How far out might you plan a fishing session?

I guess a lot of this depends on where you live in relation to some fishing, plus whatever work and family commitments you might have and so on. I got to thinking about this because I went out fishing on Monday morning - I blanked! - and it was one of those sessions that I had been thinking about for a few days before when I saw the forecast………….

I live near a lot of saltwater fishing and I work for myself. I am either here at home doing my thing or I am away somewhere. I am married with two teenage daughters and my wife and I have been together so long that she knows what I’m like if I don’t go fishing on a regular basis. It’s what I do, and as much as I am a proud father and I hope that I do all I can to help with my girls’ running and sailing and so on, I am not one of those blokes who “asks permission” of their other half when they want to go fishing. I don’t understand marriages or partnerships like that, but there are plenty of times when I can’t go fishing because it’s my night to take the youngest girl to running training, or my wife is working late and the girls need a pickup from school etc. As much as going fishing is a huge part of my life, I am also a husband and a father and there’s a lot of stuff which needs to be done outside of fishing.

The sort of conditions the forecast suggested for Monday morning………..

But I can often go fishing when a lot of other people might be at work. I don’t work set hours and I can usually fit the work I need to do here around my going fishing to take advantage of the tides and conditions. What about the quiet hours of the night when regular people are asleep? I tend to fish plenty of shorter, sharper sessions rather than fish marathons which I don’t enjoy anyway. Living so close to a lot of fishing gives me the chance to fish what I think are the best parts of various tides and then get on with work and family commitments. I keep a constant eye on the current weather, the forecast, tide tables, water clarity, moon phases, various webcams etc., and most of my fishing sessions sort of “appear” to me when I commute the various factors and come up with a plan.

Sometimes though a plan begins to formulate in my head a fairly long way out. This might be because I really like the look of the tides and the long range forecast kinda suggests where might be worth thinking about. This happened the other day. We had incredibly flat calm conditions for a while, almost strangely so in fact, but the forecast was suggesting that things would change overnight Sunday into Monday morning. I have sometimes done well early in the season at a particular spot which I had an inkling about probably around Thursday last week, whilst accepting that the forecast could well change between then and Monday and my plan might need to change. I would suggest that bass fishing demands that our plans need to be as flexible as possible anyway, but I guess that a lot depends on your own fishing situation as such. How flexible can you be? How far do you have to travel? Can you drop everything and go when you think it might fire? Does it make more sense for you to fish much longer sessions and maximise the time you have like that? We all lead different lives and I don’t for one second think that I’ve got it all figured out - because I haven’t. Not at all in fact!

Anyway, so for all that Monday morning had been literally calling me to a specific spot for a few days, when I got there I was met with conditions that weren’t exactly ideal and I blanked. I’d have fancied hooking a fish or two if they had been around, and perhaps they were but I was doing something wrong, but I learnt a bit more about this location for future reference and when I blank I can’t really ask for more than that. One session which I had been thinking about the moment I saw the forecast change, but it didn’t work, and I wonder how many spur of the moment sessions will end up being really good this year?