Defining the Best: Part 2

Last month's feature examined the ways in which the knowledge and skill sets utilized by delivery drivers distributing magazines along a route structurally resemble those of captains running charters on coastal waters. Most importantly, the article states the following truth related to how the analysis of these two activities helps clarify the best way to define which angler reigns supreme over all others. In the end, the angler who displays the highest level of productivity over the broadest area ascends to the top rung of the proverbial ladder.

The process of ranking the best angler resembles the same one used in another avocation in which I participate frequently. People who regularly make excursions to find as many species of birds as possible call themselves "birders." I've engaged with others in debates over how to properly identify the best birder. I'd say some folks fall into a predictable trap when trying to arrive at such a conclusion; they place too much emphasis on the number of species a person has seen and identified in their lifetime.

Some people have observed and identified many thousands of species of birds, after traveling to far-flung destinations all across the globe. Certainly, individuals who've achieved such a thing deserve some consideration in the discussion of who's the best birder in the world, or who's the best birder of all time, with an important caveat―consideration of how much help these birders generally use in order to compile such impressively long lists. Anyone familiar with the movie titled "The Big Year" will understand what I mean by this.

People who become obsessed with seeing long lists of birds in an area (in the case of the movie, on the continent of North America) burn through barrels of jet fuel and empty sacks of cash in order to achieve their goals. Along the way, they solicit the help of many others who've already located species, especially unusual ones, and quickly make trips to add the birds to their lists. This kind of activity doesn't really prove anything significant about their skills as birders; it provides much more evidence of their levels of expendable income, free-time and motivation.

I don't believe consideration of the number of species a birder has seen in their life is the most illuminating way to decide who ranks at the top of the list of best birders in the world. I'd say a more accurate method of ranking involves the same process as the one described in last month's feature. The world's best birder is the one who displays the highest levels of knowledge and skills over the broadest range; the ranking relies more on identifying elite performance (process), than outcome (production).

Serious birders become proficient at locating and identifying most or all the species of birds within what might be called their "patch." Certainly, birders who limit the scope of their patch to their backyard feeding stations, and who learn to recognize all the birds who visit them cannot stake any legitimate claim to being the world's best birder, when compared to people who become proficient at finding most or all the birds in an entire county, state, nation or continent. Some birders do indeed meet this high standard, displaying knowledge and skills related to finding and identifying birds across large swaths of the earth's surface.

The best birder in the world displays a wealth of knowledge about the sounds the birds make, also the physical traits they display, their habits and preferred habitats, and they can locate these species in many places, without the aid of others. Birders must acknowledge the migration patterns birds use to survive and thrive. These patterns dictate where and when some species will be found; some species live in a patch year-round, while others appear only briefly, while passing through, and still others come to stay for part of the year. The best birders know when to look for all the species, where they will most likely appear and how to locate and identify them, given the time of year, time of day and even the type of weather prevailing in a place.

In these ways, a top birder most closely resembles a specific kind of angler, one who targets multiple species of fish, rather than a single species. Essentially, anglers who choose to target one species become specialists. They might become better than all others at producing speckled trout measuring at least twenty-eight inches in length, or marlin weighing at least 800 pounds.

Surely, these kinds of feats bear some significance in the discussion of the world's greatest angler, but specialists can't legitimately claim higher status on the scale than anglers who produce great catches of most or all the species found within the waters they work. Just as learning to catch fish regularly in all the coastal waterways within a state proves harder than learning to catch them regularly in one named bay, learning to target and catch all the species within a body of water proves more challenging than focusing on just one species. So, targeting multiple species over a larger area provides more legitimate potential for status.

As is the case with birders, when attempting to rank the best anglers, one should consider not only how many quality fish of how many different species an angler manages to catch, but also how much help they use in the process of catching them. An angler with endless free-time and resources who zips all around the globe targeting everything from peacock bass in Brazil to great white sharks on Australia's Barrier Reef and who hires guides every step of the way deserves no serious consideration as the World's Greatest Angler. Conversely, an angler who shows productivity at catching many different species in many different places and who does so using minimal help from local experts does deserve consideration.

Who could deny that a person capable of teasing a brown trout to slurp a fly off the surface of an alpine stream in Montana, coaxing a smallmouth bass to strike a plastic worm in Lake Ontario, besting a roosterfish in a battle of brute force in Costa Rica and rigging a live bait properly in order to trick a grander marlin in the South Pacific would deserve mention as the best angler anywhere? I'm sure some person out there loosely meets this description. But, this publication is focused on saltwater fishing, specifically in the state of Texas. Accordingly, this discussion swings back around within those boundaries, to describe the optimal parameters to use when trying to identify the best saltwater angler in the Lone Star State..

I simply don't see how specialists can be placed at the top of the list. Anglers who display superior skills and productivity levels when targeting a single species of fish and/or exclusively using a single method simply don't reign supreme over anglers who display similar levels of skill and productivity with multiple species of fish, using many different methods. I make that statement after immersing myself in the culture of Texas coastal fishing for many years, and after becoming familiar with and competing against some of the anglers many consider the best in the state. In my estimation, versatility carries more weight than singular focus. In the end, specialists, no matter which revered species they target or how successfully they do so, rank beneath anglers who possess a broader range of skills which allow them to successfully target more species.

Putting more species on a list, in and of itself, does not a better angler or birder make. However, producing lists which include large numbers of species over a wide area does indicate superiority, especially when the person produces the lists without significant help from others. The coastal waters of Texas certainly qualify as a large "patch," particularly when one includes everything from the nooks and crannies of the coastal marshes, through the broad waters of the estuaries and bays, into the nearshore zone and onto the offshore waters governed by the state. These places provide homes to a long list of sport fish, including, but not limited to: speckled trout, red and black drum, flounder, sheepshead, ladyfish, tarpon, Spanish and king mackerel, jack crevalle, Florida pompano, bluefish, cobia and several species of sharks, including some real monsters, like tigers, great hammerheads and bulls.

Certainly, an angler who possesses the knowledge and skill sets to productively target most or all these species deserves consideration for placement at the top of the list of the state's best saltwater anglers. Achieving goals related to catching so many species of fish within a calendar year involves a functional awareness of what types of conditions and times of year provide the ripest opportunities for targeting each of them. The best angler, then, resembles the best birder in the most meaningful way, demonstrating astute perception of how the timing of natural events and weather conditions elevates and diminishes the likelihood for making productive outings to target each species.

Like the best birder, the best angler knows when, where and how to target all the fish within their patch. These adaptable experts operate productively in all parts of the state, the birder with the goal of finding and identifying all the kinds of birds, the angler hoping to win fights with all the species of fish. The birder shows adept skills from the high plains to the sky islands of the west, through the thorny thickets and resacas of the deep south and into the soft shadows of the east's piney woods. The angler displays equal skills poling the shallows of a back-lake, wading a shallow reef in the middle of a deep, wide bay, hopping around on the granite shoulders of a jetty or floating offshore, above a vast blue basin.

The state's best saltwater angler is no specialist, no Usain Bolt or Novak Djokovic. More a decathlete than a sprinter, like a freakish athlete highly adept at multiple sports, the angler at the top of the list has much more in common with Bo Jackson than Tom Brady. The state's best saltwater angler reigns as a prince of all trades, not as the king of one.