The one freshwater habit that will cost you the most fish in salt isn’t your cast, your fly choice, or your ability to read water. It’s the way you set the hook. Years of lifting a rod tip to a rising trout have wired a reflex into your arm, and the first time a bonefish or a striper eats your fly, that reflex fires before your brain gets a vote. The fix is mechanical, you can drill it at home before your trip, and the sooner you start, the fewer fish that early reflex will cost you.

If you’ve fished trout for years and you’re heading to salt this summer — striped bass on the sand flats from Maine to the Cape, redfish and snook on the Gulf, tarpon in the Keys, or bonefish on a first tropical trip — this is the skill that decides your early success more than anything else you pack. Not because it’s hard, but because you already have a competing habit running thousands of reps deep. As Cahill puts it, “a dedicated freshwater angler will have thousands of hours of muscle memory to overcome.”