The almost magical world that fish live in is hard for us to understand. It is easy to look out into a field and observe feeding deer, or to look up and watch birds flying. But it's hard to see into the fish's world.

For that reason, fish are more of a mystery than they have to be.

To understand fish, you have to realize that they don't plunk themselves down on one spot and spend the rest of their lives there. They move, and they move a lot, from season to season, and from day to day. If you study written information on the seasonal movements of the fish you want to catch, you can cut down on many hours of fishing effort wasted in the wrong locations.

Remember this basic rule: fish tend to "relate" to something. They often hold along weed edges, around stumps and trees that fall into the water, where a muddy bottom changes to gravel, or where gravel changes to rock.

And don't just think about shallow-water objects. Fish relate to things in deeper water, too. That's where locations like dropoffs and deeper rock piles come into play.

I call this whole idea the "edge effect." Just as grouse hunters know that a spot where an open area meets the woods has a better chance of holding grouse than a similar spot in the middle of the woods, a good fisherman knows the same thing about fish.

Look around the edges of different kinds of cover, different depths of water, different types of bottoms, and you will find fish.

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