>>939500Freshwater or saltwater?
Regardless, my philosophy is to have as many rods as is legal, but only have as many in the water as I can control. So, I'll have some live bait/cut bait ones set out while I thresh around with lures on another. Sometimes, catfish or whatever are too active for me to leave the baited rods. Where I fish, there's no limit to the number of rods in the water. I may have 7+ rods in the water at once and 2+ might have bits at any one time.
Normally, as soon as I have my creel limit for the target fish I'll go home. If I have a cooler with ice, I may stay and target species that don't have creel limits in order to fill my freezer.