Do you fish with a golden hook? Ancient Roman emperor Augustus compared taking large risks with the chance of small gains to fishing with a golden hook: the risk of losing the hook was greater than the reward of any fish caught. Does your negativity contribute to your failure to succeed in capturing your fish of a lifetime? If so then you are in the minority of anglers. When asked whether they are always confident about catching fish ahead of their intended session, 79 per cent of 128 anglers confirmed that they always are. 12 per cent said that they are on most occasions. Five per cent stated that they are confident some of the time and just four per cent said that they are never confident of catching anything. This finding of overwhelming positivity is not surprising since we anglers are, by nature, an optimistic breed. If we weren’t, we would never leave the house!
Herein lies a bit of a paradox. These same anglers were asked whether they believed in the 80:20 principle which implies that 80 per cent of fish are caught by 20 per cent per cent of anglers. This follows the broad rule of the Pareto principle that for any given activity, 80 per cent of output is generated by 20 per cent of participants. The majority of
