Dean Rojas is making the most of playing hurt. In the process, he’s become ambidextrous. Rojas was strictly a right-hander until he aggravated an old wrist injury prior to BASSfest at Lake Texoma.
“It hurts,” said Rojas, who was sporting an Ace bandage on his right wrist and hand at Friday’s weigh-in. “I can’t use a spinning rod at all. I’m casting left-handed. When I hook a fish, the adrenalin kicks in and takes over. It was worse at Texoma. It’s about 50 percent better now.”
Rojas made his first Top 12 cut of the season at Texoma and finished eighth. He’s been in fifth place each of the first two days at Cayuga. The injury has had its benefits.
“It’s made me slow down,” Rojas said. “There’s certain things I can’t do, so it’s made me really concentrate and slow down on things I can do.”
But it’s not fun. “(Friday) morning, it was swollen and it hurt,” Rojas said.
And it makes for some ugly fish-catches. “I look like a crippled up old man,” he said. “I have to lay the rod on my arm to swing one in the boat.”
BASSTrakk currently shows Rojas has dropped back to 20th place. He has four fish weighing only 7-9, so he’s got time and room to move back up into the top 12 for his second left-handed tournament in a row.