This is not exactly how grandpa said it since he was a “little Irishman from Minnesota” as he’d always told everyone and big words were not part of his plain spoken vocabulary, but I understood what he meant when he told me that not all fish eat the same things. So, he regularly cautioned me to take more than one type of bait when I go fishing. In his case, he’d have night crawlers, Salmon eggs, corn, and often sweetened bread dough for catfish.
This, of course, made sense to me and over the course of the decades has always played true.
When I fish in the Pacific Ocean I have, at a minimum, three kinds of bait: Anchovies, Mackerel, and Squid. Sometimes I will take Blood Worms although I don’t like using live bait but I am always willing to change bait on any pole at any time. This is what grandpa really meant.
Flexibility is a key element in fishing since there are factors that could interrupt your well laid plans for an outing which could limit your fishing options so don’t limit yourself. The fish you want to catch may not be around so if you have only the bait they like, then you should just go home. However, if you have a selection, you can change bait, maybe catch some other type of fish, and have a successful day. A few weeks ago, I was fishing off the deep end of the Ventura Pier using Squid as bait and nothing was hitting on it. So, I changed to Mackerel and I started getting hits right away. Eventually, I hooked into a Bat Ray about two feet wide. I didn’t land it do to faulty fishing line but it was close enough for me to gauge its width.
If I had not switched bait, I know I would not have had a chance to even look at it.
The Old Man & The Seas 
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