Okay, here is today's question: what is the single most important factor that you always have to consider, in order to be successful, when you go fishing? And I'll give you a hint. It has nothing to do, whatsoever, with boats, motors, rods, reels or lures. 

The answer, of course, is that you have to be fishing on a spot—or spots—where there are fish, because everything else is absolutely unimportant. 

Indeed, talk with any real estate salesperson and they'll tell you the three most important things that determine the selling price of a house are location, location and location. 

I was reminded of that on Saturday as I was sitting in a layout blind in a field near Oak Hammock Marsh, north of Winnipeg, with my daughter Jenny and good friends Cameron and Brennan Tait and watched thousands of Canadas, snows, blues and mallards parade past our decoys. Only the birds were one field away and thus, too far to take a shot. In other words, we were in the wrong location. 

The days immediately prior, when Cameron and Brennan had scouted out the shoot, the wind was perfect for the field we had chosen and it was filled with ducks and geese that were munching and crunching on the barley seeds that littered the ground from the recent harvest. 

 But the wind shifted to the west over night and blew like the blazes. So, when the birds lifted off from the marsh in the morning, instead of heading into, and fighting the blustery weather, they simply drifted down wind with it. 

Now, we may have been born at night, but it certainly wasn't last night. So for Sunday's hunt, when Cameron's daughter Madison joined us, and when the winds were predicted to be similar to Saturday's, we made a slight adjustment of less than one-quarter-of-a-mile in our location.  

And it made all the difference in the world.  

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