Recently, I pitched my plastic bug to the shadow of a clump of coontail in Mosquito Lake, turned my head to talk to my friend on the BassCat’s back deck and missed the opportunity to hook the best bass of the day.

When will I learn?

I have not read Murphy’s Laws of Fishing (yes, there is that book). I would guess, however, that one of them is, “Expect to get bit on every cast; forget this and you’ll regret it forever.”

Forever is a long time. I fuss over my fishing flops too long, but I don’t dwell on them forever. I usually get over them soon after I boat my next big fish.

We should learn from our failures. I try, but the truth is I fail sometimes and fall into the same old traps.

Remember when your parents told you “Do as I say, not as I do”? That’s my advice to you today. I can provide three decades’ worth of guidance about how to catch more and bigger fish, but that doesn’t mean I always follow my own advice.

I can tell you, for instance, that gold spinner blades work better on overcast days than chrome- or nickel-plated blades. So why do I catch myself throwing a nickel-bladed spinnerbait on rainy days?

Don’t be lazy. The biggest bass are rarely easy to catch. But I catch myself sometimes being lazy and working the easy cover for easy fish. They are smaller than the big old bass that hunker into the gnarly cover where a chain saw might be necessary to cut out a hooked fish.

Another of my bad fishing habits is to forget about the fun that crappies, bluegills, perch and rock bass provide. I am guilty of being consumed with tactics intended to catch largemouth and smallmouth bass. When the bass aren’t biting, I should switch gears and have fun with the panfish, but I don’t do that often enough.

Velcro and other tie-down devices don’t work unless they are properly engaged. I haven’t lost a lot of gear over the years, but whenever something has gone overboard, it was because I was in too much of a hurry to strap stuff down, even for a short run.

I am among the anglers who spend more time fishing on a boat than on foot. That’s not necessarily bad, of course, but it does pull us away from the foundation of our sport. I used to love trudging the bank of Yellow Creek in Poland to fish for chubs and suckers and wading Little Beaver Creek for smallmouth bass. I miss those days.

The list of my great mistakes includes a litany of tales about horsing big fish to the boat only to suffer the agony of them escaping. I have learned from experimentation that if you ease up on a hard-charging fish, it often will reduce its own effort to resist.

But in the heat of the battle, I forget Newton’s third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Many anglers overpack for a day on the lake. I fight to resist stowing 100 pounds of lures in the boat, but fear what apparently is a common worry: The day’s hot lure is one that is back home in my basement.

Another piece of advice is a fact I learned a long time ago. Never underestimate the ability of a novice to create a terminal bird’s nest in your spinning reel. Similarly, never trust your friend who says, “Oh, sure, I can use a baitcasting reel.”

And finally, remember this: If it can happen out on the water, it will. Be ready.

Jack Wollitz is a lifelong angler who makes many mistakes on the water. He appreciates emails from readers about their own fishing adventures. Send a note to him at jackbbaass@gmail.com.