirements just as adeptly as politicians) by substituting the Simple with Shallow. We now have Keep It Shallow Stupid, still get a KISS, and this is one that should be long recalled, particularly in the heat and so called “Dog Days” of Summer. While experience can result in knowledge, it only really matters if one applies this knowledge. It is also said that if one writes things down it will help them to remember things and therefore this is an attempt to remind myself to practice what I preach.

I have been experimenting and promoting deep tactics for big walleye’s in the heat of Summer for years and in this quest have proven myself right often enough to be comfortable in the fact that these methods do indeed work well most of the time. Problem is that it is not all of the time and the fact that big fish are but a very small percentage of the total population. This is important for both an angler in competitive or recreational settings. As a recreational angler, if you are targeting only big fish, you can only reasonably expect to bring a few to the boat eachday. Not our intended outcome and we can do better.

As a tournament angler-in today’s world of slot restrictions and no cull rules-you can also only reasonably expect to bring a few to the boat each day. A couple of problems can quickly arise here. God forbid some of these big fish come unpinned and you get little return for your time invested and the fact that you have forgot to bring in the all important “unders.” Once again, not our intended outcome and we now have a leader board that tells the whole world we could have done better. Humbling and impossible to hide from.

Hopefully there is a point to be made here and that for me is that to be a consistent angler on any level; we must always remain flexible and explore all of our options. It is easy to become one dimensional and fail to recognize and take advantage of all that is available to us. As with anything, we can fall into a rut with pre-conceived notions and that is generally not a good thing. Better to quickly react to the conditions at hand and let our lessons learned guide us. Guess we should adhere to the KISS format both Simple and Shallow.