If it takes "10,000 hours to master something"... 2025
Neil McCauley reply :
Has anyone actually logged 10,000 hours of fishing yet?
How much time do you actually put in per year?
I went and looked at every year I've been fishing, all the way to the childhood days dropping a line off the dock on family vacation. I estimated the # hours/year... really not as many as I thought. About 200-250 as a kid, then everything went on hold during college, <50 the whole time. The last 8 years since then things picked up. Last summer alone I got almost 300 hrs (by the Fall wife was ready to strangle me 
) But even at that rate, to get to 10,000 would still take 28 years!
Sam reply :
Neil, interesting concept but I enjoy fishing so much that to try to keep a running total of time while enjoying the pastime would somehow not work for me.
I just want to go out and have a good time and create some lasting memories.
Time on fishing is not important to me.
Coopdog72 reply :
I'd never keep track of the hours because when I hit 10k my wife would say since I mastered fishing I should sell everything and help her scrapbook. Lol
WIGuide reply :
It's hard to say since I only tracked time of trips for a year or two, but I think I've got to be close to that. I've been fishing for as long as I can remember picture for proof haha
Team9nine reply :
I've got my 10,000 hours in and then some. Now days, since I stopped tourney fishing, I average about 200-300 hours just bass fishing and another 100+ hours for other species (white bass, walleye and crappie mostly). A few years back I actually tracked my yearly bass fishing for a Midwest Finesse In-Fisherman piece and it was 82 trips for a total of 260 hours. That made the average length of each bassin' trip three hours, 10 minutes. I landed 2,305 bass, which was an average of 8.86 bass per hour or one bass for every six minutes and 46 seconds of fishing. Can't wait until I retire - those numbers should really go up then 
-T9
Master Bait'r reply :
In that case I am a 3x Grand Master at making poor decisions and enjoying them. Anybody want an autograph?
Scarborough817 reply :
does time spent in tackle shops count?
scaleface reply :
I know I have 10,000 hours of fishing in but its not all bass fishing .
Mosster47 reply :
Total fishing easily, but most of it wouldn't be bass. I was so young I can't remember my first good bass, but I've got the picture!
gardnerjigman reply :
On 3/9/2016 at 11:13 PM, Master Bait'r said:In that case I am a 3x Grand Master at making poor decisions and enjoying them. Anybody want an autograph?
My wife would argue that it didn't take that long for me to master being a butt...
Fisher-O-men reply :
On 3/9/2016 at 9:59 PM, WIGuide said:It's hard to say since I only tracked time of trips for a year or two, but I think I've got to be close to that. I've been fishing for as long as I can remember picture for proof haha
Which one is you? The one with the petrified expression or the Boy Scout?
Master Bait'r reply :
On 3/10/2016 at 12:27 AM, Fisher-O-men said:Which one is you? The one with the petrified expression or the Boy Scout?
At least now you have the spaced-out gaze to go with the online persona 
I doubt I'll ever not picture that face when he posts from now on haha
Bluebasser86 reply :
Well I fish every chance I get, which is usually a few times a week, and I've been doing it pretty much since I was born and I turn 30 in a couple months, so I have to be getting close if I'm not there yet.
WIGuide reply :
On 3/10/2016 at 12:27 AM, Fisher-O-men said:Which one is you? The one with the petrified expression or the Boy Scout?
The petrified one, can you blame me though, it was the first time I ever saw catfish hunter... haha
On 3/10/2016 at 12:33 AM, Master Bait'r said:At least now you have the spaced-out gaze to go with the online persona
Apparently it took me a while to figure out make a normal face when it came to fishing. Here's a few more you can think about whenever you read one of my posts! lol
buzzed bait reply :
the 10,000 hours thing is a myth..... if it were true, i would be a master sleeper, but instead i am a horrid sleeper!
Fishes in trees reply :
I question the premise, i.e., if it takes 10,000 hours to master something, then lots of stuff, some of it important, doesn't get mastered. What up with that? I'll just put this old homily in a category with other homilies, i.e., sometimes kinda true, more often than not untrue, and leave it at that. To continue on this vein, time spend fishing doesn't (and shouldn't) necessarily count forward time spend toward "mastery".
whatever that is . . . . In addition the 10,000 hours number doesn't necessarily account for "slow learners". I could go on, but I'll stop now.
Old homilies, folk wisdom, call it what you will, are often particularly irksome to me.
Paul Roberts reply :
I've some idea of the fishing hours I’ve tallied, since I’ve kept a fishing journal since 1977 –now working on filling my 10th volume. I logged over 100 fishing days/year for some of those years. Some of those days were up to 14 hrs long. I still much prefer to put in full days if I can, and hate 2 hr “dips in the pool”; I’ve always felt that the planet rolls over too darn quickly. Much of my fishing was multi-species which I consider very valuable time spent, bringing a lot of insight into my bass fishing. There were a few years I did not fish -university years, living abroad, marrying a non-angler. Nowadays -still in the family support mode- fishing time is limited. I just tallied the 2010 season -an average year nowadays- and got 39 trips at 4-11hrs/trip –about 80% of that dedicated to bass.
All that tallied however, all those hours aren’t equal in terms of attainment of "mastery". And such hours just aren’t comparable across anglers. There’s something to be said for opportunity –the quality of fishing waters in close proximity, say. There’s also something to be said for sheer competence. Some people have steeper learning curves than others –what Malcolm Gladwell was confronting in his book, “Outliers”, through which the 10000hrs research was swept into the popular imagination. How “mastery” develops is not a simple issue, or, at least there’s more to consider than sheer number of hours spent or IQ points.
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gladwells-10000-rule-2014-7
“…But in less stable fields, like entrepreneurship and rock and roll, rules can go out the window.” deliberate practice is only a predictor of success in fields that have super stable structures. For example, in tennis, chess, and classical music, the rules never change, so you can study up to become the best."
I think we know where fishing would fall in the stability continuum. 
Raul reply :
My man, I´ve fished since I was 9, nowadays I can´t remember some things I did or said 24 hours ago, how I´m I supposed to know how many hours I have logged ? It´s pretty much like: How many did you catch ? many years ago it mattered, nowadays it doesn´t matter anymore, so when somebody asks me how many I caught I reply: I ceased counting after I caught the first one.
It´s more important what and how much you learned.
buzzed bait reply :
On 3/10/2016 at 2:30 AM, Paul Roberts said:“…But in less stable fields, like entrepreneurship and rock and roll, rules can go out the window.” deliberate practice is only a predictor of success in fields that have super stable structures. For example, in tennis, chess, and classical music, the rules never change, so you can study up to become the best.
I think we know where fishing would fall in the stability continuum.
see i agree somewhat with this in that fishing is too unstable, not to mention none of us really "practice" fishing, we just fish. in fishing, practicing and doing are more or less the same.
on the other hand, i disagree that in a stable environment you can "study up to become the best". 10,000 hours or 10 million hours won't make me as tall or naturally gifted as a Lebron James for instance.
Paul Roberts reply :
On 3/10/2016 at 4:52 AM, buzzed bait said:see i agree somewhat with this in that fishing is too unstable, not to mention none of us really "practice" fishing, we just fish. in fishing, practicing and doing are more or less the same.
on the other hand, i disagree that in a stable environment you can "study up to become the best". 10,000 hours or 10 million hours won't make me as tall or naturally gifted as a Lebron James for instance.
Yes, I think the researcher exercised poor word choice when he said, "study up to become the best". I think he would have been better off saying, "study and practice to become the best you can be".
Bankbeater reply :
I could probably go back through my logs and come up with some kind of number, but that seems like a lot of work.
QUAKEnSHAKE reply :
But what technique are you mastering in that 10,000hrs like
frogs 10000hrs to master
senko 10000hrs to master
spinnerbaits or whatever. Each one to be a master needs 10,000hrs.
tomustang reply :
I don't count, I just fish.
The 10,000hr mastery is silly.
hawgenvy reply :
Just 40 more years of casting and I'll finally stop losing lures in trees.
soflabasser reply :
Fishing is hobby I plan on doing for the rest of my life,so I hope to surpass that amount of time several times over!
clh121787 reply :
Been fishing ever since I can remember. Probably halfway to 10k hours. Im maybe halfway to mastering finessing lures out of trees.thumb.jpg.0fc3c6021b7647ba89b0eadf1f67e355.jpg)
Jaderose reply :
I fish. I don't count hours....I don't take video....i don't take pictures.....I don't keep logs (I might do this a little but I doubt it).....I generally go to the same place 99% of the time. It's an interesting little 70 acre lake that holds lots of big bass and a lot of different challenges. Have I mastered this hobby? Nope.....and I hope I never do. The day I have it "mastered" is the day it will bore me.
Catt reply :
10,000 hours?
Got that many just in tournament fishing, during the 70-80s we fished from "safe light until dark thirty".
After my divorce in 1982 in lived for two years in the marshes of southwest Louisiana guiding hunting & fishing.
I have no idea how many total hours I've logged!
BassMaster17 reply :
being young and all I would say I'm about a little over 1,000 hours of bass fishing, another 500 or so of other species.
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