The 90/10 Rule of Fishing & of Finding Meaning in Your Life

When I was in my twenties, long before I developed a passion for fly fishing, I really wanted to learn how to be a deer hunter. I was a real novice, but full of desire. Of course, in hunting and fishing it seems evident that a starting point is to find an accessible place where the wild game or fish hang out. In that vein, I was quite excited when my good friend, who was also getting into deer hunting, told me that he had an uncle who lived out in the country where we could hunt. He said his uncle was a kind, eccentric old guy with a big heart who had only recently moved to the country, but was regularly inviting him down to his place to deer hunt and spend time.

The drive was about three hours, but we didn’t mind since we finally had a place to hunt. When we got there that evening, we enjoyed a few beers and some interesting conversation with the old guy. He told us that in the morning he would take us “to where the deer were at”.

Neither my buddy or I slept well that night probably because of the anticipation of the morning hunt and the opportunity to get educated on where the deer are. That next morning, after an early country breakfast, his uncle took us to where he thought we would find deer. He drove us a couple of miles down the road, well beyond his property. He stopped next to a yellow, metal, “deer-crossing-road-sign” with 3 bullet holes in it and he said this is the spot. He had reasoned that there must be deer there since the state had actually put up a sign to let others know there were deer right there. My buddy and I laughed out loud even though we knew his uncle wasn’t trying to be funny. He was trying to be as helpful as he could be, but we quickly realized this was the classic case of the blind leading the blind. 

A lot of years have passed since that day, but my quest for the where, when, why and how to legally and ethically hunt deer never stopped growing. In the process, I even became a hunter-education instructor, and I coached one of my son’s and eventually a 5-person team of young hunters as they trained for and eventually won, not only the Missouri state, but also the International Youth Hunter Education Challenge (YHEC).

In deer hunting, we often use the term, hunt the edge, which refers to hunting where the agriculture area (field or pasture) meets the forest. Whitetail deer often use this as a travel path. Of course, sometimes the property or terrain doesn’t have an edge, so other clues or factors come into consideration as to where the deer might travel are use.

A heuristic is a practical, rule-of-thumb approach to problem-solving designed to yield a quick, “good enough” solution when finding an optimal one is impossible or impractical. “Hunt the edge” is a heuristic, and the “90-10-10-90 Fishing Rule” is another (the idea that 90% of the fish are in 10% of the water and 10% of the fishermen catch 90% of the fish). Not long ago, I heard this heuristic (rule-of-thumb) from Jason Randall, which he used to pique our interest just before he presented a well-thought-out, and well-produced presentation on the where, when, why and how of increasing your odds at finding the most productive areas in a stream to fish.

Out of curiosity, I recently did a quick Google search to find out if any other notable fishing personalities and authors have mentioned the 90/10 Fishing Rule (short for 90-10-10-90). Here’s a short, but incomplete list: Lefty Kreh, Al Lindner, Bill Dance, Tom Mann, Buck Perry, Mark Sosin, Bill Binkelman, Frank Sergeant, Joseph Simonds, Wyatt Parcel, Paul Johnson, John LaMorte. It turns out this rule-of-thumb generalization has been being used for longer than some of the people reading this have been alive or fishing.

As I teach my kids, grandkids and others how to get started at, or better at, fly fishing, I plan to continue to borrow the classic 90/10 rule to paint a picture and pique their interest in striving to read the water to find the areas most likely to hold greater concentrations of fish as opposed to just relying on blind luck.

I have previously mentioned, and may continue to use the 90/10 rule in my posts in the FATC FORUM as a way to communicate in fly fishing vernacular that if you’re fishing for meaning in your life or significance or a praise-worthy legacy, maybe it would be helpful to be deliberate and to focus your search. In both cases, from a catching standpoint, it boils down to the fact that knowing where to fish is much more critical than the amount of time you spend on the water.

There’s a relatively new book out that I guarantee you will find way more helpful than that proverbially shot-up, yellow, deer-crossing-road-sign I mentioned earlier, if you’re searching for meaning in your life.

So, if you have you been trying to read the waters of life to find the meaning of your life, I’d like to point out some fishy-looking water. In case you haven’t heard, I’m planning on facilitating another annual FATC BOOK STUDY. It will be 6 consecutive Wednesday evenings starting on September 9, 2026. The book will be THE MEANING OF YOUR LIFE —Finding Purpose In An Age of Emptiness by Arthur C. Brooks. But we don’t need to wait till then to actively think about and cultivate our desire for meaning, significance and a story worth leaving. And feel free to buy the book ahead of time and to start reading it –even if you can’t join us for the FATC book study.

Feel free to share your thoughts here on the FATC FORUM about this or about whatever is on your mind. Remember our motto: It’s not just about the fly fishing. 

John Muckerman

FATC Inspirational and Leadership Lead