On the water, I looked at casting distance, accuracy, sensitivity, responsiveness, and comfort by taking each combo through its paces
Tackle boxes are largely an exercise in personal preference, but ensuring you have lures or bait suitable for the fishery, as well as ways to tie these lures and bait to your line and get them to either float or sink as desired, is the basic idea
As a catfish moves away, the line tightens and the hook rotates toward the corner of the mouth
Light waves strike tiny particles of sediment or plankton in the water, scattering the light in random fashion, but light bouncing off an object, a prey fish for example, has a more uniform pattern
The right hand should hold the rod close to the reel, so that the thumb of the right hand rests on the rim of the spool of the reel