What an excellent thread!
You'll know your skills have improved when you're wading in the stream with salmon running past you, completely ignoring whatever you've been casting, and you've begun counting them as they pass by. Make sure you put a notch in your rod for every five and crosshatch that for every ten. Later, as your skills evolve, you'll start giving them names. Finally, when you've mastered salmon fishing, you'll become adept at releasing 10 out of the 12 you caught because they were unclipped coho.
Steelhead fishing is a little easier. They'll come right up to your lure and ignore it instead of veering away or feigning sleep, like the salmon do. At the master level, you'll get the opportunity to release every other fish, if only because it's too dark instead of being unclipped.
Panfishing in our fine lakes is great because the weeds will help bring variety to your diet! However, trout fishing is where the real action is... lots of hiking to find unpopulated places, only to discover that someone got there first and cleaned out the hole, so you get to hike some more.
[this exercise in stretching the comedic muscles is brought to you by a leftover glass of sickly sweet wine]
