Ever Think About How Many Casts You Make During a Day of Bass Fishing?

That thought certainly has crossed my mind a few times over the years, but I never bothered to investigate the matter until today. It just happens to be one of those times when I'm "feeling" yesterday's eight hours on the water a bit more than usual.

The first thing my Internet research turned up was the suggestion by a fishing-club president that the typical angler makes three casts per minute, which means that, on any given eight-hour fishing day/tourney, you'll make 1,440 casts. Now let's say you catch five fish (the average) during those eight hours. In that case, your cast-to-catch ratio is one fish every 288 casts.

In my way of thinking, that leaves a whole bunch of unproductive time. Of course, that time need not be unproductive. For example, I know a couple of guys (won't mention any names, but their initials are D.K. and B.M.) who can devour a whole bucket of chicken during those 287 unproductive casts. However, I jest.

While we're talking about productive vs. unproductive casts, consider that I also ran across one fella who sometimes actually counts his casts. He finds that he averages about 25 casts per fish when the bite is good. After a cold front, though, he goes 40 or 50 casts before putting a fish in the boat.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let's take a look at some stats for noted pro angler and power fisherman Kevin VanDam (pictured below).

At a Bassmaster Elite 50 event on Lake Dardanelle in 2004, when VanDam was 36 years old, his first-day observer timed his casts for the first hour. The observer reported that VanDam averaged a cast every 10 seconds, which translates into 360 casts per hour, or more than 2,500 casts a day.

VanDam offered this clarification, "I wasn't fishing the entire cast at Dardanelle. The strike zone was about 5 feet long--right around the cover the bass were using. Once I'm through the strike zone, I always reel in as quickly as possible, so I can make another cast."

It's important to keep your bait wet. In the words of Joey Monteleone, outdoors fishing legend and big-bass angler, "Keep casting, stay focused, and be ready. If you're not casting, you can't be catching." That sounds like pretty good advice to me, especially coming from someone with documented catches of more than 1,200 bass weighing more than 5 pounds.