By Pete Robbins – Half Past FIrst Cast

If you’re as anal and compulsive as I am about scheduling, you probably have some big trips planned for the long term future. I don’t mean the deposits-paid-written-in-ink kind of plan, but rather a general expectation of something to come.

As in: “When the kids all graduate, we’ll go on an African safari.”

Or: “In five more years I’ll treat myself to a trout-by-helicopter adventure in Patagonia.”

I have more goals than I can possibly fulfill, but I’m going to try like hell to achieve as many as I can. I think it’s healthy. So long as you don’t discount being present in your day-to-day life, these goals allow you to celebrate milestones and the long horizon gives you time for planning and $aving.

At the same time, you need to be ready to change those plans, no matter how dear you hold them to your heart.

First, environmental or political forces can wreak havoc on those intentions. For example, if years ago you’d intended to travel to the interior of Venezuela for payara, that eventually became a non-starter. Or if five years ago you’d put Lake Okeechobee on your bucket list for 2020, seeing some of the recent tournament results might lead you to turn your focus elsewhere.

On the flip side, sometimes it pays to move your dreams FORWARD. I’m not saying that you should mortgage your house and sell grandma’s jewelry to do it, but if you infer from reputable sources that a place is peaking, it can make sense to pull the trigger.

I know this from experience. I fished the famous Elite Series event on Falcon in 2008. It was so good that on Day One the tournament director told competitors not to weigh any fish clearly under 10 pounds for the big fish award. During practice with Jeff Kriet, he had to make a phone call, so he set me down on a school of 2- and 3-pounders and let me catch dozens of them, noting that they’d be worthless during competition. After that event, I made an effort to go back every year and it seemed to get a little bit worse each time. By 2012, it seemed every boat was doodling little 4-inch worms. I was so glad that I had been during the heyday, but that time was over. [Note: I continue to monitor the fishing at Falcon through Facebook accounts of Matt Reed and others, and it appears that it has rebounded somewhat. I’m due for a trip sometime in the near future.]

Learning from that lesson, I’d always been curious about ice fishing and had heard about the big stocked brown trout in Lake Michigan. In fact, the IGFA world record had been caught right in Milwaukee Harbor. Those trout were non-reproducing, and when we heard that the state was ending or severely reducing the trout stocking plans going forward, we made plans to be there as soon as the ice was thick enough and we had a free weekend. But for the catalyst of that news, we likely would not have done it that soon, if at all. [Note: After this was initially written, the state of Wisconsin increased stocking numbers to 450,000 fish annually.]

The point is, if you have reason to believe that a particular opportunity may go away, or at least decrease substantially in quality, screw your plan – get there while the getting is good. If it doesn’t get worse you can always go again.

If you want to know where the bite is hot, or you want to know the best time to go to one of our favorite locations, check out www.halfpastfirstcast.com or email us at [email protected].