As one ages, one's fishing voodoo becomes more complex. For me, it has turned into a career. Just look at the title of my show. My job description is to hunt for big fish. I mean really open.
Fishing is a game of observation.
To gain what I call confidence that comes with experience, you need to spend months at a time, not days, on the water. I think it's vital to first learn one body of water intimately, then branch out to other places. If you skip all over the place to different bodies of water, chasing a hot bite and relying on other people's observations, you never gain a complete, first-hand picture of your own. You never really internalize or become part of the place or process. So you never really learn.