Success in the two outdoor activities that entertain me several times each week boils down to reliable equipment and simple adjustments.

Fishing and golfing might seem to be very different, but I find that each sport requires a combination of skills and good decisions to avoid fishless days and double bogeys.

Eye-hand coordination, sharp senses and knowing when to tweak the stroke all go a long way in providing fun and excitement on the lake and on the golf course.

This all came into crystal clarity last week while sharing the BassCat with fishing buddy Ted Suffolk and then playing 18 holes at Kennsington Golf Club with Stan Czeck, Ralph Roberts and Jim Zarlenga.

Ted and I were poking plastics through holes in the aquatic vegetation at one of our favorite bass lakes, when an oversized largemouth glided out of the shadows and smacked my lure. I set the hook hard and the bass surged toward the weedy wall from which it had appeared.

Then, it was gone.

The fight had barely started, but the big fish was gone, thanks to equipment failure that could have been avoided if I had only inspected the reel’s drag before pitching my bait.

A few days later, with a respectable score recorded on the first nine with Stan, Ralph and Jim, I descended into double bogey hell thanks to a balky putter. I could have avoided a nasty back nine if only I’d adjusted my judgment of the speed of the greens relative to the power in my putt stroke.

Another week, more lessons on the lake and the golf course.

Those lessons are these: Make sure my tackle is ship-shape before making the first cast and when all of my putts stop well short of the hole, hit the rest of them a little harder.

The ill-fated hookset last week was the result of slippage of the drag. I normally crank the drag down as tight as possible, which is standard operating procedure when flipping heavy-weighted lures into a nasty thick cover on a 20-pound-test fluorocarbon line. I know that stout won’t break easily, but any drag slippage will fail to deliver maximum power to the hook point.

A simple inspection of the reel prior to fishing that day would have revealed the slipping drag and I would have remedied the potential problem.

A fishing trip presents many variables beyond the control of the angler — weather, water temperature and color, the fishes’ behavior and much more — which makes it all the more important to take control of the performance of our equipment, the presentations we execute to the fish and the decisions we make throughout the day.

Sounds simple, right? If only it were. Just when we think we have it dialed in, one of those goofy variables pops up.

Fishing and golfing. Both can be exhilarating and both can be humbling.

Jack Wollitz’s book, “The Common Angler,” is a collection of stories that explain why anglers are passionate about fishing. Send a note to jackbbaass@gmail.com.