Does more practice make you better?

Two different perspectives.
More practice https://majorleaguefishing.com/bass-pro-tour/4-to-8-the-series-featuring-justin-lucas/
Less practice https://youtu.be/Pjlgj9p4ugw
I personally don't think it helps to practice more because conditions change so drastically.

If more practice dont make you a better angler then you simply aint paying attention. Even if you dont catch a single fish, just the time on the water should teach you something about the body of water you are on.

Time on the water makes you better. Call it whatever you want

Plus 1

I practice every day.

So you don't need any practice adapting to changing conditions? Hmmmm

Leave you rods at home one day and just graph and move around looking at different areas than you normally fish.

Practice will help you to learn what is and what is not happening.
Practice will help you learn to cast better
Practice will help you develop how to fish the lures you are using.
Practice will teach you that if you do not succeed at first you will learn how to.
Practice is the time you can form a game plan for the next adventure on the water.
NOT having any practice will only result in you never becoming a better angler.

Practice helped me to almost eliminate backlashes. Knock on wood.

The thing with practice is you have to learn from it and not just spin your wheels.

In my opinion, practice might make you “better”; but that doesn’t mean you’ll catch more fish. We all know a guy that can show up with hardly any practice and whoop us.

May not now but there was a time when that did spend time on the water.

More practice gives you more confidence, so I guess that is better!

Practice usually tells me what I should not be doing.

I think any time on the water, practice or otherwise, makes you better but that doesn't mean that you're going to do better in that weekend's tournament from practicing more. It's really easy to get hung up on what worked during practice and not adjusting to the conditions/situation on tournament day.

Practice for me now is more about eliminating unproductive water and baits as others have mentioned. Come tournament time I hopefully have a more productive lure in my hands.

Not all practice days are equally justified.Alot of guys taking those trophies on practice days and cant figure out why they didnt bite on the big day.

The key is to follow the fish. So when i find I have done good in practice and then go out and cannot find them where they were, it is now time to find where they went. They are there but practice has helped me find where maybe they have went.
When I had a tournament where we had two days of practice, that would happen to me, and thankfully my 2nd practice day taught me where they went to.
Every time I am on the water, I find myself learning something new. It may be how to fish a certain lure better, it may be learning a new technique but it always something.

As long as you don't get localitis. Ever known of a lake that you have fished for a long time, then someone comes to the lake and catches good fish. When you find out what they did, it surprises you because you don't fish that area anymore. Over time you stop going to areas where you don't catch fish (that is called Localitis). Sometimes you need to go off the beaten path. I remember back in the day, I had a killer pattern with a specific size and color crankbait on Lake Travis. Day before the tournament big front comes thru, and wiped all that away. Only thing that hurts practice is drastic weather changes, IMO.. But no, practice doesn't hurt. I have even seen pro's not set the hook, just letting them hold onto a worm until they drop it. That way they could possibly catch that fish again.

I practice my casting more often then not...I need to learn skipping, so that's what I'm doing now. Well I'm getting a ton of backlashes out. AHAHAHAHA

I don't care what you say. The more youre on the water, the better you are going to be. There's no doubt about that. You can follow patterns and trends better. Keep up with water temps and clarity and pattern from there.

Probably going to ruffle some feathers with this one but, simply being on the water does not make you better at fishing. Attention to detail and a person's ability to see cause and effect, DURING PRACTICE, is what makes you better. Not simply the act of being present. This is not specific to fishing but applies more broadly to any pursuit.

We're all guilty of zoning out while out on the water. How many times have you made a cast and been checking out the scenery during the retrieve? Might have gotten a bite but were preoccupied with what is happening at work, or thinking about what to have for dinner, picking kids up from school, etc... Didn't mentally annotate at what speed you were reeling in, what action you were putting on the bait, what cover you were bumping into, or any 1 of the other 100 factors that go into fishing performance. This event was useless and contributed nothing or very little to your development. This is how people can devote loads of time to things and not get better at them. It's the attention to detail that sets one practice session apart from another.

If you wanna get technical about it, the recognition of cause and effect are what cause the development of dendritic (neurons) connections in your brain that are responsible for storage of memories. If you blindly hooked into a fish because you were simply present and got lucky, those connections aren't made. Memories were not developed. And you didn't improve your skills.

"I did stay at a Holiday Inn once"

Sorry, had to bust your chops. This post is right on the money. I zone out looking for the next hump, pocket, etc...

Well my tournament performance isn't nearly as good as it was when I first got my boat, so I'm certainly not getting any better. I won tournaments having barely fished a lake at all. Now that I've fished some of those lakes quite a bit, I can't place in the money. Guess that just means I suck at fishing.

“Practice Fishing”? You either go fishing or you do not go fishing

Yeah, I understand this. I have too much book knowledge on what I'm supposed to be doing that I can't put into more effective action. I also don't have 30+ years of competitive fishing. Growing up, fishing was a bank activity for pan-fish or whatever would bite.

Actually I think the wealth of knowledge available through social media and the internet has taken from time spent on the water.

Steve Kennedy doesn’t practice much and says it makes him fish the conditions better. Over thinking can definitely make you second guess yourself. Practice to suit your style and then follow your gut.

Time on the water helps. Short term practice can be either good or bad. If you know what they are doing for the time of year sometimes just going fishing can be what it takes to win. Depends on how much lake knowledge you have, understanding what they should be doing and where they are doing it, if they are doing it! etc. How much practice you need is situational. Practice can just beat up your tournament fish. Other times you need practice to figure out what might have a chance to win or cash a check.

Lots of pros will talk about fishing in the moment or letting the fish tell you what to do,

How many times have you heard......I had such a poor practice or had a great practice and the tournament results were the opposite? Other times practice and the tournament totally line up.

It just depends.