Anyone involved in hunting, especially big game, knows how important it is to use the right caliber of gun to take the prey you are after. You don’t use a 22-caliber rifle for hunting deer or bears, and you don’t need a 300 Winchester Mag. to bag a gray squirrel. This week’s piece, however, is not about choosing the right caliber for hunting but rather it’s about choosing the right “caliber” for your fishing outing. When I looked up the word caliber, the thesaurus offered two other words I found very fitting — level and ability.

When it comes to fishing, those of us who fish for a variety of fish are often faced with choosing equipment that will perform at the right level and equipment that has the ability to meet the demands for the particular species of fish we are targeting. I know, when we were kids, we grabbed the old fishing rod that hung in the basement, and off we went with our worms and bobber to catch whatever happened to come along. As we grew in experience, we learned that certain rods, lines, reels, and lures performed differently for the different species, and we became more sophisticated in our approach.

The truth is, choosing the right “caliber” for our fishing experiences will definitely increase your chances of connecting more frequently.

This thought came to me as I fished on several occasions over the past couple of weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice other people fishing with the wrong equipment. Last week while some friends and I caught crappies at a steady pace, parties in another boat only a short distance from us could barely come up with one or two. I noticed a couple of things that were probably causing the problem; one was way oversized spinning outfits, and the other was the very large bobbers — they looked big enough to keep a person afloat.

The point is, you need to adjust your gear to suit the size of fish you are after. A heavy spinning outfit spooled with 14 or 20-pound test monofilament that’s geared for taking bass with chunky bass lures is not what you want for taking smaller, lighter hitting panfish. To successfully take crappies, bluegills, and perch fishing in deeper water, it’s important that you can feel that light “tap” 12 feet down — sensitivity is extremely important and the smaller, lighter, more flexible rod with a smaller reel and four-pound test line makes that possible.

By the same token, if I am after bass along the weed edges of a lake, I won’t be using an ultralight spinning outfit with a four-pound test; you may hook into one — but good luck trying to land it successfully.

Under these circumstances, I will switch to heavier gear — a medium action spinning outfit spooled with 14–20-pound line at the least, and the size of my lures will greatly increase over the small one-eighth ounce jigs I was using for smaller panfish. I may even switch to casting gear with braided line while working soft plastic worms and lizards on Carolina Rigs and Texas Rigs.

Unfortunately, one size doesn’t fit all; if you are just starting out, something in the mid-range may do, but as you become more experienced, it’s wise to choose a few different outfits to fit the species that you are targeting.